Daily public ledger. [volume] (Maysville, Ky.) 1892-191?, 1896-09-12
POOR IrALY.
The Nation Il Impoverished and threat
ened with bankruptcy.

ened with bankruptcy.
The condition of Italy attracts wide
spread attention and sympathy. The
country is still suffering from the neces-
stiles of the position which she has as
sumed among the nations. Her unfit
cation" consummated nearly 40 years
ago, entailed on her enormous expendi-
lures. She needed lines of railway TO
bind her territories together, and
military display to make her influence
effective.
To escape isolation, to hold her own
against France and still further to as
sert herself in the eyes of the world,
she joined Germany and Austria in the
famous triple alliance. This brought
new burdens in its wake. The army
was gradually strengthened, and war
ship was added after war ship, until
Italy now maintains the navy of a first
class power.
The effort to build up a united Italy"
1isorganized the finances of the country.
As the armament increased, the treasury
became empty. For years past the ma
ton has had to meet large annual def
cts. To raise the needed revenue, taxa
ton has become more and more excess
Give, both because the amount needed was
great, and because, owing to corruption
in municipal and national admnistra-
tions, part only of the sum collected
reached its rightful destination.
Bank scandals, involving the highest
statesmen in the land, have aggravated
the situation; despair of reaching a
solution has furnished new opportuni-
ties to the radical and socialistic agita-
tors of the violent type, and not long
ago there was an insurrectionary move
ment in Sicily.
In many ways Italy is only at the be-
ginning of the career which, as a great
European power, she seems to have
marked out for herself. Her manu-
features are poorly developed as com
pared with those of the United States, of
Great Britain or Germany.
She has a population of artisans and
laborers whose wages barely suffice to
give them the imperative necessities of
life. Hunger or actual starvation pre-
vail over large areas of the territory.
The sanitary arrangements of towns
are of the most elementary kind. Ig-
norance is widespread, and there is
much illiteracy.
1t is also clear that, while the Italians
possess qualities that connect them with
an interesting and glorious past, they
have also inherited some of the less
praiseworthy traits Of their ancestors.
In their proneness to anger, and the
ease with which they commit crimes of
violence, the line of descent can be
traced-for southern portions of Italy,
at any rate-from the earliest period of
Roman history down through the mid
die ages to our own day. The mob that
might have been harangued by Cicero
in the time of Caesar, or could have I'M
aerstood an Grafton from the lips of
Dante during the struggle between the
Guelphs and Ghibelines, is still, in its
baser passions, the same mob as that
which the other day, on receipt of the
news from Abyssnia, proceeded to
"smash things up generally"
The return to power of Marquis di
Rudini puts an already tried man into
4 position of acute responsibility, but
promises no important change in the
policies of the nation. The ferment of
the past month, while it revealed the
eXcitability of the populace, showed also
the mistaken loyalty of the italian peo-
pie to their king.-Youth's Companion.