Page 341 sur 1118

We say a greater number of farms than ordinary, because the

insupportable taxes, levied with a cupidity and folly unequalled;

the habitual conduct, even in time of peace, of the standing

troops (conduct which the mournful documents of the age compare

to that of an invading army), and other causes which we cannot

enumerate, had for some time slowly operated to produce these sad

effects in all the Milanese,-the particular circumstances of

which we now speak were, therefore, like the unexpected

exasperation of a chronic disease. Hardly had this harvest been

gathered, when the supplies for the army, and the waste which

always accompanies them, caused an excessive scarcity, and with

it its painful but profitable concomitant, a high price upon

provisions; but this, attaining a certain point, always creates

in the mind of the multitude a suspicion that scarcity is not in

reality the cause of it.