Explore "Sicily and Malta" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I found that every thing in and about Sicily had been exaggerated by travellers, except two things -- the folly of the government and the wretchedness of the people. _They_ did not admit of exaggeration.
Really you may learn the fundamental principles of political economy in a very compendious way, by taking a short tour through Sicily, and simply reversing in your own mind every law, custom, and ordinance you meet with. I never was in a country in which every thing proceeding from man was so exactly wrong. You have peremptory ordinances _against_ making roads, taxes on the passage of common vegetables from one miserable village to another, and so on.