Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 368, June 1846

Semper inops, ventique fidem poscebat et anni."[13 - De Bello Gild., v. 64, 65.]

"When Africa revolted under Gildo, in the reign of Honorius, Rome," says Gibbon, "was on the brink of starvation, from which she was only saved by large importations from Gaul."[14 - Gibbon, c. xxix.] She still depended on her provinces; domestic agriculture was ruined. Claudian represents the genius of ancient Rome bewailing, in pathetic and eloquent terms, her dependence for food on the nations she had conquered, in words which all governments rendering their people dependent on foreign supplies would do well to bear in mind. "Formerly," says the poet, "my prayers used to be that my legions might triumph on the banks of the Araxes, or that the consul might display his eagles at Susa; now all I ask is a supply of food to avert the extremities of hunger. The province of Africa, which furnishes corn to my people, is under the power of Gildo. He intercepts our supplies, and our food is at his mercy. He sells the harvests which belong to the descendants of Romulus; he possesses the fields purchased by my blood. The warrior people which conquered the world, now dishonoured and in want, endures the miserable punishment of peace; blockaded by no enemy, they are like the inhabitants of a besieged town. Death impends at every moment; there remain only doubtful supplies for a few days. My greatness has been my ruin; I was safer when my territory was more limited; would that its boundaries were once more at my gates! But, if I am doomed to perish, at least let me have a different fate; let me be conquered by another Porsenna; let my city be burnt by a second Brennus. All things are more tolerable than hunger."[15 - "Advenio supplex, non ut proculcet AraxenConsul ovans, nostræve premant pharetrata securesSusa, nec ut Rubris aquilas figamus arenis.Hæc nobis, hæc ante dabas. – Nunc pabula tantumRoma precor. Miserere tuæ, Pater Optime, gentis —Extremam defende famem.******Tot mihi pro meritis Lybiam Nilumque dedêreUt dominam plebem bellatoremque senatumClassibus astivis alerent.******Nunc inhonorus, egens, perfert miserabile pacisSupplicium, nulloque palam circumdatus hosteObessi discrimen habet. Per singula letumImpendet momenta mihi, dubitandaque pauciPræscribunt alimenta dies." – Claud. De Bello Gild.]

Nor was the state of Greece, in the later stages of the empire, more favourable.

"No description could exaggerate the miseries of Greece in the later stages of the empire. The slave population, which had formerly laboured for the wealthy, had then disappeared, and the free labourer had sunk into a serf. The uncultivated plains were traversed by bands of armed Sclavonians, who settled in great numbers in Thessaly and Macedonia. The cities of Greece ceased to receive the usual supplies of agricultural produce from the country; and even Thessalonica, with its fertile territory and abundant pastures, was dependent on foreign importation for relief from famine. The smaller cities, destitute of the same advantages of situation, would naturally be more exposed to depopulation, and sink more rapidly to decay. The roads, after the seizure of the local funds of the Greek cities by Justinian, were allowed to go to ruin, and the transport of provisions by land became difficult. When the Byzantine writers, after the time of Heraclius, mention the Greeks and Peloponnesus, it is with feelings of aversion and contempt."[16 - Finlay's Greece under the Romans, 435, 436.]

Nor was Asia Minor in a more prosperous condition in the later stages of the empire. In Asia Minor the decline of the Greek race had been rapid. This decline, too, must be attributed rather to bad governments than to hostile invasions; for from the period of the Persian invasion, in the time of Heraclius, the greater part of that immense country had enjoyed almost a century of uninterrupted peace. The Persian invasions had never been very injurious to the sea-coast, where the Greek cities were wealthy and numerous; but the central provinces were entirely ruined. The fact that extensive districts, once populous and wealthy, were already deserts, is proved by the colonies which Justinian II. settled in various parts of the country. Population had disappeared even more rapidly than the agricultural resources of the country."[17 - Ibid. 517.]

But while this was the state of matters in Italy, Asia Minor, and Greece – that is, the heart of the empire – its remoter provinces, Spain, Lybia, and Egypt, not only exhibited no symptoms of similar decay, but were, down to the very close of the reigns of the Cæsars, in the highest state of wealth, prosperity, and happiness. Listen to Gibbon on this subject in regard to Spain: —

"The situation of Spain, separated on all sides from the enemies of Rome by the sea, the mountains, and intermediate provinces, had secured the long tranquillity of that remote and sequestered country; and we may observe, as a sure symptom of domestic happiness, that in a period of four hundred years, Spain furnished very few materials to the history of the Roman empire. The cities of Merida, Cordova, Seville, and Tarragona, were numbered among the most illustrious of the Roman world. The various plenty of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, was improved and manufactured by the skill of an industrious people; and the peculiar advantages of naval stores contributed to support an extensive and profitable trade. Many particulars concerning the fertility of Spain may be found in Huet's Commerce of the Ancients, c. 40."[18 - Gibbon, c. xxxi. p. 351.]

The state of Lybia was equally characteristic of the highest and most general prosperity, especially in relation to agricultural industry, at the time when Italy and Greece were thus languishing in the last stage of decrepitude and decay.

"The long and narrow tract," says Gibbon, "of the African coast was filled, when the Vandals approached its shores, with frequent monuments of Roman art and magnificence; and the respective degrees of improvement might be accurately measured by the distance from Carthage and the Mediterranean. A simple reflection will impress every thinking mind with the clearest idea of its fertility and cultivation. The country was extremely populous; the inhabitants reserved a liberal supply for their own use; and the annual exportation, particularly of wheat, was so regular and plentiful, that Africa deserved the name of the common granary of Rome and of mankind."[19 - Ibid. c. xxxiii. vol. vi. p. 20.]

Nor was the state of Egypt less prosperous in the last ages of the Roman empire; nor was its condition a less striking contrast to the miserable and languishing condition of the Italian and Grecian plains. It is thus described by Mr Finlay,[20 - Greece under the Romans, 456, 467.] whose recent work has thrown so much light on the social condition of the inhabitants of the Roman empire in their later days: – "If the accounts of ancient historians can be relied on, the population of Egypt had suffered less from the vicious administration of the Roman empire, and from the Persian invasion, than any other part of their dominions; for at the time of its conquest by the Romans it contained seven millions and a half of inhabitants, exclusive of Alexandria; and in the last days of the empire it nourished almost as great a number. The Nile spread its fertilizing waters over the land; the canals were kept in a state sufficient for irrigation; and the vested capital of Egypt suffered little diminution, whilst war and oppression annihilated the accumulation of ages over the rest of the world. The immense wealth and importance of Alexandria, the only port which Egypt possessed for communicating with the empire, still made it one of the first cities in the universe for riches and population, though its strength had received a severe blow from the Persian conquest."[21 - Josephus, ii. 16.]

Sicily was another exception from the general decrepitude and ruin of the Roman empire in the latter reigns of the Cæsars. "In the island of Sicily, the great bulk of the population was Greek, and few portions of the Greek race had succeeded so well in preserving their wealth and property uninjured."[22 - Finlay, 515.]

But in the other parts of the empire, to the north of the Mediterranean, the agricultural population was, in the time of Heraclius, absolutely destroyed. "The imperial armies," says Finlay, "which, in the time of Maurice, had waged an active war in Illyria and Thrace, and frequently invaded the territories of the Avars, had melted away during the disorders of the reign of Phocas. The loss was irreparable; for in Europe no agricultural population remained to supply the means of forming a body of local militia, or even a body of irregular troops."[23 - Ibid. 406.]

It may readily be supposed, that so entire a destruction of the rural population in Europe, as thus took place under the Emperors in the Roman empire, must have been attended with the most fatal effects to their means of defence and national power. The inhabitants of towns, accustomed to sedentary occupations, and habituated to the luxury of baths, the excitement of theatres, the gratuitous distributions of food, could not endure the fatigue, privations, and hardships of the military life. Substitutes were almost universally sought for, and they, amidst the desolation of the country, could be found only in the semi-barbarous tribes on the frontier. Thus the defence of the empire came to be intrusted almost entirely to the arms of the barbarians, and it was hard to say whether they were most formidable to their friends or foes. Nothing could supply the place of the rural population on the shores of the Mediterranean. The legions gave a master to the Roman world, and the legions were recruited from Gaul, Germany, Britain, and Pannonia. Thus the dominion of the Capitol was really at an end long before it was formally subverted; and Rome had received a master from the barbarians long before the days of Alaric.

This continued splendour and population of the towns, amidst the ruin of the country, in the declining periods of the Roman empire, has attracted the particular notice of one of the greatest historians of modern times. "In the midst," says Sismondi, "of the general desolation of the country, the continued existence and splendour of the great towns is not so easily explained; but the same thing is now to be witnessed in Barbary and Turkey, and in the whole Levant. Wherever despotism oppresses insulated man, he seeks refuge from its outrages in crowds. The great Roman towns, in the first three centuries of the empire, were in great part peopled by artisans, and freedmen, and slaves; but they contained also a number far greater than in our days of men who, limiting their wants to the mere support of existence, spent their lives in indolence. All that population was alike unarmed, unpatriotic, incapable of defence against a foreign enemy; but as it was collected together, and at hand, it always inspired fear to domestic authority. Accordingly, to keep it quiet, there was always a regular gratuitous distribution of corn in the larger towns, and numerous spectacles in the theatres, the amphitheatres, and the circus, maintained at the public expense. The carelessness of the future, the love of pleasure and indolence, which have always characterised the inhabitants of great towns, characterised the Roman provincials even to the latest days of the empire, and in the midst of their greatest calamities. Treves, the capital of the northern prefecture of Gaul, was not the only city of the empire which was surprised and pillaged by the barbarians, at the moment when its citizens, their heads crowned with garlands, were applauding with enthusiasm the victors in the games of the circus."[24 - Sismondi, Chute de l'Empire Romaine, i. 36.]

The frequent custom of recruiting the legions by means of slaves, in the later period of the empire, which was wholly unknown in the days of the Republic, reveals, in the clearest manner, the weakness to which, in respect of military resources, it had arrived, long before the external symptoms of decay were visible in its fortunes. Even in the time of Marcus Aurelius, the legions which were to combat the Quadi and Marcomanni, on the Danube, were recruited from the servile class. Justinian went so far as to declare, by a public edict, every slave free who had served in the army.[25 - Novell, 81.] "At last the army came to be composed entirely," says Finlay, "of the rudest and most ignorant peasants, of enfranchised slaves, and naturalised barbarians. This increased the repugnance, already sufficiently great, felt by the better class of citizens to enter the military life. The mercenaries formed the most valued and brilliant portions of the army, and it became the fashion to copy and admire the dress and manners of the barbarian cavalry."[26 - Finlay, 246, 247.]

All the ancient historians concur in representing this impossibility of finding native soldiers in its central provinces, as the main cause of the overthrow of the empire. And that this, and not the power of the barbarians, was the real cause of the destruction of the empire, is proved by the fact, that whenever they were well directed, the superiority of the legions was as clearly evinced as in the days of Marius or Cæsar. "Whenever the invaders," says Finlay, "met with a steady and well-combined resistance, they were defeated without much difficulty. The victorious reigns of Claudius II., Aurelian, and Probus, prove the immense superiority of the Roman armies when properly commanded; but the custom which was constantly gaining ground, of recruiting the legions from among the barbarians, reveals the deplorable state of depopulation and weakness to which three centuries of despotism and bad administration had reduced the empire."[27 - Finlay, 117.]

But amidst this general prostration of the political and military strength of the Roman empire, in consequence of the decline and desolation of the country, the great towns still continued flourishing, and wealth to an extraordinary and unparalleled extent existed among the chief families, some of patrician, some of plebeian origin. That was the grand characteristic of Rome in its later days. The country, in the European part of the empire at least, was daily growing poorer; the cultivation of the fields was neglected; and the provinces, crushed under the weight of the direct taxes, which had become unavoidable, had in most cases sunk to half their former number of inhabitants. But the metropolis, whether in Italy or on the shores of the Bosphorus, was still the seat of opulence, luxury, and prosperity. The strength of Constantinople was sufficient to repel the barbarians, and prolong the life of the empire of the east, for many centuries after it had ceased to derive effective support from any of its provinces. It is recorded by Ammianus Marcellinus, that when Rome was taken by the Goths under Alaric, it was still inhabited by 1,200,000 souls, who were maintained chiefly by the expenditure of seventeen hundred and sixty great families, many of whom had £160,000 of yearly income, equal to at least £300,000 a-year of our money.[28 - Ammianus Marcellinus, c. xiv.] And of the flourishing condition of the cities of the empire, especially those which were on the shores of the Mediterranean, even so late as the eighth century, Mr Finlay gives the following account: —

"The strongest proof of the wealth and prosperity of the CITIES of Greece, even in the last days of the empire, is to be found in the circumstance of their being able to fit out the expedition which ventured to attempt wresting Constantinople from the grasp of a soldier and statesman such as Leo the Isaurian was known to be, when the Greeks deliberately resolved to overturn his throne. The rural districts, in the eighth century, were reduced to a state of desolation, and the towns were flourishing in wealth. Agriculture was at the lowest ebb, and trade in a prosperous condition."[29 - Finlay, 544. Ammianus Marcellinus, c. xix.] Sismondi gives his valuable testimony to the same effect: – "It was at this very time, when industry in the country was declining, that the towns of the provinces arrived at their highest degree of opulence. Adrian excited the emulation of their rich citizens, and he extended to the furthest extremities of the empire the luxury of monuments and decorations, which had hitherto been reserved for the illustrious cities which scorned to be the depots of the civilisation of the world."[30 - Sismondi, Chute de l'Empire Romaine, i. 50.] Such, in a few words, was the condition, generally speaking, of all the part of the empire to the north of the Mediterranean, in the decaying period of its existence. The towns were every where flourishing; but it was in Africa, Sicily, and Spain alone that agriculture was undecayed. And the decay and ruin of rural industry, and of the inhabitants of the country to the north of the Mediterranean, left them no adequate means of resisting the attacks of the brave but artless barbarians, who there pressed upon the yielding frontiers of the empire.

Coexistent with this fatal decline in the rural population and agricultural industry, was the increase of direct taxation, which was so keenly felt and loudly complained of in all the later stages of the Roman history. This is a branch of the subject of the very highest importance, because it leads to precisely the same conclusions, as to the real causes of the fall of Rome, as the others which have been already considered.

It is well known that when the Romans first conquered Macedonia, the senate proclaimed a general liberation from taxes and imposts of every kind to the Roman citizens, as the reward of their victories. This state of matters, however, could not long continue in an old state charged with the duty, and under the necessity of keeping up, a large establishment to maintain its dominion over its subject provinces. For some time, indeed, the wealth brought by the conquest of Asia and Egypt into the Roman treasury was so considerable, that the necessity of taxes levied on its own citizens was not felt; and as long as the people had a direct share in the government, they took care to uphold an exemption in their own favour. But when one master was given to the whole Roman world, this invidious system of one class living upon another class was erelong abandoned. "Augustus," says Gibbon, "had no sooner assumed the reins of government, than he frequently intimated the insufficiency of the tributes from the provinces, and the necessity of throwing an equitable proportion of the public burdens upon Rome and Italy. In the prosecution of this unpopular design, however, he advanced with slow and cautious steps. The introduction of customs was followed by the establishment of an excise; and the scheme of taxation was completed by an artful assessment of the real and personal property of the Roman citizens, who had been exempted from every kind of contribution for above a century and a half."[31 - Gibbon, i. 261, c. vi.]

Customs on foreign goods imported into Italy was the first species of taxation attempted on the Roman people. "In the reign of Augustus and his successor," says the same historian, "duties were imposed on every kind of merchandise, which, through a thousand channels, flowed to the great centre of opulence and luxury; and in whatever manner the law was expressed, it was the Roman purchaser, and not the provincial merchant, who paid the tax. The rate of the customs varied from the eighth to the fortieth part of the value of the commodity. There is still extant a long, but imperfect, catalogue of Eastern commodities, which, about the time of Alexander Severus, were subject to the payment of duties. Precious stones, Parthian and Babylonian leather, cottons, silks, raw and manufactured, ebony, ivory, and eunuchs, were among the taxed articles. An excise also was introduced by Augustus, of one per cent on whatever was sold in the markets or by public auction; and this extended from the most considerable purchase of lands or houses, to those minute objects which commonly derive their value from their infinite multitude and daily consumption."[32 - Gibbon, c. vi. vol. i. p. 262.]

But erelong these indirect taxes proved unproductive, and recourse was had to the lasting scourge of direct taxes. One of 5 per cent on legacies and inheritances was first imposed by Augustus, and adhered to by him, in spite of the indignant murmurs of the Roman nobles and people. The rate was raised by Caracalla to a tenth of all inheritances; and, when the privilege of Roman citizenship was extended to the whole provincials of the empire, they were subjected at once both to the former burdens which they had paid as provincials, and the new tax levied on them as Roman citizens.[33 - Ibid. c. vi. vol. i. p. 268.] From that time, the direct burdens became daily more oppressive, and at length proved an almost insurmountable bar to industry. "The noxious weed," says Gibbon, "sprung up with the most luxuriant growth, and in the succeeding age darkened the Roman world with its deadly shade. In the course of this history, we shall be too often summoned to explain the land-tax, the capitation, and the heavy contributions in corn, wine, oil, and meat, which were exacted from the provinces for the use of the court, the army, and the capital."[34 - Ibid. p. 268.]

These direct taxes soon became fearfully oppressive, and it is proved, by the clearest evidence, that they were among the leading causes of the decline of the empire. "The whole landed property of the empire," says Gibbon, "without excepting the patrimonial estates of the monarch, was the object of ordinary taxation, and every new purchaser contracted the obligations of the former proprietor. An accurate survey was made of what every citizen should contribute to the public service, and this was made anew every fifteen years. The number of slaves and cattle constituted an essential part of the report; an oath was administered to the proprietors, which obliged them to disclose the true state of their affairs; and any attempt to prevaricate or elude the vigilance of the legislature, was severely watched, and punished as a capital crime, which included the double guilt of treason and sacrilege. A large portion of the tribute was paid in money; and, of the current coin of the empire, gold alone could be legally accepted. The remainder of the taxes, according to the proportion observed in the annual indiction, was levied in a manner still more direct and still more oppressive. According to the different value of lands, their real produce, in the various articles of wine or oil, corn or barley, wood or iron, was transported by the labour, or at the expense of the provincials, to the imperial magazines, from whence they were occasionally distributed for the use of the court, the army, and the two capitals, Rome and Constantinople. The commissioners of the revenue were so frequently obliged to make considerable purchases, that they were strictly prohibited from allowing any compensation, or from receiving in money the value of those articles which were exacted in kind."[35 - Ibid. c. xvii. vol. ii. p. 86.]

"Either from accident or design, the mode of assessment seemed to unite the substance of a land to the form of a capitation-tax. The return which was sent from every province and district expressed the number of tributary subjects, and the amount of the public impositions. The latter of these sums was divided by the former; and the estimate, that each province and each head was rated at a certain sum, was universally received not only in the popular but the legal computation. Some idea of the weight of these contributions per head may be formed by the details preserved of the taxation of Gaul. The rapacious ministers of Constantine had exhausted the wealth of that province, by exacting twenty-five gold pieces (£12, 10s.) for the annual tribute of every head. The humane policy of his successor reduced the computation to seven pieces. A moderate proportion between these two extremes of extravagant oppression and transient indulgence, therefore, may be fixed at sixteen gold pieces, or about nine pounds sterling, as the common standard of the impositions of Gaul. The enormity of this tax is explained by the circumstance, that, as the great bulk of the people were slaves, the rolls of tribute were filled only with the names of citizens in decent circumstances. The taxable citizens in Gaul did not exceed 500,000; and their annual payments were about £4,500,000 of our money; a fourth part only of the modern taxes of France."[36 - Gibbon, c. xvii. vol. iii. p. 92.] The ordinary land-tax in the eastern provinces was a tenth, though in some cases it rose by the operation of the survey to a fifth, in others fell to a twentieth of the produce. It was valued for a term of years, and paid, unless when exacted in kind, commonly in money.[37 - Finlay, pp. 49-50.]

There was one circumstance which rendered the direct taxes peculiarly oppressive in the declining periods of the Roman empire, and that was the solid obligation, as the lawyers term it, which attached to the municipalities, into which the whole empire was divided, of making good the amount of their fixed assessment to the public treasury. Of course, if the municipality was declining, and the same quota required to be made up from its assessable inhabitants by the magistracy, who were responsible for its amount, it augmented the burden on those who remained within its limits; and if they dwindled, by public calamities or emigration, to a small number, it might, and often did become of a crushing weight. This system is general over the East; and its oppressive effect in the declining stage of states, is the chief cause of the rapid decay of Oriental empires. There is a remarkable authentic instrument, which attests the ruinous influence of this system in the later stages of the Roman dominion. This is a rescript of the Emperior Majorian, which sets forth: – "The municipal corporations, the lesser senates, as antiquity has justly styled them, deserve to be considered as the heart of the cities, and the sinews of the Republic. And yet so low are they now reduced, by the injustice of magistrates and the venality of collectors, that many of their numbers, renouncing their dignity and their country, have taken refuge in distant and obscure exile." He strongly urges, and even ordains their return to their respective cities; but he removes the grievances which had forced them to desert the exercises of their municipal functions, by directing that they shall be responsible, not for the whole sum assessed on the district, but only for the payments they have actually received, and for the defaulters who are still indebted to the public.[38 - Novell Majorian, tit. iv. p. 34. Gibbon, c. xxxvi. vol. vi. p. 173.] But this humane and wise interposition was as shortlived as it was equitable. Succeeding emperors returned to the convenient system of making the municipal corporations responsible for the sum assessed on their respective districts, and it continued to be the general law of the empire down to its very latest day. Sismondi, in his Décadence de l'Empire Romaine, and Michelet, in his Gaule sous les Romains, concur in ascribing to this system the rapid decline and depopulation of the empire in its later stages.

But although there can be no question that the conclusions of these learned writers are in great part well founded, yet this system of taxation by no means explains the decline and fall of the Roman empire. It requires no argument, indeed, to show, that such a system of solid obligations, and of levying a certain sum on districts without any regard to the decline in the resources or number of those who were to pay them, must, in a declining state of society, be attended with the most disastrous, and it may be in the end fatal consequences. But it does not explain how society should be declining. That is the matter which it behoves us to know. When the reverse is the case – when industry and population are advancing, the imposition of fixed tributes on districts is not only no disadvantage, but the greatest possible advantage to a state – witness the benefit of the perpetual settlement to the ryots of Hindostan – or of a perpetual quit-rent to English landholders. And that, bad as this system was when applied to a declining state of society, it was not the cause of the ruin of the Roman empire, and would not have proved injurious if the state had been advancing, is decisively proved by several considerations.

1. In the first place, the taxes and system of municipalities, being responsible for a fixed sum, was not confined to the European provinces of the Roman dominion, viz. – Italy, Greece, Gaul, Macedonia, and Romelia, where the progress of decay was so rapid, but it was the general law of the empire, and obtained equally in Spain, Lybia, Egypt, and Sicily; as in the provinces which lay to the north of the Mediterranean. But these latter provinces, it has been shown, were, when overrun by the barbarians about the year 400, not only nowise in a state of decrepitude, but in the very highest state of affluence and prosperity. They had become, and deserved the appellation of, "the common granary of Rome and of the world." They maintained the inhabitants of Italy, Greece, Rome, and Constantinople, by the export of their magnificent crops of grain. Spain was at least twice as populous as it is at this time, Lybia contained twenty millions, Egypt seven millions of inhabitants. Sicily was in affluence and prosperity, while the adjoining plains of Italy were entirely laid out in pasturage, or returned to a state of desolation and insalubrity. It is in vain, therefore, to seek a solution of the decline of the empire in a system, which, universally applied, left some parts of it in the last stages of decrepitude and decay, and others in the highest state of prosperity and affluence.

2. In the next place, the taxes of the empire were by no means at first of such weight as to account, if there had been nothing else in the case, for the decay of its industry. The tax on inheritances, it has been shown, was at first five, afterwards ten per cent; and the land-tax was ten per cent on the produce. The former tax of ten per cent on successions, is the present legacy-tax on movable succession to persons not related to the deceased, in England; and ten per cent on the produce, is the tithe, and no more than the tithe, which has so long existed in the European monarchies, and even when coexisting with many other and more oppressive burdens, has nowhere proved fatal to industry. Income of every sort paid ten per cent in Great Britain during the war – the land paid the tithe and poor's-rate in addition – and the other taxes yielded a sum four times as great; yet industry of every kind flourished to an extraordinary degree during that struggle. Ever since the termination of the Revolution, the land-tax in France has been far heavier than it was in Rome, varying, according to the Cadastre, or valuation, from fifteen to twenty-five per cent; but yet it is well known public wealth and agricultural produce have increased in an extraordinary degree during that period. It was not, therefore, the weight of the impositions, but the simultaneous circumstances, which rendered the northern provinces of the empire unable to bear them, which was the real cause of the ruin of its industry.

3. In the third place, whether the magnitude of the naval and military establishments, or the absolute amount of its public revenue, is taken into consideration, it is equally apparent that the Roman empire was at first not only noways burdened with heavy, but was blessed with singularly light government impositions. Gibbon states the population of the whole empire, in the time of Augustus, at 120,000,000, or about half of what all Europe, to the westward of the Ural mountains, now contains; and its naval and military establishments amounted to 450,000 armed men – "a force," says the historian, "which, formidable as it may seem, was equalled by a monarch of the last century, (Louis XIV.) whose kingdom was confined within a single province of the Roman empire."[39 - Gibbon, c. i. vol. i. p. 30.] Compared with the military and naval forces of the European powers in time of peace, this must seem a most moderate public establishment. France, in the time of Napoleon, with 42,000,000 inhabitants, had 850,000 regular soldiers in arms, besides 100,000 sailors; and Great Britain, in its European dominions alone, with a population of 18,000,000 souls, had above 500,000 regular soldiers and sailors in the public service. France has now, in peace, with a population of 32,000,000 souls, about 360,000 men, between the army and navy, in the public service; and England, with a population of 28,000,000, upwards of 150,000, besides double that number in India. Russia, with 62,000,000 inhabitants, has 460,000 soldiers in the public service. Austria, with 33,000,000, has 260,000. All these peace establishments are twice as heavy in proportion to the numbers of the people, as that of Rome was in the time of Augustus; and, in subsequent reigns, the number of armed men maintained by the state, was so far from increasing, that it was constantly diminishing, and, in the time of Justinian, had sunk down to 140,000 soldiers, maintained by an empire more extensive than that of Russia at this moment.

4. The same conclusion results from the consideration of the absolute amount of the public revenue levied in the Roman empire, compared with what is extracted from modern states. Gibbon estimates the public revenue of the whole empire in the time of Augustus, at "fifteen or sixteen millions sterling;"[40 - Ibid. c. i. vol. i. p. 37.] and in the time of Constantine the revenue derived from Gaul was £4,500,000 a-year.[41 - Ibid. c. xvii. vol. iii. p. 93.] The first of these sums is less than a third of what is now levied in time of peace on Great Britain, with less than thirty millions of souls, instead of the hundred and twenty millions who swelled the population rolls of the Roman empire: the last is little more than an eighth of what is now extracted from France, having nearly the same limits as ancient Gaul. Supposing that the value of money has declined, from the discovery of the South American mines, a half, (and at this time, owing to the decline of those mines, it has not sunk more,) still it is apparent that the public burdens of modern times are at least three times as heavy as they were in the Roman empire in the highest period of its greatness. As its strength and military establishment constantly declined after that period, there is no reason to suppose that the absolute amount of the public taxes was at any subsequent time greater, although unquestionably, from the decline in the resources of those who were to bear them, they were felt as infinitely more oppressive. And that these taxes were not disproportioned to the strength of the empire, when its resources were unimpaired, and its industry flourishing, is decisively proved by the extremely prosperous condition in which it was during the eighty years when Nerva, Trajan, Adrian, and the two Antonines filled the imperial throne. "At that period," says Gibbon, "notwithstanding the propensity of mankind to exalt the past and depreciate the present, the tranquil and prosperous condition of the empire was warmly felt and honestly confessed by the provincials as well as the Romans."[42 - Ibid. c. ii. vol. i. p. 91.] "They affirm," says a contemporary writer, "that, with the increase of the arts, the human species has visibly multiplied. They celebrate the increasing beauty of the cities, the beautiful face of the country, cultivated and adorned like an immense garden, and the long festival of peace which was enjoyed by so many nations, forgetful of their ancient animosities, and delivered from the apprehension of future danger."[43 - Plin. Hist. Nat. iii. 5.]

Ancient as well as modern historians are full of complaints, in the later periods of the Roman empire, of the prodigious increase of wealth in the hands of the rich, and decline in the remuneration of industry to the poor. Their complaints on this subject are so numerous, and supported by such an array of facts, as to leave no room for doubt that they are well founded. Indeed, it seems to have been generally true of the whole empire north of the Mediterranean, what Mr Finlay shows was the case down to the very latest periods in Greece, that while industry and population in the country were ruined, the towns were in a state of affluence and prosperity. Even so early as the time of Plutarch, the accumulation of debts had come to be complained of as an extensive evil.[44 - Περι του μηδειν Δανειξεισθαι "De Ære Alieno vitando." —Plutarch.] "These debts," says Finlay, "were generally contracted to Roman money-lenders. So injurious did their effects become to the provinces, that they afforded to one class the means of accumulating enormous fortunes by forcing others into abject poverty. The property of the provincial debtors was at length transferred to a very great extent to Roman creditors. Instead of invigorating the upper classes, by substituting an industrious timocracy for an idle aristocracy, it had a very different effect. It introduced new feelings of rivalry and distrust, by filling the country with foreign landlords. The weight of debts seems to have been the chief cause of revolutions in the ancient world. The Greeks could not long maintain the struggle, and they sunk gradually lower in wealth, until their poverty introduced an altered state of society, in which they learned the prudential habits of small proprietors, and escape not only from the eye of history but even of antiquarian research."[45 - Finlay, 90.]

This constant tendency of wealth, in the later periods of the Roman empire, to accumulate in the hands of the great capitalists, accompanied by the progressive deterioration of the condition of the middle and working classes, is amply proved and forcibly illustrated by Sismondi, in his admirable work on the Decline of the Roman Empire. "During the long peace," says he, "which followed the victories of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, those colossal fortunes were accumulated, which, according to Pliny, ruined Italy and the empire.[46 - "Verumque confitentibus latifundia perdidêre Italiam, immo ac provincias." – Plin. Hist. Nat.] A single proprietor, by degrees, came to buy up whole provinces, the conquest of which had in former days furnished the occasion of many triumphs to the generals of the Republic. While this huge capitalist was amassing riches, wholly disproportioned to the capacity of man, the once numerous and respectable, but now beggared, middle class, disappeared from the face of the earth. In districts where so many brave and industrious citizens were to be seen in former times, alike ready to defend or cultivate their fields, were to be found nothing but slaves, who rapidly declined in number as the fields came to be exclusively devoted to pasturage. The fertile plains of Italy ceased to nourish its inhabitants; Rome depended entirely for its subsistence on the harvests which its fleets brought it from Sicily, Africa, and Egypt. From the capital to the farthest extremity of the provinces, depopulation and misery in the country coexisted with enormous wealth an the towns. From this cause the impossibility of recruiting the legions with native Romans was experienced even in the time of Marcus Aurelius. In his war against the Quadi and the Marcomanni, which had been preceded by a long peace, he was obliged to recruit the legions with the slaves and robbers of Rome."[47 - Sismondi, Chute de l'Empire Romaine, i. 51.] It is impossible to give a stronger proof of the extent to which this enormous evil of the vast fortunes accumulated in the towns, and the entire ruin of industry in the country, had gone in the last days of the empire, than is to be found in the fact already mentioned, that when Rome was taken by Alaric, in the year 404 after Christ, while Italy could furnish no force to resist the invaders, the capital itself contained seventeen hundred and sixty great families, many of them with incomes of £160,000 a-year, equal to £300,000 of our money, whose expenditure maintained an urban population of 1,200,000 souls.[48 - Ammianus Marcellinus, c. xiv.]

It may readily be conceived, that when this prodigious concentration of wealth in the hands of the great proprietors of towns, and ruin of industry in the country, came to coexist with the solid obligations of the rural municipalities for the sum assessed on their districts, the burden of the public taxes, though light at first, compared with what is little complained of in modern times, came to be altogether overwhelming. This accordingly was the case in all the Northern provinces of the empire in its later stages. What every where preceded their ruin, was the desertion of the inhabitants in consequence of the crushing weight of the public burdens. From the entire failure of the indirect taxes amidst the ruin of agricultural, and the imposition of taxation on urban industry, it had become necessary to make progressive additions to the direct taxes till they became exterminating. "Three great direct taxes," says Sismondi, "alike ruinous, impended over the citizens. The first was the Indictions or Land-Tax, estimated in general at a tenth of the produce, or a third of the clear revenue, and often doubled or tripled by the Super indictions which the necessities of the provinces compelled them to impose. Secondly: the Capitation-Tax, which sometimes rose as high as 300 francs (£12) ahead on the free and taxable citizens; and, third, the Corvées, or forced contributions in labour, which were for the service of the imperial estates, or the maintenance of the public roads. These direct imposts in the declining days of the empire, so entirely ruined the proprietors of rural estates, that they abandoned them in all quarters. Vast provinces in the interior were deserted; the enrolment for the army became daily more difficult from the disappearance of the rural population; the magistrates of municipalities in town or country, rendered responsible for the assessment of their districts and the levy of their quota of soldiers, fled the country, or sought under a thousand pretexts to escape the perilous honour of public office. So far did the desertion of the magistracy go in the time of Valentinian, (364-375, after Christ,) that when that cruel tyrant ordered the heads of three magistrates of towns in a particular province to be brought to him for some alleged offences, 'Will your Imperial Majesty be pleased to direct,' said the prefect Florentius, 'what we are to do in those towns where three magistrates cannot be found?' The order was upon this revoked."[49 - Sismondi, Chute de l'Empire Romaine, i. 44.]

The disastrous state of the rural districts amidst this accumulation of evils is thus forcibly described by Mr Finlay: – "In many provinces, the higher classes had been completely exterminated. The loss of their slaves and serfs, who had often been carried away by the invaders, had reduced many to the humble condition of labourers. Others had emigrated, and abandoned their land to the cultivators, from being unable to obtain any revenue from it in the miserable state to which the capture of the stock, the loss of a market, and the destruction of the agricultural buildings had reduced the country. In many of the towns, the diminished population was reduced to misery by the ruin of the rural districts in their neighbourhood. The higher classes in the country disappeared under the weight of the municipal duties they were called upon to perform. Houses remained unlet; and even when let, the portion of rent which was not absorbed by the imperial taxes was insufficient to supply the demands of the local expenditure. The labourer and the artisan alone could find bread; the walls of cities were allowed to fall into ruins; the streets were neglected, public buildings had become useless; aqueducts remained unrepaired; internal communications ceased; and with the extinction of the wealthy and educated classes in the provincial towns, the local prejudices of the lower orders became the law of society."[50 - Finlay, 219, 220.]

Such, on a nearer survey, was the condition of the Roman empire which preceded its fall. From it may be seen how widely the real causes of its decline differed from the vague generalities of Montesquieu, that the ruin of the empire was the necessary consequence of its extension; or the still vaguer declamations of the scholars, that it was the corruption incident to great and long-continued wealth which enervated the people, and rendered them incapable of defending themselves against the Northern nations. In truth, both these causes did operate, and that too in a most powerful manner, in bringing about the ruin of the empire; but they did so, not in the way supposed by these authors, but in an indirect way, by inducing a new set of evils, which destroyed industry in the most important of its provinces, by depriving the industrious of a market for their industry, and rendering the public burdens overwhelming, by changing the value of money. The operation of these causes can now be distinctly traced by us, because we feel them working among ourselves: their existence has not hitherto been suspected, or their effects traced by philosophers, because no state in modern Europe but our own, in recent times, had come within the sphere of their influence. And to see what these causes really were, it is only necessary to recall, in a few propositions, to the reader's mind, the general result of the foregoing deduction: —

I. During the Republic, and till the commencement of the empire, agriculture was in the most flourishing state in Italy; and it was in its sturdy, free cultivators, that the legions were recruited which conquered the world.

II. From the time of Tiberius, cultivation declined in the Italian and Grecian plains, and continued to do so to the fall of the empire. Pasturage came to supersede agriculture; population disappeared in the fields; the race of free cultivators, the strength of the legions, were ruined; the flocks and herds were tended only by slaves; the small proprietors became bankrupt, or fled the country; and the whole land in the European provinces of the empire fell into the hands of a limited number of territorial magnates, who resided at Rome or Constantinople, and mainly upheld, by their profuse expenditure, the prosperity of those capitals of the empire.

III. In the midst of the general decline of rural industry in all the provinces to the north of the Mediterranean, the wealth and prosperity of the great cities remained undecayed. The small provincial towns were in great part ruined; but the great cities, especially such as were on the sea-coast, continued flourishing, and received in their ample bounds all the refluent population from the country. Rural industry languished and expired, but commerce was undecayed; the fortunes of the great capitalists were daily accumulating; and in no period in the history of mankind, were urban incomes so great as in the city of Rome, on the eve of its capture by the Goths.

IV. While this was the state of matters to the north of the Mediterranean, that is, in the heart of the empire, the remoter agricultural provinces of Spain, Sicily, Lybia, and Egypt, were in the very highest state of prosperity; they fed all the great cities of the Roman world by their immense exportations of grain, and yet enough remained, down to their conquest by the Vandals under Genseric, to maintain a vast population at home, greater than has ever since existed in those countries, in a state of affluence and comfort.

V. Taxation, from the time of its first introduction under Augustus, was at first chiefly indirect, and by no means oppressive. Gradually, however, the produce of the indirect taxes failed, or became inadequate to the wants of the empire, and recourse was had to direct taxes, levied chiefly on landed property and successions. But these direct taxes were at first light, and not a third part of those levied on Britain or France during the war; and the public establishments of the Roman government were not a fourth, in proportion to the population, of those now maintained by the great European monarchies during peace.

VI. In process of time, however, the resources of the people, in the principal provinces of the empire, and especially those to the north of the Mediterranean, declined to such a degree, that though the military and naval establishments of the empire were reduced to a third of their former amount, and became inadequate to defend its frontiers against its enemies, the direct taxes required to be continually increased, till they became so oppressive as to destroy industry, and prove the immediate cause of the depopulation and ruin of the empire.

Such are the facts, as established by the unanimous and concurring testimony of all the best informed historians; and now for the causes which produced these facts. They are set forth and supported by an equally clear and undisputable array of authorities.

Even so early as the latter days of the Republic, the system was introduced of feeding the Roman people with grain derived by tribute from the provinces. In the time of Augustus, the annual quantity distributed to the poorer citizens of Rome was 1,200,000 modii, or 35,156 quarters. But Tiberius went a step further, and actually gave bounties on the importation of foreign grain. "An enormous quantity," says Finlay, "of grain was distributed in this way, which was received as tribute from the provinces. Cæsar found 320,000 persons receiving this gratuity. It is true he reduced the number to one-half. The greater part of this grain was drawn from Sicily, Africa, and Egypt. In the time of Alexander, generally 75,000 modii was distributed daily. This distribution enabled the poor to live in idleness, and was itself extremely injurious to industry; but another arrangement was adopted by the Roman government, which rendered the cultivation of land around Rome unprofitable to the proprietors. A large sum was annually employed by the state in purchasing grain in the provinces, and in transporting this supply to Rome, where it was sold at a fixed price to the bakers. Augustus appointed an officer, styled Prefectus Annonæ, whose duty was to provide by government purchases for the subsistence of the people. An allowance was also made to the private importers of grain, in order to ensure a constant supply.[51 - It is curious to find Tacitus praising the establishment of bounties on the importation of foreign grain by Tiberius, without a word on the evil effects of the system. —Annal. vi. 13. "Quibus e provinciis et quanto majorum, quam Augustus rei frumentariæ copiam advectaret."] In this way, a very large sum was expended to keep grain cheap in a city where a variety of circumstances tended to make it dear. This singular system of annihilating capital, and ruining agriculture and industry, was so deeply rooted in the Roman administration, that similar gratuitous distributions of grain were established at Antioch and Alexandria, and introduced into Constantinople when that city became the capital of the empire."[52 - Finlay, 53.]

The necessary effect of this system was the cessation of agriculture in Italy, the ruin of the small proprietors, and the engrossing of the land in the provinces by a few great landholders, who cultivated their extensive estates by means of slaves. "Riches, far exceeding the wealth of modern sovereigns, flowed into the hands of the great proprietors; villas and parks were formed over all Italy on a scale of the most stupendous grandeur; and land became more valuable as hunting-ground than as productive farms. The same habits were introduced into the provinces. In the neighbourhood of Rome, agriculture was ruined by the public distribution of grain received as tribute from the provinces, and by the bounty granted to merchants importing to secure a maximum price of bread. The same system proceeded in the provinces; and similar distributions at Alexandria and Antioch must have been equally injurious."[53 - Finlay, 105.] When Constantine established his new capital on the shores of the Bosphorus, he was under the necessity of adopting, and even extending, the same ruinous system. "Wealthy individuals from the provinces were compelled to keep up houses at Constantinople, pensions were conferred upon them, and a right to distributions of provisions to a considerable amount was annexed to those dwellings. These rations consisted of bread, oil, wine, meat, and formed an important branch of revenue even to the better class of citizens. These distributions were entirely different from the public ones at Rome, which were established as a gratification by the state to the poor citizens who had no other means of livelihood. The tribute of grain from Egypt was appropriated to supply Constantinople, and that of Africa was left for the consumption of Rome. This was the tie which bound the capital to the emperors, and the cause of the toleration shown to its factions. They both felt they had a common interest in supporting the despotic power by which the provinces were drained of money to support the expenditure of the court, and supply provisions for the people."[54 - Ibid. 137.]

Although, however, these public distributions of grain in the chief towns of the empire had some effect in checking the cultivation of corn in Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor, by depriving its cultivators of their best market, yet the private importation of grain from these great corn countries must have been a far more serious and general evil. Gibbon states the number who received rations at Constantinople daily in the time of Constantine at 80,000, and in Rome in the time of Tiberius it was 180,000. Supposing the other great towns were fed in the same proportion, perhaps a million of persons in the Roman world were nourished at the expense of the state on Egyptian or African grain. But a million of persons consume annually a million of quarters of grain; not a sixtieth part of the annual consumption of the British empire at this time, and probably not a two-hundredth part required by the 120,000,000 souls who composed the Roman empire in the days of the Antonines. But though the state paupers were thus but a small fraction of the whole consumers of foreign grain, yet the general importation was immense, and became erelong so great as to constitute the entire source from which the population of Italy, as well as Constantinople and the adjacent provinces of Romelia, Macedonia, and Greece, were fed. It was this general importation, not the gratuitous distributions, which ruined Italian agriculture; for it alone was on a scale commensurate with the population of the Italian peninsula, and could alone account for its general ruin. Tacitus expressly says, it was the preference given to African agriculture, not the gratuitous distributions, which destroyed Italian cultivation. "At, Hercule, olim ex Italia legionibus longinquas in provincias commeatus portabantur: nec nunc infecunditate laboratur; sed Africam POTIUS et Egyptum excercemus, navibusque et casibus vita populi Romani permissa est.[55 - Tacitus, Annal. xii. 43.]" The supply of grain for the Roman world was entirely obtained from Spain, Sicily, Africa, and Egypt, while Greece was maintained by corn imported from Poland.[56 - Michelet, Histoire de France, i. 277.] It was not that the Italian and Grecian fields had become sterile: Tacitus expressly says the reverse, – "nec nunc infecunditate laboratur." But the country in which grain produced fifteen fold, as Italy did, could not compete with that which produced sixty or eighty fold, on the banks of the Nile. Nor could the industry of the centre of the empire, where money was plentiful, comparatively speaking, and labour was therefore dear, stand against the competition of the remoter provinces, where it was scarce, and labour was therefore cheap.

The ruin of Italian and Grecian agriculture from this cause is so evident, that it is admitted by the ablest advocates of an unlimited freedom in the corn trade. "The first effect of this system," says a late able and learned writer on the liberal side, "was the ruin of Italian agriculture. The natural market for the corn of the Italian farmer was, to a great extent, destroyed by the artificial supplies obtained from the provinces. Hence, as Dureau de la Malle has remarked, (ii. 218,) the history of the seventh and eighth centuries of Rome presents this singular contrast – that the agriculture, the population, and products of Italy, diminish progressively as she extends her conquests and power. The fatal influence which the gratuitous supplies from the provinces would exercise upon the native agriculture, was perceived by Augustus; but he abandoned his intention of altering the system, from a conviction it would be restored by his successor. The result was, that southern and central Italy, instead of being tilled by a race of hardy active farmers, themselves freemen, and working on their own land, was divided into plantations cultivated by slaves."[57 - Edinburgh Review. April 1846. No. 168. Page 370-371.] This explains how it came to pass that Spanish agriculture took such a start from the time of Tiberius; and how, in the general ruin of the empire, Spain, Africa, and Egypt, were the only provinces which retained their prosperity. It will be recollected that it was in the reign of Tiberius that bounties were first given by the Roman government to the private importers of foreign grain.

Of the main dependence of the Western empire in its declining days on Africa, not merely for the necessary supply of food, but even for the chief resources and strength of the state in the midst of the desolation of its European fields, Sismondi gives a striking account – "The loss of Africa was at this period, (439 after Christ,) perhaps the greatest calamity which the empire of the West could have undergone. It was its only province the defence of which cost no trouble; the only one from which they drew money, arms, and soldiers, without its ever requiring any back. It was at the same time the granary of Rome and of Italy. The gratuitous distributions of grain at Rome, Milan, and Ravenna, had, over the whole Italian peninsula, destroyed the cultivation of grain. Experience had proved that the return could not pay its expense; and the reason was, that the more fertile fields of Africa furnished a part of the harvest destined for the nourishment of the people of Italy. The sudden stoppage of that supply by the conquest of Africa by the Vandals, caused a cruel famine in Italy; which still further reduced its wretched inhabitants."[58 - Sismondi, Chute de l'Empire Romaine, i. 233.] And so entirely did Constantinople become dependent on foreign importation of sea-borne grain from Egypt and the Ukraine for its support, that "when the Persians, in the year 618, overran Egypt, and stopped the usual supplies of grain from that province, the famine became so alarming, that the government determined upon transferring the seat of empire to Carthage in Africa, as the most likely point from whence the dominion of Syria and Egypt might be regained."[59 - Finlay, 389.] The latter of these had long been regarded as the most valuable province of the empire.[60 - Ibid. 392.]

When this entire dependence of the great cities in the northern parts of the empire, for centuries together, on Spain, Sicily, Africa, and Egypt, is considered, it must with every rational mind cease to be a matter of surprise that its west and northern provinces declined in industry and population; that these grain provinces to the south of the Mediterranean alone retained their numbers and prosperity; and that under the constant decline, in the European provinces, in the market for agricultural produce, the rural population disappeared, and the recruiting of the army in the country became impossible. It is not surprising that while they were enrolling slaves in Italy, and enlisting barbarians on the Danube and the Rhine, to defend the frontiers, from Africa and Spain alone they drew supplies both of money and soldiers, without requiring to send back any. The latter provinces were the granary and garden of the empire; the only part of it where rural industry met with remunerating prices or adequate encouragement. And the same circumstances explain in a great degree how it happened, that while the rural districts of Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, and Romelia, were continually declining in population, rental, and revenue, their towns, especially on the sea-coast, were, down to the last days of their existence, in a flourishing condition. These towns were the seat of manufactures and commerce. It was by their capital that the vast corn trade by which all the cities of the empire were fed was carried on. It was their fabrics which mainly furnished the means of purchasing the immense proportion of this grain, which, being imported by private importers, required to be paid for in some species of manufactured produce. And the reason why grain was raised so much cheaper, and therefore profitably, in Egypt, Lybia, and Spain, than in Italy and Greece, was, partly, that the former of these countries were by nature blessed with a more prolific soil and a warmer sun than the latter; and, partly, that as Rome and Constantinople were the two capitals of the empire, the greater part of its wealth was attracted, either by taxes, tribute, or the concourse of the rich, to them, and, consequently, the abundance of riches rendered money cheap, labour dear, and cultivation, when exposed to foreign competition, unprofitable.

But there was more in the case than this. Simultaneously with the vast and increasing importation of foreign grain, which at length destroyed cultivation in all the northern provinces of the empire, a continual diminution of its circulating medium was going forward; and it was to the combined and cotemporaneous operation of these two causes, that the ruin of the empire is beyond all question to be ascribed.

So early as the days of Tiberius, the abstraction of the gold and silver currency of the empire by the incessant drain of foreign commerce, was loudly complained of by the Roman writers; and there is the most decisive proof, that in the course of time the supply of the precious metals on the empire became so inadequate to the wants of its inhabitants, that their value was enhanced to a great and ruinous degree. It was the commerce of the East which first induced this destructive drain upon the metallic treasures of the empire. "The objects," says Gibbon, "of oriental traffic were splendid and trifling; silk – a pound of which was esteemed worth a pound of gold – precious stones, and a variety of aromatics, were the chief articles. The labour and risks of the voyage were rewarded with almost incredible profit; but it was made on Roman subjects, and at the expense of the public. As the nations of Arabia and India were contented with the produce and manufactures of their own country, silver, on the side of the Romans, was the principal, if not the only instrument of commerce. It was a complaint worthy of the gravity of the senate, that in the pursuit of female ornaments, the wealth of the state was irrecoverably given away to foreign and hostile nations. The annual loss is computed by a writer of an inquisitive but censorious temper, (Pliny,) at £800,000 sterling. Such was the style of discontent brooding over the dark prospect of approaching poverty."[61 - Gibbon, chap. ii. vol. i. p. 90.] Eight hundred thousand pounds a-year, equivalent to about two millions of our money, must have been a severe drain upon the supply of the precious metals in the Roman empire; and we, who have seen in 1839 the Bank of England reel, and the United States bank fall, under the effect of an exportation of six or seven millions of sovereigns to buy foreign grain in a single year, can appreciate the effect of such a constant drain upon a state, the metallic resources of which were much less considerable than those of England at this time.