century, it had come to weigh only 68.* This is a clear indication, that 68 grains of gold were then equal in value to what 118 grains had been three centuries before; for Majorian, by a special decree, ordered all aurei of whatever reign, the Gallic solidus alone excepted, to pass, not according to weight, but standard. So thoroughly was this increase in the value of gold understood by the tax-gatherers, that they "exacted the whole payment in gold; but they refused the current coin of the empire, and would accept only such ancient pieces as were stamped with the names of Faustina or the Antonines. The consequence was, that the municipal magistrates, who were responsible for the amount assessed on their district, renounced their dignity and country, and took refuge in distant and obscure exile." That is the most decisive proof to what a grievous extent the currency had, from the operation of the causes which have been mentioned, come to be contracted; for as gold constitutes, from its superior value, at least nine-tenths of the circulating medium of every civilised state, so great a rise in its value could only have been occasioned by a very great contraction of the whole currency. We know in what state the metallic currency of Great Britain was when the light guinea was selling for twenty-five shillings.

In the latter days of the empire, when the invasions of the barbarians began, and its provinces were liable to be pierced through and overrun by columns of their predatory hordes, the universal and well-founded terror produced a general hoarding of the precious metals, which entirely withdrew them from circulation, until they were forced from the trembling inhabitants by threats of massacre or conflagration. The effect of this, in contracting the currency, and causing the little that remained to disappear altogether from the circulation, of course was prodigious. It lowered to almost nothing the money price of every species of industry, and proportionally augmented the weight of public and private debts-the subject of such loud and constant complaints from ancient historians. "In the reign of Justinian," says Gibbon, "a rapid decrease was felt in the

* GREAVES on Ancient Coins, i. 329, 331. + GIBBON, vol. vi. c. 36, p. 173. ‡ GIBBON, c. xxxvi. vol. iii. p. 305. "Fessas provincialium varia atque multiplici tributorum exactione, fortunas et extraordinariis fiscalium solutionum oneribus attritas," is the strong expression in Majorian's Novell, tit. 34.

forced and circulating capitals which constitute the national wealth. His revenues, in consequence, were not equal to his expenses. Every art was tried to extort from the people their gold and silver and fathers were sometimes compelled to prostitute their daughters to appease the collectors. He lived with the reputation of a hidden treasure; but he bequeathed to his successor only the payment of his debts."* Nor was this evil confined to the latest periods of the empire of the West--the years which immediately preceded its fall. From the time of Commodus, who succeeded Marcus Antoninus, the incursions of the barbarians into the northern provinces of the empire had been severely felt; and from the era of the separation of the empires of the East and West, they were almost perpetual, and sometimes extended far into its interior provinces. The effect of these alarms and dangers, in producing a universal disposition to hoard, and consequently rendering money every where scarce, prices cheap, and debts and taxes oppressive, was very great, and may be regarded as one of the chief causes of the excessive and crushing weight which the direct burdens of the state acquired in the later periods of the empire.

The resource so well known, and so often had recourse to with the happiest effects, in modern times, to supply the void produced by a temporary or permanent drain of the precious metals, was unknown in antiquity. They had no paper currency. Even bills of exchange were unknown. These, as is well known, were a contrivance of the Jews, in the Middle Ages, to transport their wealth in a commodious form, when threatened with persecution, from, one country to another. To what an extent paper of these various kinds has come to supply the place of gold and silver, may be judged of by the fact, that, during the war, the paper currency of Great Britain and Ireland rose to £60,000,000 sterling; and that, at the present time, the private bills in circulation in it are estimated at £132,000,000 sterling. But this admirable resource, by which an accidental or temporary dearth of the precious metals is supplied by a paper currency, circulating at par with it, and fully supplying, as long as credit lasts, its place, was unknown in the ancient world. Gold, silver, and copper were their sole

* GIBBON, vol. iii. c. xl. p. 509, 510. Milman's edition.

circulating mediums; and consequently, when they were progressively withdrawn, by the causes which have been mentioned, there was nothing left to supply their place. Instantly, as if by the stroke of a fell necromancer, disasters of every kind accumulated on the wretched inhabitants. Credit was violently shaken; money disappeared; prices fell to a ruinous degree; industry could obtain no remuneration; the influence and ascendency of realised capital became irresistible; and the only efficient power left in the state was that of the emperor, who wrenched his taxes out of the impoverished hands of his subjects, or of the creditors and landlords, who, by legal process, exacted their debts from their debtors, and drove them to desperation. This was exactly the social state of the empire in its declining days. We can appreciate its horrors, from having had a foretaste of them during the commercial crises with which, during the last twenty-five years, this country has been visited.

From what has now been said, it is evident that the two circumstances which occasioned the fall of the Roman empire, were the destruction of its domestic agriculture, by the importation of grain from its distant provinces, and the accumulation of debts and taxes, arising from the contraction of the currency, induced by many concurring circumstances. If these causes be attentively considered, it will be found that they not only afford a perfect solution of its fall, but explain how it happened at the time it did, and had not occurred at an earlier period. They show what it was which, slowly but steadily wasting away the vitals of the empire, successively destroyed its rural population and agricultural industry, and at length crushed its property under the increasing load of debts and taxes. They explain how it happened that the indirect taxes, which at first were sufficient, with a moderate imposition of five per cent on inheritances, to support the large military and naval establishments of Augustus, became gradually unproductive, and were at length succeeded by direct taxes on land, of severe, and in the end destructive amount, yet inadequate to uphold even the Lilliputian military and naval forces of Justinian. They show what every page of contemporary history demonstrates, that it was neither the superior military power of

the barbarians, nor the diminished skill and courage of the legions, which occasioned the overthrow of the mighty fabric, but the wasting away of its internal resources which was the real cause of its decay. They tell us that it was not the timidity of the legions, but the inability of Government to array them in sufficient strength, which rendered them unequal to the contest with an enemy whom, during the vigour of the state, they had so often repelled. They explain how it happened that Italy and Greece had become deserts in their rural districts, before one of the barbarians had crossed either the Alps or the Hamus; and how Africa, Spain, and Egypt, alone of the provinces, retained their prosperity, when rural industry was wellnigh extinct in all other parts of the empire. Lastly, they explain how it happened that, while the rural districts to the north of the Mediterranean were so generally relapsing into a state of desolation, the great cities of Greece and Italy long retained their prosperity, and the wealth of the capitalists and great proprietors who inhabited them was continually increasing, while all other classes were ground to the earth under the weight of public or private burdens.

It must appear, at first sight, not a little extraordinary that the very causes which thus evidently led to the destruction of Rome-viz., the unlimited importation of foreign grain and contraction of the currency-are those which have been most the object of the policy of the British Government, for the last quarter of a century, by every possible means to promote in this country. They were imposed upon Rome by necessity. The extension of the empire over Spain, Africa, and Egypt, as well as the magnanimous policy of its government towards all its subjects, rendered a free trade in grain with the provinces, and large importations from the great corn countries, unavoidable. Public misfortunes, the increasing luxury of the rich, that very great importation of grain itself, the failure of the Spanish and Grecian mines, and the entire want of any paper currency to supply the place of the metals thus largely abstracted, necessarily and unavoidably forced this calamitous contraction of the currency upon the Roman empire. But the British policy has adopted the same principles, and done the same things, when no necessity or external pressure rendered

it unavoidable. A free trade in grain is to be introduced, not in favour of distant provinces of the empire, but of its neighbours and its enemies. The currency has been contracted, not by public calamities, or any lasting deficiency in the means of supplying the failure of the ordinary sources of gold and silver, but by the fixed determination of Government, carried into execution by repeated acts of Parliament in 1819, 1826, and 1844, to abridge the paper circulation, and deprive the nation of the benefit of the great discovery of modern times, by which the calamitous effects of the diminution in the supply of the precious metals throughout the world have been so materially prevented.

Such a result must appear under all circumstances strange, and would be inexplicable, if we did not reflect, that the same impulse which was communicated to the measures of Government in Rome, by the influence of the capitalists and the clamorous inhabitants of great towns, is equally felt in the same stage of society in modern times. The people in our great cities do not call out, as in ancient days, for gratuitous distributions of corn from Libya or Egypt; but they clamour just as loudly for free trade in grain with Poland and the Ukraine, which has the effect of swamping the homegrower quite as completely. The great capitalists do not make colossal fortunes by the plunder of subject provinces, as in the days of the Roman proconsuls; but they never cease to exert their influence to procure a contraction of the currency by the measures of Government, which answers the purpose of augmenting their fortunes at the expense of the industrious classes just as well. Political writers, social philosophers, practical statesmen, fall in with the prevailing disposition of the most influential classes; they deceive themselves into the belief that they are original, and promulgating important truths, when they are merely yielding to the pressure of the strongest, or at least the most noisy, class at the moment in society, and of that one which is best able to remunerate their exertions. The Reform Bill gave three-fifths of the British representation to the members for burghs. From that moment the eventual adoption of legislative measures favourable to the interests of capital, and agreeable to the wishes of the inhabitants of towns, how destructive soever to those of the country, was as cer