into men's minds everywhere, at the same time, with wonderful facility. At first sight, one is astonished to see, in that prodigious and ill-united aggregate of little republics, in that accumulation of separate municipalities, spring up so suddenly an unbounded respect for the sacred authority of the empire. But the truth is, it had become a matter of absolute necessity, that the bond which held together the different parts of this heterogeneous dominion should be very powerful; and this it was which gave it so ready a reception in the minds of men. "But when the vigour of the central power declined during a course of ages, from the pressure of external warfare and the weakness of internal corruption, this necessity was no longer felt. The capital ceased to be able to provide for the provinces; it rather sought protection from them. During four centuries, the central power of the Emperors incessantly struggled against this increasing debility; but the moment at length arrived when all the practised skill of despotism over the long insouciance of servitude could no longer keep together the huge and unwieldy body. In the fourth century we see it at once break up and disunite; the barbarians entered on all sides from without, the provinces ceased to oppose any resistance from within, the cities to evince any regard for the general welfare; and, as in the disaster of a shipwreck, every one looked out for his individual safety. Thus, on the dissolution of the Empire, the same general state of society presented itself as in its cradle. The imperial authority sank into the dust, and municipal institutions alone survived the disaster. This, then, was the chief legacy which the ancient bequeathed to the modern world—for it alone survived the storm by which the former had been destroyed-cities and a municipal organisation everywhere established. But it was not the only legacy. Beside it, there was the recollection at least of the awful majesty of the Emperor; of a distant, unseen, but sacred and irresistible power. These are the two ideas which antiquity bequeathed to modern times. On the one hand, the municipal régime, its rules, customs, and principles of liberty; on the other, a common, general, civil legislation, and the idea of absolute power, of a sacred majesty, the principle of order and servitude."— Civilisation Européenne, 20, 23. The causes which produced the extraordinary, and at first sight unaccountable, depopulation of the country districts, not only in Italy, but in Gaul, Spain, and all the European provinces of the Roman Empire, are, to a certain extent, explained by Guizot in his Essays on the History of France, and have been fully demonstrated by Sismondi, Thierry, and Michelet. They were a natural consequence of the municipal system, then universally established as the very basis of civilisation in the whole Roman Empire, and may be seen urging, from a similar cause, the Turkish Empire to dissolution at this day. This was the imposition of a certain fixed duty, as a burden on each municipality, to be raised, indeed, by its own members, but admitting of no diminution, save under the most special circumstances, and on an express exemption by the emperor. Had the great bulk of the people been free and the empire prosperous, this fixity of impost would have been the greatest of all blessings. It is the precise boon so frequently and earnestly implored by our Ryots in India, and indeed by the cultivators all over the East. But when the Empire was beset on all sides with enemies-only the more rapacious and pressing that the might of the legions had so long confined them within the comparatively narrow limits of their own sterile territories and disasters, frequent and serious, were laying waste the frontier provinces, it became the most dreadful of all scourges; because, as the assessment on each district was fixed, and scarcely ever suffered any abatement, every disaster experienced increased the burden on the survivors who had escaped it, until they became bent down under such a weight of taxation as, coupled with the small number of freemen on whom it exclusively fell, crushed every attempt at productive industry. It was the same thing as if all the farmers on each estate were to be bound to make up annually the same amount of rent to their landlord, no matter how many of them had become insolvent. We know how long the agriculture of Britain, in a period of declining prices and frequent disaster, would exist under such a system. Add to this what these writers have not dwelt on, but which was more powerful than any other cause in producing the ruin of the Roman Empire, the necessary effect which the free circulation of grain, throughout its whole extent, had in depressing the agriculture of Italy, Gaul, and Greece. They were unable to withstand the competition of Egypt, Libya, and Sicily, the storehouses of the world, where the benignity of the climate and the riches of the soil rewarded seventy or a hundredfold the labours of the husbandman. Gaul, where the increase was only sevenfold-Italy, where it seldom exceeded twelve-Spain, where it was never so high, were crushed in the struggle. The mistress of the world, as Tacitus bewails, had come to depend for her subsistence on the floods of the Nile. Unable to compete with the cheap grain raised in the more favoured regions of the south, the cultivators of Italy and Gaul gradually retired from the contest. They devoted their extensive estates to pasturage, because live cattle or dairy produce could not bear the expense of being shipped from Africa, or did not exist in its arid provinces; and the race of agriculturists, the strength of the legions, disappeared from the fields, and was lost in the needy and indolent crowd of urban citizens, in part maintained by tributes in corn brought from Egypt and Libya. This augmented the burdens upon those who remained in the rural districts; for, as the taxes of each municipality remained the same, every one that withdrew into the towns left an additional burden on the shoulders of his brethren who remained behind. So powerful was the operation of these two causes the fixity in the state burdens payable by each municipality, and the constantly declining prices, owing to the vast import from agricultural regions more favoured by nature that it fully equalled the effect of the ravages of the barbarians in the frontier provinces exposed to their incursions; and the depopulation of the rural districts was as complete in Italy and Gaul, before a barbarian had passed the Alps or set his foot across the Rhine, as in the plains between the Alps or the Adriatic and the Danube, which had for long been ravaged by their arms. Domestic slavery conspired with these evils to prevent the healing power of nature from closing these yawning wounds. Gibbon estimates the slaves throughout the Empire, in its latter days, at a number equal to that of the freemen; in other words, one-half of the whole inhabitants were in a state of servitude; and as there were 120,000,000 souls under the Roman sway, 60,000,000 were in that degraded condition. There is reason to believe that the number of the slaves was still greater than this estimate, and at least double that of the freemen; for it is known by an authentic enumeration, that, in the time of the Emperor Claudius, the number of citizens in the Empire was only 6,945,000 men, who, with their families, might amount to 20,000,000 souls; and the total number of freemen was about double that of the citizens. + In one family alone, in the time of Pliny, there were 4116 slaves. But take the number of slaves, according to Gibbon's computation, at only half the entire population, what a prodigious abstraction must this multitude of slaves have made from the physical See "The Roman Campagna," in Vol. II., and "The Fall of Rome," in the present volume of this collection, where this subject, scarce noticed by these able writers, but perhaps the most important that can now occupy the attention of all men of thought in the British Empire, is treated of at large. + GIBBON. PLINY, Hist. Nat. xxxiii. 47. and moral strength of the empire! Half the people requiring food, needing restraint, incapable of trust, and yet adding nothing to the muster-roll of the legions, or the persons by whom the fixed and immovable annual taxes were to be made good! In what state would the British Empire now be, if we were subjected to the action of similar causes of ruin? A vast and unwieldy dominion, exposed on every side to the incursions of barbarous and hostile nations, daily increasing in numbers and augmenting in military skill; a fixed taxation, for which the whole free inhabitants of every municipality were jointly and severally responsible, to meet the increasing military establishment required by these perils; a declining, and at length extinct, agriculture in the central provinces of the Empire, owing to the deluge of cheap grain from its fertile extremities, wafted over the waters of the Mediterranean; multitudes of turbulent freemen in cities, kept quiet by daily distribution of provisions, at the public expense, from the imperial granaries; and a half, or two-thirds, of the whole population in a state of slavery, neither bearing any share of the public burdens, nor adding to the strength of the military array of the Empire. Such are the discoveries of modern philosophy, as to the causes of the decline and ultimate fall of the Roman Empire, gleaned from a few facts, accidentally preserved by the ancient writers, apparently unconscious of their value! It is a noble science which, in so short a time, has presented such a gift to mankind. Guizot has announced, and ably illustrated, a great truth, which, when traced to its legitimate consequences, will be found to go far towards dispelling many of the pernicious innovating dogmas which have so long been afloat in the world. It is this, that whenever an institution, though apparently pernicious in our eyes, has long existed, and under a great variety of circumstances, we may rest assured that it in reality has been attended with some advantages which counterbalance its evils, and that upon the whole it is beneficial in its tendency. This important principle is thus stated: "Independent of the efforts of man, there is established by a law of providence, which it is impossible to mistake, and which is analagous to what we witness in the natural world, a certain measure of order, reason, and justice, without which society cannot exist. From the single fact of its endurance we may conclude, with certainty, that a society is not completely absurd, insensate, or iniquitous; that it is not destitute of the elements of reason, truth, and justice, which alone can give life to society. If, the more that society develops itself, the stronger does this principle become-if it is daily accepted by a greater number of men, it is a certain proof that in the lapse of time there has been progressively introduced into it more reason, more justice, more right. It is thus that the idea of political legitimacy has arisen. "This principle has for its foundation, in the first instance, at least in a certain degree, the great principles of moral legitimacy-justice, reason, truth. Then came the sanction of time, which always begets the presumption of reason having directed arrangements which have long endured. In the early periods of society, we too often find force and falsehood ruling the cradles of royalty, aristocracy, democracy, and even the church; but everywhere you will see this force and falsehood yielding to the reforming hand of time, and right and truth taking their place in the rulers of civilisation. It is this progressive infusion of right and truth which has by degrees developed the idea of political legitimacy: it is thus that it has become established in modern civilisation. At different times, indeed, attempts have been made to substitute for this idea the banner of despotic power; but, in doing so, they have turned it aside from its true origin. It is so little the banner of despotic power, that it is in the name of right and justice that it has overspread the world. As little is it exclusive: it belongs neither to persons, classes, nor sects; it arises wherever the idea of right has developed itself. We shall meet with this principle in systems the most opposite in the feudal system, in the municipalities of Flanders and Germany, in the republics of Italy, as well as in simple monarchies. It is a character diffused through the various elements of modern civilisation, and the perception of which is indispensable to the right understanding of its history."-Lecture iii. 9, 11; Civilisation Européenne. No principle ever was announced of more practical importance in legislating for mankind than is contained in this passage. The doctrine is somewhat obscurely stated, and not with the precision which in general distinguishes the French writers; but the import of it seems to be this—That no system of government can long exist among men, unless it is substantially, and in the majority of cases, founded in reason and justice, and sanctioned by experienced utility for the people among whom it exists; and therefore, that we may predicate with perfect certainty of any institution which has been generally extended and long established, that it has been upon the whole beneficial, and should be modified or altered with a very cautious hand. That this proposition is true, will probably be disputed by none who have thought much and dispassionately on human affairs for all human institutions are formed and supported by men; and unless men had some reason for supporting them, they would speedily sink to the ground. It is in vain to say a privileged class have got possession of the power, and they make VOL. III. G |