by disaster. The Romans felt the benefit of this magnanimous conduct in the steady adherence of their allies during the severest periods of national misfortune. Even the defeats of the Trebia and Trasymene were not followed by the defections of a single ally; while the first serious disaster of Carthage, which confined its privileges to its own citizens, stript the Republic of all its subsidiary forces. The steady growth, unequalled extent, and long duration of the Roman empire, proves the wisdom of their political system; but it fell a prey at length to the dreadful evil of domestic slavery. It was this incurable evil which, even in the time of Augustus, thinned the ranks of the legions; which, in process of time, filled the armies with mercenary soldiers, and the provinces with great proprietors; which subsequently rendered it impracticable to raise a military force in the southern provinces of the empire, and at length 'Polyb. iii. consumed the vitals of the state, and left nothing to Ferg. Rome, withstand the Barbarians, but nobles who wanted iii. 66, vii. courage to defend their property, and slaves who Sism. Hist. were destitute of property to rouse their courage.' The Roman citizens, in the time of Paulus Emilius, amounted to 337,000 persons capable of bearing arms; the admission of the Italian allies by Caius Gracchus, swelled their numbers to 4,163,000 in the time of Augustus; and the extension of the franchise to the Gauls augmented them to 6,900,000. The Emperor Antoninus, by a general edict, extended the privilege to the whole empire.❜ c. 9, & 6. v. 277. Gib. 212, v. 263. de France, i. 82. 2 Plutarch in Caius Gracchus, and Paul Emilius. Ferg. v. iii. The slaves in the Roman empire were extremely numerous ; those of a single family were ascertained, on a melancholy occasion, to amount to 400 souls; but no general enumeration or peculiar garb was allowed, lest it should be discovered how few the freemen were in com- Tac. Anl. xi. 24. parison to their number.-TACITUS. tion of the Northern Nations. Its great effects. The barbarians who overthrew the Roman Em dom and First irrup- pire, brought with them from their deserts the freeof energy savage life. Amidst the expiring emb of civilized institutions, they spread the flames of barbarian independence; on the decayed stock of urban liberty, they engrafted the vigorous shoots of pastoral freedom. From their exploits, the thrones, the monarchs, and the nobles of Europe, took their rise; in their customs is to be found the source of the laws and institutions of modern times; in their settlements, the origin of the peculiar character by which the different European nations are Lamentable distinguished. Their conquests were not in the end prostration of the van a mere change of government, or the substitution of one race of monarchs for another; but a total subversion of the property, customs, and institutions of the vanquished people. Their cities were destroyed, their temples ruined, their movables plundered, their estates confiscated.* The daughters of the greatest among the conquered were compelled to receive husbands from the leaders of their enemies, while those of the inferior classes were exposed to the grossest insults, or driven in despair to the protection of convents; and the youth of the other sex, born to splendid possessions, were sold as slaves, or compelled to labour as serfs on the lands which quished. * So far was this universal system of disinheriting carried after the Norman Conquest, that, by a general enactment, inserted in Doomsday Book, all alienations by Saxons, subsequent to the Conquest of William; and all titles to estates not derived from him, and registered in his books, were declared null.-THIERRY, ii. p. 278. 'Thierry, ii. 100, 101. their fathers held as proprietors. To such extremes of distress were the inhabitants of the vanquished states sometimes reduced, that they voluntarily sub- 24, 96, 97, mitted to bondage as the price of life, and sought in Sism. slavery the only protection which could be obtained France, i. from the violence by which they were surrounded.' It was not, however, at once, or by any sudden act of violence, that this complete transfer of property from the vanquished to the victors took place. The settlements of the Northern nations in the provinces of the Roman Empire did not resemble the conquest either of the Roman legions, or the armies of modern Europe, but were rather akin, though more violent, to the gradual inroad which the Irish poor have effected into the provinces of Western Britain in these times. Wave after wave succeeded before the whole country was occupied; one province was overrun for a whole generation before another was invaded; and a more equitable division of goods between the natives and the conquerors at first took place than could have been expected, where power was at the disposal of such rude barbarians. Sometimes a half, sometimes a third, of the vanquished lands, were left in the hands of the old proprietors; and although the portion was abridged by each successive inroad of conquerors, yet it was several centuries before the transfer was completely effected; and some remnants of the ancient free, or allodial tenure, have in all the European monarchies survived the whole changes of the middle ages. Gradually, however, the work of spoliation Hist. de 277. 1 Guizot, Essais sur l'Hist. de France, 330, 252, 280, 301. Thierry, Essais sur l'Histoire, 87, 99. thence be tween the classes of society in modern times. was extended; the depressed condition, and timid Before the The lamentable state of weakness and decay into Separation which the Roman empire had fallen in the latter ages of its existence, in consequence of the universality of slavery in all its provinces, rendered the people totally incapable of preventing this general spoliation. They submitted, almost without resistance, to every invader, and could hardly be induced to take up arms, even by the most incessant foreign and domestic aggressions. Hence arose a total separation of the higher and lower orders, and an entire change in the habits, occupations, and character of the different ranks of society. From the free conquerors of the Roman provinces have sprung the noble and privileged classes of modern Europe; from their enslaved subjects, the numerous and degraded ranks of peasants and labourers. The equality and energy of pastoral life stamped a feeling of pride and independence upon the descendants of the conquerors, which in many countries is yet undiminished; the Introduc misery and degradation of the vanquished riveted Thierry, chains about their necks, which were hardly loosened tion, i. 8, 9. for a thousand years.' In this original separation of the different ranks of society, consequent upon the invasion of the Franks into Gaul, is to be found the remote cause of the evils which induced the FRENCH REVOLUTION. But many ages were destined to elapse, before the conflicting interests thus created came into collision; and it was by the gradual agency of several concurring causes that the energy was restored to the mass of the people, which had been lost amidst the tranquillity of Roman servitude, and the violence of feudal oppression. When the lands of the vanquished people were at length completely divided, and the military followers of the victorious invaders had completely overspread the conquered territory, the nobles despised their subjects too much to court their assistance in periods of danger. Shut up in castles, and surrounded by their own military retainers, they neither required the aid, nor felt for the sufferings of their bondsmen. The ravages of the Normans, the cruelty of the Huns, excited but little compassion while it was wreaked only on the slaves of the country; and the baron, secure within his walls, beheld with indifference his villages in flames, and the long files of weeping captives who were carried off from beneath his ramparts by the desolating invaders. During these long ages of feudal anarchy, the lower orders neither improved in courage nor rose in importance; the lapse of time Sism. France, i. 74, 87. |