第73章

To reap, however, themselves, while alive, all possible benefit from what they might chance to leave others to enjoy after their death, they encouraged some of the members of a despicable class who seem to have constituted no inconsiderable part of Roman society.Parasites ready to minister to every pleasure, and to perform every possible service, waited on the man of wealth, in the hope and expectation of enjoying a portion of it after his death.They were more desirable than children, both because they were able to give something more than mere unsubstantial affection and esteem, and because they were willing to give it, while a son or daughter might imagine they had claims to receive what they could not be said to have labored for.The poets and satirists of the Augustine age, and of subsequent times, give sufficient evidence of the existence of a state, evil in itself, and the forerunner of many evils.(43) It gave occasion to the law compelling parents to leave their children a certain part, a fourth, of their property.Its prevalence may be judged of by the wording of the enactments increasing the children's share.It is stated, as a fact well known, that parents generally either disinherit, or omit their children in their wills, leaving the bulk of their property to distant relations, to strangers, or to slaves, to whom they give freedom; and that thus, if their t:amily is numerous, they, who during the lifetime of their father enjoyed affluence, find that his death leaves them in poverty.(44)Nothing, surely, can more clearly show the extreme and pervading selfishness of the time, than its becoming necessary for the magistrate to compel the citizens to marry, and also to compel them to leave portions to their children.

The existence of such a state of things implied a degree of isolation of feeling and action, so great, as necessarily to produce general weakness and decay.The general selfishness of the principles guiding the conduct of individuals, may be gathered from a prevailing proverb "when I die let the world burn." (45) When such were the maxims ruling society, there could not fill to be a heedless sacrifice of the interests of futurity, an exhaustion of the means or instruments which the forethought of previous generations had employed industry to accumulate, without any correspondent reformation of them.Sallust, in a fragment quoted hy Montesquieu, well describes the men of his day as a race who could neither themselves hold property, nor allow others to retain it.(46) Only such instruments could consequently be formed as were of very quickly returning orders, and, as the vigor of the accumulative principle decayed, the members of each succeeding generation saw a mass of materials fall from their grasp, which had afforded a plentiful supply to the wants of their more provident forefathers.

The means of supporting human life diminished, and the numbers of mankind diminished with them.When vice itself did not sufficiently check the growth of the elements of life, it brought want and famine to its assistance.

The history of the Roman world under the Caesars, is a melancholy detail of the gradually decaying funds of the Empire, and the gradually decreasing numbers of its inhabitants.Italy, according to Pliny, and other writers, was in the old times crowded with people, thickly set with cities, and rich in all things ministering to the needs of its inhabitants.In his day, its diminished population depended for their sustenance on the productions of other territories.The change certainly was not owing to any alteration in the materials."Non fatigata aut effoeta humus," says Columella.The earth would have yielded the same returns, had they who possessed it been willing to expend what was necessary to give it the capacity of yielding them.As the materials were only wrought up to very quickly returning orders, they had necessarily a much smaller capacity, and the annual returns made by them were of consequence much less.Pasture took place of tillage; corn was brought from the provinces; and when the supply failed famine ensued.

Even the construction of ships for the transport of this, and other merchandise, would seem to have been an effort to which the accumulative principle was scarcely equal.It was found necessary to encourage it by rewarding those who prosecuted that branch of industry.(47) Sometimes land formerly cultivated was allowed to lie entirely waste, and passed altogether out of the class of instruments.The forest and wilderness gained on the Romans, as they would now, for similar reasons, on an Indian population, were some of these tribes put in possession of the domains, anciently the property of their race, at present yielding abundantly to the provident industry of the whites.Had there been no irruption of the barbarians the Empire must have perished, more slowly perhaps, but as certainly, from the operation alone of these internal causes of decay.They were occasioning a progressive diminution of the capacity which materials formerly possessed.

Thus, it is to the Romans themselves as much as to the Barbarians, that the destruction of the public edifices is to be ascribed.The stones were applied to private purposes.With the capacity for yielding a return, there necessarily perished the return yielded, and the power, consequently, of maintaining the same number of men, and contributing an equal amount to the wants of the state.Hence the population of the Empire, and the imperial revenue diminished from age to age.