the two orders of the
republic,--the patricians and the plebeians,--dissensions which gave
rise to civil wars, proscriptions, and loss of liberty, and finally led
to the empire; but the primary and mediate cause of their decline was
the establishment by Numa of the institution of property.

I end with an extract from a work which I have quoted several times
already, and which has recently received a prize from the Academy of
Moral and Political Sciences:--

"The concentration of property," says M. Laboulaye, "while causing
extreme poverty, forced the emperors to feed and amuse the people, that
they might forget their misery. _Panem et circenses:_ that was the Roman
law in regard to the poor; a dire and perhaps a necessary evil wherever
a landed aristocracy exists.

"To feed these hungry mouths, grain was brought from Africa and the
provinces, and distributed gratuitously among the needy. In the time of
Caesar, three hundred and twenty thousand people were thus fed. Augustus
saw that such a measure led directly to the destruction of husbandry;
but to abolish these distributions was to put a weapon within the reach
of the first aspirant for power.

"The emperor shrank at the thought.

"While grain was gratuitous, agriculture was impossible. Tillage gave
way to pasturage, another cause of depopulation, even among slaves.

"Finally, luxury, carried further and further every day, covered the
soil of Italy with elegant villas, which occupied whole cantons. Gardens
and groves replaced the fields, and the free population fled to the
towns. Husbandry disappeared almost entirely, and with husbandry the
husbandman. Africa furnished the wheat, and Greece the wine. Tiberius
complained bitterly of this evil, which placed the lives of the Roman
people at the mercy of the winds and waves: that was his anxiety. One
day later, and three hundred thousand starving men walked the streets of
Rome: that was a revolution.

"This decline of Italy and the provinces did not stop. After the
reign of Nero, depopulation commenced in towns as noted as Antium and
Tarentum. Under the reign of Pertinax, there was so much desert land
that the emperor abandoned it, even that which belonged to the treasury,
to whoever would cultivate it, besides exempting the farmers from
taxation for a period of ten years. Senators were compelled to invest
one-third of their fortunes in real estate in Italy; but this measure
served only to increase the evil whic