Tiber to the Silarus. Within sixty years
after the death of Constantine, and on the evidence of an actual survey,
an exemption was granted in favor of three hundred and thirty thousand
English acres of desert and uncultivated land; which amounted to one
eighth of the whole surface of the province. As the footsteps of the
Barbarians had not yet been seen in Italy, the cause of this amazing
desolation, which is recorded in the laws, can be ascribed only to the
administration of the Roman emperors.

Either from design or from accident, the mode of assessment seemed to
unite the substance of a land tax with the forms of a capitation. The
returns which were sent of every province or district, expressed the
number of tributary subjects, and the amount of the public impositions.
The latter of these sums was divided by the former; and the estimate,
that such a province contained so many capita, or heads of tribute; and
that each head was rated at such a price, was universally received, not
only in the popular, but even in the legal computation. The value of
a tributary head must have varied, according to many accidental, or at
least fluctuating circumstances; but some knowledge has been preserved
of a very curious fact, the more important, since it relates to one of
the richest provinces of the Roman empire, and which now flourishes as
the most splendid of the European kingdoms. The rapacious ministers of
Constantius had exhausted the wealth of Gaul, by exacting twenty-five
pieces of gold for the annual tribute of every head. The humane policy
of his successor reduced the capitation to seven pieces. A moderate
proportion between these opposite extremes of extraordinary oppression
and of transient indulgence, may therefore be fixed at sixteen pieces
of gold, or about nine pounds sterling, the common standard, perhaps,
of the impositions of Gaul. But this calculation, or rather, indeed,
the facts from whence it is deduced, cannot fail of suggesting two
difficulties to a thinking mind, who will be at once surprised by the
equality, and by the enormity, of the capitation. An attempt to explain
them may perhaps reflect some light on the interesting subject of the
finances of the declining empire.

I. It is obvious, that, as long as the immutable constitution of human
nature produces and maintains so unequal a division of property,
the most numerous part of the community would be deprived of their
subsistence, by the equal assessme