consolations, one of the most grateful
was the punishment of the Delators; the common enemies of their master,
of virtue, and of their country. Yet even in the inquisition of these
legal assassins, Pertinax proceeded with a steady temper, which gave
every thing to justice, and nothing to popular prejudice and resentment.
The finances of the state demanded the most vigilant care of the
emperor. Though every measure of injustice and extortion had been
adopted, which could collect the property of the subject into the
coffers of the prince, the rapaciousness of Commodus had been so very
inadequate to his extravagance, that, upon his death, no more than eight
thousand pounds were found in the exhausted treasury, [50] to defray the
current expenses of government, and to discharge the pressing demand of
a liberal donative, which the new emperor had been obliged to promise
to the Praetorian guards. Yet under these distressed circumstances,
Pertinax had the generous firmness to remit all the oppressive taxes
invented by Commodus, and to cancel all the unjust claims of the
treasury; declaring, in a decree of the senate, "that he was better
satisfied to administer a poor republic with innocence, than to acquire
riches by the ways of tyranny and dishonor. Economy and industry he
considered as the pure and genuine sources of wealth; and from them he
soon derived a copious supply for the public necessities. The expense of
the household was immediately reduced to one half. All the instruments
of luxury Pertinax exposed to public auction, [51] gold and silver plate,
chariots of a singular construction, a superfluous wardrobe of silk
and embroidery, and a great number of beautiful slaves of both sexes;
excepting only, with attentive humanity, those who were born in a
state of freedom, and had been ravished from the arms of their weeping
parents. At the same time that he obliged the worthless favorites of
the tyrant to resign a part of their ill-gotten wealth, he satisfied
the just creditors of the state, and unexpectedly discharged the long
arrears of honest services. He removed the oppressive restrictions which
had been laid upon commerce, and granted all the uncultivated lands
in Italy and the provinces to those who would improve them; with an
exemption from tribute during the term of ten years. [52]

[Footnote 50: Decies. The blameless economy of Pius left his successors
a treasure of vicies septies millies, above two and twenty milli