st his fellow-man. It must be so. For
profligacy is selfishness; and the family, and the society, the nation,
exists only by casting away selfishness and by obeying law:--not only the
outward law, which says in the name of God, 'Thou shalt not,' but the
inward law, the Law of Christ, which says, 'Thou must;' the law of self-
sacrifice, which selfish lust tramples under foot, till there is no more
cohesion left between man and man, no more trust, no more fellow-help,
than between the stags who fight for the hinds; and God help the nation
which has brought itself to that!

No wonder, therefore, if Salvian's accounts of Gaulish profligacy be
true, that Gaulish recklessness reached at last a pitch all but
incredible. It is credible, however shocking, that as he says, he
himself saw, both at Treves, and another great city (probably Cologne,
Colonia Agrippina, or 'The Colony' par excellence) while the destruction
of the state was imminent, 'old men of rank, decrepit Christians, slaves
to gluttony and lust, rabid with clamour, furious with bacchanalian
orgies.' It is credible, however shocking, that all through Gaul the
captivity was 'foreseen, yet never dreaded.' And 'so when the barbarians
had encamped almost in sight, there was no terror among the people, no
care of the cities. All was possest by carelessness and sloth, gluttony,
drunkenness, sleep, according to that which the prophet saith: A sleep
from the Lord had come over them.' It is credible, however shocking,
that though Treves was four times taken by the barbarians, it remained
just as reckless as ever; and that--I quote Salvian still--when the
population was half destroyed by fire and sword, the poor dying of
famine, corpses of men and women lying about the streets breeding
pestilence, while the dogs devoured them, the few nobles who were left
comforted themselves by sending to the Emperor to beg for Circensian
games.

Those Circensian games, and indeed all the public spectacles, are fresh
proofs of what I said just now; that if a bad people earn bad government,
still a bad government makes a bad people.

They were the most extraordinary instance which the world ever saw, of a
government setting to work at a vast expense to debauch its subjects.
Whether the Roman rulers set that purpose consciously before them, one
dare not affirm. Their notion probably was (for they were as worldly
wise as they were unprincipled) that the more frivolous and sensual the