ry obstacle, and human
perseverance at length attaining universal dominion. It was the
spectacle most likely to rivet the attention of strenuous and growing
nations--of men in that stage of existence when national ambition is
strong and the patriotic passions ardent, and the selfish interests have
not yet become so powerful as to have generally extinguished the
generous affections. But it may be doubted whether the events that
occurred in the later stages of the Roman empire, are not fraught with
more valuable and important information than those of its earlier
annals. Less interesting to the soldier, less animating to the citizen,
less heart-stirring to the student, they are more instructive to the
philosopher, more pregnant with warning to the statesman. They contain
the only instance yet exhibited among men of a nation sinking from no
external shock, but from the mere influence of internal decay; and point
alone, of all passages in the annals of the species, to the provision
made by nature, in the passions and selfishness of men, against the
possibility of universal dominion.

To any one who attentively considers this all-important subject, two
things must be apparent, of the very highest consequence in arriving at
correct ideas on it. The first is, that the Roman empire did not sink
under the external violence of the barbarians, but under the weakness
and decline which had arisen in its own bosom. The second, that the
causes hitherto assigned by historians and philosophers for this
internal decay, are either vague generalities, having no definite
meaning, and incapable of any practical application, or can be easily
shown, even to the most superficial reader, not to have been the real
causes of the phenomenon.

There can be no doubt that some of the irruptions of the
barbarians--particularly those of the Goths into Romelia, which led to
the fatal battles of Thessalonica and Adrianople; and of Alaric into
Italy, which terminated in the capture of the Eternal City--were very
formidable inroads, and might, in the best days of the empire, have
taxed its strength and resolution to repel. But a little consideration
must be sufficient to show, that, formidable as these invasions were,
they could without much difficulty have been withstood, if the empire
had possessed the strength which it did in the days of the republic, or
in the first two centuries of the Caesars. The Cimbri and Teutones, whom
Marius combated and destro