t be sufficient to show, that these
were not the real sources of the decline of the empire; or rather, that
if they had not been aided in their operation by other causes, which
truly undermined its strength, it might have been great and flourishing
to this hour.

Slavery, it must be recollected, was _universal_ in antiquity, and is so
over two-thirds of the human race at this hour. Much as we may feel its
evils and deprecate its severities, we ourselves, till within these
three centuries, were entirely fed by serfs; and a few years only have
elapsed since the whole of our colonial produce was raised by slave
labour. America and Russia--the two most rising states in
existence--are, the former in part, the latter wholly, maintained by
slaves. It was an army, in a great measure composed of men originally
serfs, which repelled Napoleon's invasion, survived the horrors of the
Moscow retreat, and carried the Russian standards to Paris, Erivan, and
Adrianople. Alexander the Great conquered Asia with an army of freemen
wholly fed by slaves. The Athenians, in the palmy days of their
prosperity, had only 21,000 freemen, and 400,000 slaves. Rome itself, in
its great and glorious periods, when it vanquished Hannibal, conquered
Gaul, subdued the East--in the days of Scipio, Caesar, and Trajan--was to
the full as dependent on slave labour as it was in those of its
decrepitude under Honorius or Justinian. Cato was a great dealer in
slaves; the Sabine farm was tilled by the arms of slaves; Cincinnatus
and Regulus worked their little freeholds entirely by means of slaves.
Rome was brought to the verge of destruction, nearer ruin than it had
been by the arms of the Carthaginians, by the insurrection of the slaves
shortly after the third Punic contest, so well known under the
appellation of the Servile war. It is perfectly ridiculous, therefore,
to assign as a cause of the destruction of Rome, a circumstance in the
social condition of its people which coexisted with their greatest
prosperity, which has prevailed in all the most renowned nations of the
earth in a certain stage of their progress, and is to be found, in our
own times, in states the most powerful, and the most likely to attain
vast and long-continued dominion.

Equally futile is it to point to the weight of the taxes as the main
cause of the long decline and final overthrow of Rome. Taxes no doubt
are an evil; and if they become excessive, and are levied in a direct
form, t