quas in provincias commeatus portabantur: nec nunc infecunditate
laboratur; _sed Africam_ POTIUS _et Egyptum excercemus, navibusque et
casibus vita populi Romani permissa est_.[55]" The supply of grain for
the Roman world was entirely obtained from Spain, Sicily, Africa, and
Egypt, while Greece was maintained by corn imported from Poland.[56] It
was not that the Italian and Grecian fields had become sterile: Tacitus
expressly says the reverse,--"_nec_ nunc infecunditate laboratur." But
the country in which grain produced fifteen fold, as Italy did, could
not compete with that which produced sixty or eighty fold, on the banks
of the Nile. Nor could the industry of the centre of the empire, where
money was plentiful, comparatively speaking, and labour was therefore
dear, stand against the competition of the remoter provinces, where it
was scarce, and labour was therefore cheap.

The ruin of Italian and Grecian agriculture from this cause is so
evident, that it is admitted by the ablest advocates of an unlimited
freedom in the corn trade. "The first effect of this system," says a
late able and learned writer on the liberal side, "_was the ruin of
Italian agriculture_. The natural market for the corn of the Italian
farmer was, to a great extent, destroyed by the artificial supplies
obtained from the provinces. Hence, as Dureau de la Malle has remarked,
(ii. 218,) the history of the seventh and eighth centuries of Rome
presents this singular contrast--that the agriculture, the population,
and products of Italy, diminish progressively as she extends her
conquests and power. The fatal influence which the gratuitous supplies
from the provinces would exercise upon the native agriculture, was
perceived by Augustus; but he abandoned his intention of altering the
system, from a conviction it would be restored by his successor. The
result was, that southern and central Italy, instead of being tilled by
a race of hardy active farmers, themselves freemen, and working on their
own land, was divided into plantations cultivated by slaves."[57] This
explains how it came to pass that Spanish agriculture took such a start
from _the time of Tiberius_; and how, in the general ruin of the empire,
Spain, Africa, and Egypt, were the only provinces which retained their
prosperity. It will be recollected that it was in the reign of Tiberius
that bounties were first given by the Roman government to the private
importers of foreign grain.

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