iers, from Africa and Spain
alone they drew supplies both of money and soldiers, without requiring
to send back any. The latter provinces were the granary and garden of
the empire; the only part of it where rural industry met with
remunerating prices or adequate encouragement. And the same
circumstances explain in a great degree how it happened, that while the
_rural_ districts of Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, and Romelia, were
continually declining in population, rental, and revenue, their _towns_,
especially on the sea-coast, were, down to the last days of their
existence, in a flourishing condition. These towns were the seat of
manufactures and commerce. It was by their capital that the vast corn
trade by which all the cities of the empire were fed was carried on. It
was their fabrics which mainly furnished the means of purchasing the
immense proportion of this grain, which, being imported by private
importers, required to be paid for in some species of manufactured
produce. And the reason why grain was raised so much cheaper, and
therefore profitably, in Egypt, Lybia, and Spain, than in Italy and
Greece, was, partly, that the former of these countries were by nature
blessed with a more prolific soil and a warmer sun than the latter; and,
partly, that as Rome and Constantinople were the two capitals of the
empire, the greater part of its wealth was attracted, either by taxes,
tribute, or the concourse of the rich, to them, and, consequently, the
abundance of riches rendered money cheap, labour dear, and cultivation,
when exposed to foreign competition, unprofitable.

But there was more in the case than this. Simultaneously with the vast
and increasing importation of foreign grain, which at length destroyed
cultivation in all the northern provinces of the empire, a _continual
diminution of its circulating medium_ was going forward; and it was to
the combined and cotemporaneous operation of these two causes, that the
ruin of the empire is beyond all question to be ascribed.

So early as the days of Tiberius, the abstraction of the gold and silver
currency of the empire by the incessant drain of foreign commerce, was
loudly complained of by the Roman writers; and there is the most
decisive proof, that in the course of time the supply of the precious
metals on the empire became so inadequate to the wants of its
inhabitants, that their value was enhanced to a great and ruinous
degree. It was the commerce of the East which f