general throughout the
country_, and formed an extensive evil, as already observed, in the time
of Plutarch."[63]

As this great diminution on the supply, and drain upon the treasures of
the precious metals in the time of the emperors, lowered the value of
every species of produce, so it proportionally augmented debts, and
swelled the already overgrown fortunes of the capitalists. What Finlay
says of Greece was true of the whole European provinces of the
empire:--"_The property of the Grecian debtors was at last transferred
to a very great extent to the Roman creditors._"[64] The gradual
diminution in the supply of, or abstraction of the precious metals, by
contracting the currency, lowered prices, and thus diminished the
returns of industry; while it proportionally augmented debts, and added
to the fortunes of the great capitalists and landholders. This again
produced another effect upon the manners of the inhabitants of the great
cities, which had an equally powerful effect in increasing the drain
upon that portion of the precious metals which was employed in the
public currency. The rich patricians of Rome, Antioch, and
Constantinople, possessed of colossal fortunes to which nothing in
modern times will bear a comparison, and nursed in habits of luxury and
expense beyond any thing we can even conceive, daily augmented the
amount of their immense incomes, which was devoted to the purposes of
extravagance. "The historians of the second and third centuries," says
Finlay, "are filled with lamentations on this subject."[65] It is not
surprising that it was so. Men possessed, in private stations, of as
much as three or four hundred thousand pounds a-year of modern money,
could not get through their incomes without indulging in the habitual
purchase of the most costly articles. Society in this way had come to
verify the saying of Bacon--"Above all things, good policy is to be used
that the treasure and money in a state _be not gathered into few hands_.
For otherwise, a state may _have a great stock and yet starve_. And
money is like muck, not good unless it be spread."

Hence the consumption and permanent fixing of gold and silver in the
form of plate and costly ornaments, increased in the great families down
to the very close of the empire; and while the currency was constantly
declining, and prices in consequence falling in the provinces, the
colossal capitalists of Rome and Constantinople were daily absorbing
more of t