ively considered,
it will be found that they not only afford a perfect solution of its
fall, but explain how it happened at the period it did, and had not
occurred at an earlier period. They show what it was which, slowly but
steadily, wasting away the vitals of the empire, successively destroyed
its rural population and agricultural industry, and at length crushed
its property under the increasing load of debts and taxes. They explain
how it happened that the indirect taxes, which at first were sufficient,
with a moderate imposition of five per cent on inheritances, to support
the large military and naval establishments of Augustus, became
gradually unproductive, and were at length succeeded by direct taxes on
land, of severe, and in the end destructive amount. They show what every
page of contemporary history demonstrates, that it was neither the
superior military power of the barbarians, nor the diminished skill and
courage of the legions, which occasioned the overthrow of the mighty
fabric, but the _wasting away of its internal resources_--which was the
real cause of its decay. They tell us that it was not the timidity of
the legions, but _the inability of government to array them in
sufficient strength_, which rendered them unequal to the contest with an
enemy whom, during the vigour of the state, they had so often repelled.
They explain how it happened that Italy and Greece had become deserts in
their rural districts, before one of the barbarians had crossed either
the Alps or the Haemus and how Africa, Spain, and Egypt, alone of the
provinces, retained their prosperity, when rural industry was wellnigh
extinct in all the other parts of the empire. Lastly, they explain how
it happened, that while the rural districts to the north of the
Mediterranean were so generally relapsing into a state of desolation,
the great cities of Greece and Italy long retained their prosperity, and
the wealth of the capitalists and great proprietors who inhabited them,
was continually increasing, while all other classes were ground to the
earth under the weight of public or private burdens.

It must appear, at first sight, not a little extraordinary that the very
causes which thus evidently led to the destruction of Rome, viz., the
unlimited importation of foreign grain and contraction of the currency,
are those which have been most the object of the policy of the British
government, for the last quarter of a century, by every possible m