des of native domestic
residents, was maintained throughout the duration of the republic, and
until a late period of the eastern empire, and at last was in _effect_
destroyed less by an elevation of the inferior classes than by the
degradation of the free, and the previous possessors of rights and
immunities civil and political, to the indiscriminate abasement
incident to absolute and simple despotism.

By the learned and elegant historian of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire, we are told that "In the _decline_ of the Roman empire,
the proud distinctions of the republic were gradually abolished; and
the reason or instinct of Justinian completed the simple form of an
absolute monarchy. The emperor could not eradicate the popular
reverence which always waits on the possession of hereditary wealth or
the memory of famous ancestors. He delighted to honor with titles and
emoluments his generals, magistrates, and senators, and his precarious
indulgence communicated some rays of their glory to their wives and
children. But in the eye of the law all Roman citizens were equal, and
all subjects of the empire were citizens of Rome. That inestimable
character was _degraded_ to an obsolete and empty name. The voice of a
Roman could no longer enact his laws, or create the annual ministers
of his powers; his constitutional rights might have checked the
arbitrary will of a master; and the bold adventurer from Germany or
Arabia was admitted with equal favor to the civil and military command
which the _citizen_ alone had been once entitled to assume over the
conquests of his fathers. The first Caesars had scrupulously guarded
the distinction of _ingenuous_ and _servile_ birth, which was decided
by the condition of the mother. The slaves who were liberated by a
generous master immediately entered into the middle class of
_libertini_ or freedmen; but they could never be enfranchised from the
duties of obedience and gratitude; whatever were the fruits of their
industry, their patron and his family inherited the third part, or
even the whole of their fortune, if they died without children and
without a testament. Justinian respected the rights of patrons, but
his indulgence removed the badge of disgrace from the two inferior
orders of freedmen; whoever ceased to be a slave, obtained without
reserve or delay the station of a citizen; and at length the dignity
of an ingenuous birth _was created_ or _supposed_ by the omnipotence
of the