own expence, and without inconvenience, such an edifice as the Pantheon, and at the same time supply Rome with more than one hundred fountains, all ornamented with marble, with columns, and with statues? We may go We may go farther back, and date the origin of these excessive incomes so early as the usurpation of Sylla. Crassus, whose immense fortune was accumulated under the influence and perhaps from the confiscations of that Dictator, is supposed to have possessed more than five mil lions sterling. Antonius, Cicero's colleague, besides his estates in Italy, was proprietor of the whole island of Cephallenia, and had erected a new city in it at his own expence: and in the reign of Augustus, a single individual of no rank or fame, Claudius Isidorus, though he had suffered considerable losses in the course of the civil wars, left at his death four thousand one hundred and sixteen slaves, three thousand six hundred yoke of oxen, two hundred and fifty thousand sheep, goats, swine, &c. and in money fifteen hundred thousand pounds sterling.

This evil increased to an extent almost incredible under the Emperors; and we find in Nero's time, that six Romans, who were put to death by that tyrant from motives of avarice, were in possession of one-half of Africa! In fine, in the reign of Honorius, after the division of the empire, and indeed at the very period of its most rapid decline, a Roman patrician, or one of the first rank, was supposed to enjoy an annual revenue of four hundred thousand pounds sterling, not including the provisions supplied by his estates for the use of his table. One fourth of that sum was necessary to constitute a moderate income. Now, at this very period, when the opulence

of the Roman nobles was so excessive, the reader will be surprized to learn, that a very considerable part of Italy, and that part the most fertile, was nearly converted into a desert. Yet that such was the fact, we find unquestionable proof in the Epistles of St. Ambrose, then Bishop of Milan, an eye-witness of the scene which he describes. De Bononiensi veniens urbe a tergo Claternam, ipsam Bononiam, Mutinam, Rhegium, derelinquebas; in dextera erat Brixillum; a fronte occurrebat Placentia veterem nobilitatem ipso adhuc nomine sonans: ad lævam Apennini inculta miseratus, et florentissimorum quondam popolorum castella considerabas, atque affectu relegebas dolenti. Tot igitur semiren- /~ tarum urbium cadavera, terrarumque sub eodem conspectu exposita funera . . . in perpetuum prostrata ac diruta*. This picture, though evidently copied from a well-known passage in Sulpicius's Epistle to Cicero, must be considered as an exact representation, and exhibits a scene of desolation sufficiently extensive and melancholy.

But the depopulation here deplored was the result, not of an incidental invasion, nor the consequence of a few disastrous years; it was the operation of the military system established under the Emperors, and had been in gradual progression during the three preceding centuries. Pliny, who wrote his Natural History under Vespasian, observes, that in Latium, fifty-two tribes had perished utterly, sine vestigiis, and points out several towns even in Campania itself, that had either disappeared or were in a state of rapid decay. He also mentions several

* Amb. Epist. 39.

temples neglected and falling into ruin, even in places near Rome; and frequently employs such expressions as sunt reliquiæ

. jam tota abiit . . . quondam uberrimæ multitudinis, &c. all of which are evidently indications of a decreasing population, and of a country on the decline.

The depopulation of Italy has, I know, been in part ascribed to the vast increase of Rome, and to the natural tendency which opulent provincials ever have to desert, the incelebrity of their obscure country, and to establish themselves in the Capital. During the era of liberty this evidently was not the case; for we not only find the Republic discharging the surplus of its population in colonies, but we are informed that the Senate, by an express order, prohibited the establishment of Italian provincials in the Capital, and ordered twelve thousand Latins, who had settled in the city, to return home. An expression of the historian, however, shews the propensity of the Italians, and the commencement of the evil*; yet long after this event, which took place in the year of Rome 565, many of the Italian towns were extremely populous, insomuch that Padua alone counted five hundred Roman knights among her citizens.

Under the Emperors, when not food only and sometimes raiment, but every convenience and almost every luxury were provided gratis for the Roman people; when baths furnished with

* Jam tum multitudine alienigenarum urbem onerante. Tit. Liv. Lib. XXXIX. 3.

regal magnificence were open for their accommodation, and plays and races and combats daily and almost hourly exhibited for their amusement; when porticos and groves, and temples and colonnades, without number, offered them shade and shelter at all hours and in all seasons; in short, when a thousand fountains poured out rivers to refresh them, and all the wants of nature were supplied without labour or exertion; then the idle, the indigent, and the effeminate inhabitants of Italy, and indeed of all the provinces, flocked to Rome, and crowded its streets with an useless and burthensome multitude. To this overgrown population, thus formed of the dregs and the vagrancy of the subjugated countries, Seneca refers with temper, Lucan with contempt, and Juvenal with indignation.

Non possum ferre, Quirites,

Græcam urbem,

Jam pridem Syrus in Tiberim defluxit Orontes.

It may appear singular, but it is true, that the population of Rome increased as the empire declined, and was never perhaps greater than during the inauspicious reign of Honorius, when the barbarians who had overrun the distant provinces made inroads into Italy itself, and forced the terrified inhabitants to seek for protection in the Capital. To ascertain the amount of this population would be difficult, especially as the most learned authors disagree in their calculations; but, whatever its amount may have been, it may justly be surmised, that it was not either at this, or at any preceding period, a very efficient cause of the depopulation of Italy. The British Capital may possibly contain as many inhabitants as Rome did during any,

even the most flourishing era of its empire; and it still continues to increase both in size and in population, without any prejudice to the cultivation of the country or to the prosperity of the country towns. The real causes of the depopulation of Italy under the Emperors were the unsettled state of the Roman constitution, the accumulation and the uncertainty of property, and the pressure of taxation; evils resulting invariably from a military and despotic government, and more destructive in their effects in one century than all the wars, famines, and pestilences that have ever afflicted mankind.

The same bane of public prosperity that preyed upon the resources of Italy under the Cæsars is now corroding the vitals of the Turkish empire, has already converted the fertile provinces of Asia Minor, of Syria, and of Egypt into deserts, and will shortly devour the remaining population of Greece, and leave nothing behind but barren sands and silent solitudes. That the towns and even tribes mentioned by Strabo and by Pliny should have withered away and disappeared under the deadly influence of such a government; and that Italy itself, though the centre of the power and of the riches of a mighty empire, should have gradually decayed under the immediate frown of a race of tyrants, and constantly the theatre of their cruelties, of their caprice, and of their contests is not wonderful; on the contrary, it is rather surprizing that it should have resisted the action of so many accumulated causes of destruction, have survived its fall, and have risen so great and so flourishing from its disasters.

At what period, or by what means the population of Italy was restored, its cultivation renewed, and new sources of wealth