thought so foreign to our manners] organised from above, and extending its branches everywhere below, such as that for which I believe we are indebted to M. de Sartines.[2] His heart would have bounded, but his purse would have failed, for (his third want) Cæsar had no budget. The art of finance was in its infancy. Those vast regions, on an average as rich as they are now, and which now pay to their actual sovereigns, without much complaint, at least two hundred millions sterling, did not produce to Cæsar sixteen millions sterling, and inasmuch as the contributions which produced these sixteen millions had to pass through the hands of some fifty thousand publicans and agents of finance, the contributors, who paid perhaps twice as much as the Emperor received, cried out fearfully. Lastly, if Cæsar, wishing to compel his people, had brought on any serious rising, he would have had no means of putting it down, for (a fourth want) Cæsar, having no budget, had no army. Those countries, which now furnish not less than three millions of soldiers, in those days, without being much less populous than they are now, did not furnish more than 300,000 men, and these 300,000 were absorbed by the guard on the frontiers. There were whole provinces without a single soldier. This Empire, without administration, without police, without budget, without army, would make the lowest clerk in the prefecture of police, the prefecture of the Seine, the offices of the Minister of War, or the Minister of Finance, shrug his shoulders at its poverty—military, fiscal, and administrative—I know that. But what would have been thought of our monarchies, so well constituted, so vigilant, so rich, so powerfully armed, I do not say by the clerks, but by the subjects of the Roman Empire?'—('Anton.,' vol. ii. p. 185.)

We heartily wish we had space to give the whole of the chapter from which we have made these extracts. The author proves in detail that under the Empire there was liberty of property, municipal liberty, liberty of association, liberty of worship (except for the Christians), liberty of education, liberty of speech. This last, M. de Champagny most truly says, was far more general at Rome under Trajan than under Louis Philippe at Paris. 'That liberty of the tongue was the liberty of every man: what is our liberty of the press than the liberty of two hundred journalists?' It was this that made Tacitus exclaim, 'Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quæ velis, et quæ sentias licet dicere.' The effect of this was that

'A modern European, as soon as he goes out of his own door and begins to act, to think, to live, among his fellows, must take for granted that everything is forbidden except what is expressly authorized. Under the Roman Empire, everything not expressly forbidden was understood to be authorized. Above all, intellectual liberty was complete. Every one talked, listened, gave and received information publicly as he pleased. Doctrines spread. Schools of thought raised themselves without interference of authority until it felt itself in danger, not from the general independence of thought (that misgiving had not yet come into anyone's mind), but from the special character of some teaching which arrested its attention. Even when the Imperial Government made up its mind to be severe, its rigour might often be averted, sometimes even paralyzed, by the municipal authority, which alone was on the spot and in activity in the interior of each great city. It was thus that the Christian teachers and apologists presented themselves as "philosophers," for, as a general rule, philosophers were at liberty to teach what they thought fit.'

No wonder that centuries of peace, free government of each city and nation under its own immemorial laws and customs, and taxation little more than nominal, led to the mighty public works, the very ruins of which are still the wonders of the world—the roads, 'massy causeways, whose foundations were beneath the surface, their surface many feet above it'—the system of navigable rivers and canals which made communication through the whole world (as it then was) easier and swifter than it ever was in England before the time of the generation not yet passed away. M. de Champagny quotes the words of Tertullian:—

'The world itself is opened up, and becomes from day to day more civilized, and increases the sum of human enjoyment. Every place is reached, has been made known, is full of business. Solitudes, famous of old, have changed their aspects under the richest cultivation. The plough has levelled forests, and the beasts that prey on man have given place to those that serve him. Corn waves on the sea-shores; rocks are opened out into roads, marshes are drained, cities are more numerous now than villages in former times. The island has lost its savageness, and the cliff its desolation. Houses spring up everywhere, and men to dwell in them. On all sides are government and life. What better proof can we have of the multiplication of our race than that man has become a drug, while the very elements scarcely meet our needs; our wants outrun the supplies; and the complaint is general that we have exhausted Nature herself.'[3]

Again, he quotes Pliny:—

M. de Champagny thinks that our present civilization would 'seem mean and poor to one of the contemporaries of Cicero, or even to one of the subjects of Nero.' ('Les Césars,' vol. ii. 397.) He shows how this would be felt, both as to public and private life, and especially refers to Pompeii. In proof of his assertion we must refer our readers to a passage, much too long to quote, as to the daily life of Rome itself. He follows a Roman, 'not opulent, but merely well off' through his day:—