THE RICH RICHER, THE POOR POORER. 293 



circumstances.* One found himself just so well established that he 

 could endure without being crushed. Another found that the time 

 demanded, or the wound received, or the loss sustained by an inroad, 

 or by being on an unsuccessful expedition, threw him back so that he 

 fell in debt. The former, securing a foothold and gaining a little, 

 bought a slave and established himself with a greater margin of secu- 

 rity. Slavery, of course, mightily helped on the tendency. Twenty 

 years later the second man was the bankrupt debtor and bondman of 

 the first. 



All insecurity of property has the same effect, above all, however, 

 when the insecurity is produced by abuse of state power. In the later 

 history of Rome, the Roman power, having conquered the world and 

 dragged thousands born elsewhere into Italy as slaves, set to work to 

 plunder its conquest. The booty taken by emperors, proconsuls, and 

 freedmen favorites, and by the sovereign city, was shared, through the 

 largesses, with the proletariat of the city. The largesses and slavery 

 worked together to divide the Romans into two classes. The plunder 

 of the provinces intensified the wealth of the wealthy. The largesses 

 pauperized and proletarianized the populace of the great city.f They 

 drew away citizens from the country, and from honest industry, to 

 swell the mob of the city. If a band of robbers should split into 

 patricians and plebeians and divide the plunder unequally, it is plain 

 that, as time went on, they must separate into two great factions, one 

 immensely rich, the other miserably poor. J As for the victims, al- 

 though at first the severity and security of Roman law and order were 

 not too dear even at the price which they cost ; nevertheless, the in- 

 evitable effect of robbery came out at last, and the whole Roman 

 world was impoverished.* Those only could get or retain wealth 

 among the provincials who could gain favor with, or get on the side 

 of, the rulers. No satisfactory exposition of the political economy of 

 the Roman commonwealth has yet been written. The effect of the 

 Roman system on population, on the development of capital in the 

 provinces, on the arts and sciences, on the distribution of the precious 

 metals, on city population at Rome and Constantinople, on the devel- 

 opment of talent and genius, offers lessons of profound importance, 

 touching in many points on questions which now occupy us. The 

 Roman Empire was a gigantic experiment in the way of a state which 



* As to the heavy burdens of Roman citizenship, see Merivale, viii, 284. 



f See Mommsen, book iii, chapters xi, xii ; book v, chapter xi ; Pohlrnann, " Die 

 Uebervolkerung der antiken Gross-Stadte," Leipsic, 1884. 



\ See especially Friedlaender, " Sittengeschichte," i, 22 : " In the enjoyment of the 

 extravagant abundance of advantages, excitements, and spectacles, which the metropolis 

 offered, the highest and lowest classes were best off. The great majority of the free 

 male inhabitants were fed partly or entirely at public expense. The great found there 

 an opportunity and means for a royal existence as nowhere else on earth. The middle 

 classes were most exposed to the disadvantages of life at Rome." 



* See Merivale, viii, 351 ; Gibbon, chapter xxxvi, at the end. 



