Taxation. Legislation 383 



almost universal application, and ended by furnishing a new chrono- 

 logical unit, the Indiction-period of 15 years. 



That agriculture, already none too prosperous, suffered heavily 

 under this capricious impost in the second century, seems to me a fact 

 beyond all doubt. And, not being then a general imperial tax, it fell 

 upon those provinces that were still flourishing producers of corn. 

 Debasement of currency already lowered the value of money-taxes, 

 and tempted emperors to extend the system of dues in kind. Under 

 Diocletian and Galerius things came to a head. Vast increase of taxa- 

 tion was called for under the new system, and it was mainly taxation 

 i n kind. Already the failure of agriculture was notorious, and attempts 

 had been made to enforce cultivation of derelict lands. The new taxa- 

 tion only aggravated present evils, and in despair of milder measures 

 Constantine attached the coloni to the soil. Important as the legal 

 foundation of the later serf-colonate, this law is historically still more 

 important as a recognition of* past failure which nothing had availed 

 to check. He saw no way of preventing a general stampede from the 

 farms save to forbid it as illegal, and to employ the whole machinery 

 of the empire in enforcing the new law. This policy was only a part 

 of the general tendency to fix everything in a rigid framework, to make 

 all occupations hereditary, that became normal in the later Empire. 

 The Codes are a standing record of the principle that the remedy for 

 failure of legislation was more legislation of the same kind. Hard- 

 pressed emperors needed all the resources they could muster, particu- 

 larly food. They had no breathing-space to try whether more freedom 

 might not promote enterprise and increase production, even had such 

 a policy come within their view. Hence the cramping crystallizing 

 process went on with the certainty of fate. The government, unable 

 to develope existing industry, simply squeezed it to exhaustion. 



How came it that the government was able to do this ? How came 

 it that agricultural tenants could be converted into stationary serfs 

 without causing a general upheaval 1 and immediate dissolution of the 

 empire ? Mainly, I think, because the act of Constantine was no more 

 than a recognition de iure of a condition already created de facto by 

 a long course of servilizing influences. Also because it was the apparent 

 interest, not only of the imperial treasury but of the great proprietors 

 generally, to tie down to the soil 2 the cultivators of their estates. Labour 

 was now more valuable than land. In corn-growing Africa the im- 

 portance attached to the task-work of sub-tenants was a confession of 



1 The rising of the Bagaudae in Gaul, at least partly due to agricultural distress, had been 

 put down by Maximian in 285-6. See Schiller ill pp 124-6. 



2 It is true that the colonus was guaranteed against disturbance, but I think de Coulanges 

 pp 114-7, 123 makes too much of this. 



