Stagnation of the Empire 451 



and more mechanical. Under great strains in the third century it lost 

 its vital forces to such a degree that it was powerless for internal 

 betterment. The later despotic Empire, seeing the failure of past policy, 

 could find no better way than to do as before 1 , only more mechanically 

 and more thoroughly. What little of freedom of movement and of self- 

 disposal still remained to the toiling classes accordingly disappeared. 

 Once a certain number had been slaves; now none were practically 

 free. Diminution of personal slavery had not increased personal free- 

 dom. The attempt to confine all labour to fixed grooves and rigid rules 

 was a last desperate effort to control and employ the resources of 

 ancient civilization, in the hope of thus finding means sufficient to 

 endure the ever-growing strain upon the empire. This system might 

 serve its purpose for the moment, but it was a vain device, killing en- 

 terprise and working out its own ruin through its own stagnation. In 

 agriculture, on which the whole fabric rested, its effects were particu- 

 larly ruinous: for in no occupation is there greater need of constant 

 forethought and loving care, which the prospect of private advantage 

 alone can guarantee. All these phenomena may assure us that as yet 

 there was no clear understanding of the value of free self-disposal as 

 the economic basis of society. From the moral point of view no genuine 

 progress was to be looked for in a stagnant age. The transition from 

 normal slavery to gild-bondage and normal land-serfdom does not seem 

 to have been affected by the spiritual levelling of Christianity. But 

 that as she gained power, the Church did something to mitigate 2 the 

 hardness of the time, is not to be doubted. 



I need not dwell at length on the contrast presented by modern 

 anti-slavery movements. The influence of religion, personal and hu- 

 manitarian, is alone enough to account for the new spirit aroused and 

 organized by Clarkson and Wilberforce. To put down the slave-trade 

 because it was wrong was a momentous step, and emancipation its 

 inevitable corollary, costly though it might be. That the reform was 

 carried out two generations before the handworking masses of England 

 gained political power is a most notable fact. For it is not possible to 

 connect the achievement with the natural jealousy of free labour 

 objecting to competition of slave labour. In the United States the 

 notives for Abolition were necessarily more mixed, but sincere fanatics, 



1 The compulsory tenure of municipal offices is commonly cited as illustrating the pressure 

 :ven on men of means. It began in the second century. See Dig L i 38 6 , 2 r [Ulpian], 

 L i4 6 [Callistratus citing Hadrian], and many other passages. Notable is L 4 4 1 honores 

 ui indicuntur [Ulpian]. 



2 This topic is the subject of Churchill Babington's Hulsean dissertation, Cambridge 1846. 

 learn that a pamphlet by Brecht, Sklaverei und Christentum, takes a less favourable view, 



>ut have not seen it. The survival of the colonate and its heavy burdens in the early Middle 

 ilge are treated by de Coulanges, particularly in connexion with the estates of the Church. 



29 2 



