356 Civilization and Decay 



debts, it would be a very bad thing morally; or, if 

 a change took place in a manner that would tem- 

 porarily reduce the purchasing power of the wage- 

 earner, it would be a very bad thing materially ; but 

 the current of the national life would not be wholly 

 diverted or arrested, it would merely be checked, 

 even by such a radical change. The forces that most 

 profoundly shape the course of a nation's life lie far 

 deeper than the mere use of gold or of silver, the 

 mere question of the appreciation or depreciation of 

 one metal when compared with the other, or when 

 compared with commodities generally. 



Mr. Adams unconsciously shows this in his first 

 and extremely interesting chapter on the Romans. 

 In one part of this chapter he seems to ascribe the 

 ruin of the Roman Empire to the contraction of the 

 currency, saying, "with contraction came that fall of 

 prices which first ruined, then enslaved, and finally 

 exterminated the native rural population of Italy." 

 This he attributes to the growth of the economic or 

 capitalistic spirit. As he puts it, "the stronger type 

 exterminated the weaker, the money-lender killed 

 out the husbandman, the soldiers vanished, and the 

 farms on which they once flourished were left deso- 

 late." 



But, curiously enough, Mr. Adams himself shows 

 that all this really occurred during the two centuries, 

 or thereabout, extending from the end of the sec- 

 ond Punic war through the reign of the first of the 

 Roman emperors ; and this was a period of currency 

 expansion, not of currency contraction. Moreover, 



