DISCOVERY 



57 



organised ; in the country-districts the change was 

 less violent. Landowners offered refuge to the 

 runaway townsmen on condition of servdce, and they 

 were glad to accept a position which was practically 

 that of serfs attached to the soil. But the landed 

 estates could offer no resistance to the invasions of the 

 barbarians ; and the friendlj' societies, after a century 

 or more of decay, finally perished in the general fall of 

 Roman civilisation 



The city-hfe of the Roman Empire in the third and 

 fourth centuries a.d. has some analogies to the ideal 

 of the Socialistic State. Certainly every trade was 

 under State control, and its direct purpose was the 

 prosperity of the city ; and at the same time pro- 

 prietors and employers were deprived of all profits, 

 and in fact became poorer year by year. But the 

 analogy must not be pressed too far ; the centuries 

 referred to are those of the general decline and fall of 

 Roman civihsation, of which the direct causes were 

 war, famine, and pestilence. The experience goes to 

 show that State control of industries is not a panacea 

 for every national or social evil ; but we hardly know 

 enough of the circumstances to judge whether, in fact, it 

 proved a mischief or a support to the tottering empire. 

 But if we look back to the two preceding centuries, 

 we find in the societies the happy outcome of a widely 

 diffused sentiment of sympathy and humanity. There 

 is no indication that the societies were at any time a 

 nursery for class hatred, and they were not for any 

 long period centres of poUtical disturbance. The 

 rich and the poor, the free and the slave, met within 

 these organisations on a temporarj' equality ; and 

 gaiety and good-feUowship prevailed at their monthly 

 assembUes. There is perhaps something for us to 

 learn from these experiments in the past ; and the 

 early history of the Christian community cannot be 

 rightly understood till it is recognised that it was in 

 its beginnings one friendly society amongst many 

 others. 



AUTHORITIES 

 Corpus Juris Civilis, Krueger u. Mommsen, Berlin, 1877 ; 

 Fragmenia Juris anteiustiniani, Mommsen, Berlin, 1S61 ; 

 Etude historiqiie sur Us corporations projessionelles chez les 

 Romains, E. Waltzing, 4 vols., Louvain, 1896 ; Romisches 

 Staaisrecht, Marquerdt-Mommsen, Berlin, 1869 ; War-time 

 Lectures, E. V. Arnold, Workers' Educational Association, 

 1916. 



" Industrial Gases '* ^ 



It is with the deepest regret that we record the death of 

 the author of this book. Dr. Greenwood was one of 

 the most vigorous and promising of our young chemical 



' Industrial Gases, by Dr. H. C. Greenwood. Bail!i>re, 

 tzs. 6d. net. 



[Coniinuci on p. 58 



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