f the senate
and people, and bound themselves by oath to permit nothing to be done
without their unanimous consent. Affairs then passed through their
inevitable course. The death of Crassus and the battle of Pharsalia left
Caesar the master of the world. At this moment nothing could have
prevented the inevitable result. The dagger of Brutus merely removed a
man, but it left the fact. The battle of Actium reaffirmed the destiny
of Rome, and the death of the republic was illustrated by the annexation
of Egypt. The circle of conquest around the Mediterranean was complete;
the function of the republic was discharged: it did not pass away
prematurely.

[Sidenote: Ancient necessity for slave-wars.]

From this statement of the geographical career of Rome, we may turn to
reflect on the political principles which inspired her. From a remote
antiquity wars had been engaged in for the purpose of obtaining a supply
of labour, the conqueror compelling those whom he had spared to
cultivate his fields and serve him as slaves. Under a system of
transitory military domination, it was more expedient to exhaust a
people at once by the most unsparing plunder than to be content with a
tribute periodically paid, but necessarily uncertain in the vicissitudes
of years. These elementary principles of the policy of antiquity were
included by the Romans in their system with modifications and
improvements.

[Sidenote: Depopulation of countries after Roman conquest.]

[Sidenote: Atrocity of the Roman slave-laws.]

[Sidenote: Social effects of the Roman slave-system.]

The republic, during its whole career, illustrates the observation that
the system on which it was founded included no conception of the actual
relations of man. It dealt with him as a thing, not as a being endowed
with inalienable rights. Recognizing power as its only measure of value,
it could never accept the principle of the equality of all men in the
eye of the law. The subjugation of Sicily, Africa, Greece, was quickly
followed by the depopulation of those countries, as Livy, Plutarch,
Strabo, and Polybius testify. Can there be a more fearful instance than
the conduct of Paulus Aemilius, who, at the conquest of Epirus, murdered
or carried into slavery 150,000 persons? At the taking of Thebes whole
families were thus disposed of, and these not of the lower, but of the
respectable kind, of whom it has been significantly said that they were
transported into Italy to be melte