p. 4: )
but it is to the revocation of the edict of Nantes that we owe the
Spitalfields colony.]

Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.--Part II.

I must repeat the complaint that the vague and scanty memorials of the
times will not afford any just estimate of the taxes, the revenue, and
the resources of the Greek empire. From every province of Europe and
Asia the rivulets of gold and silver discharged into the Imperial
reservoir a copious and perennial stream. The separation of the branches
from the trunk increased the relative magnitude of Constantinople; and
the maxims of despotism contracted the state to the capital, the capital
to the palace, and the palace to the royal person. A Jewish traveller,
who visited the East in the twelfth century, is lost in his admiration
of the Byzantine riches. "It is here," says Benjamin of Tudela, "in
the queen of cities, that the tributes of the Greek empire are annually
deposited and the lofty towers are filled with precious magazines of
silk, purple, and gold. It is said, that Constantinople pays each day
to her sovereign twenty thousand pieces of gold; which are levied on the
shops, taverns, and markets, on the merchants of Persia and Egypt, of
Russia and Hungary, of Italy and Spain, who frequent the capital by
sea and land." [28] In all pecuniary matters, the authority of a Jew
is doubtless respectable; but as the three hundred and sixty-five days
would produce a yearly income exceeding seven millions sterling, I
am tempted to retrench at least the numerous festivals of the Greek
calendar. The mass of treasure that was saved by Theodora and Basil
the Second will suggest a splendid, though indefinite, idea of their
supplies and resources. The mother of Michael, before she retired to a
cloister, attempted to check or expose the prodigality of her ungrateful
son, by a free and faithful account of the wealth which he inherited;
one hundred and nine thousand pounds of gold, and three hundred thousand
of silver, the fruits of her own economy and that of her deceased
husband. [29] The avarice of Basil is not less renowned than his valor
and fortune: his victorious armies were paid and rewarded without
breaking into the mass of two hundred thousand pounds of gold, (about
eight millions sterling,) which he had buried in the subterraneous
vaults of the palace. [30] Such accumulation of treasure is rejected by
the theory and practice of modern policy; and we are more apt to co