s the
safety of the emperor was avowedly preferred to every consideration of
justice or humanity, the dignity of age and the tenderness of youth were
alike exposed to the most cruel tortures; and the terrors of a malicious
information, which might select them as the accomplices, or even as the
witnesses, perhaps, of an imaginary crime, perpetually hung over the
heads of the principal citizens of the Roman world.

These evils, however terrible they may appear, were confined to the
smaller number of Roman subjects, whose dangerous situation was in
some degree compensated by the enjoyment of those advantages, either of
nature or of fortune, which exposed them to the jealousy of the monarch.
The obscure millions of a great empire have much less to dread from
the cruelty than from the avarice of their masters, and their humble
happiness is principally affected by the grievance of excessive taxes,
which, gently pressing on the wealthy, descend with accelerated weight
on the meaner and more indigent classes of society. An ingenious
philosopher has calculated the universal measure of the public
impositions by the degrees of freedom and servitude; and ventures to
assert, that, according to an invariable law of nature, it must always
increase with the former, and diminish in a just proportion to the
latter. But this reflection, which would tend to alleviate the miseries
of despotism, is contradicted at least by the history of the Roman
empire; which accuses the same princes of despoiling the senate of its
authority, and the provinces of their wealth. Without abolishing all
the various customs and duties on merchandises, which are imperceptibly
discharged by the apparent choice of the purchaser, the policy of
Constantine and his successors preferred a simple and direct mode of
taxation, more congenial to the spirit of an arbitrary government.

Chapter XVII: Foundation Of Constantinople.--Part VI.

The name and use of the indictions, which serve to ascertain the
chronology of the middle ages, were derived from the regular practice
of the Roman tributes. The emperor subscribed with his own hand, and in
purple ink, the solemn edict, or indiction, which was fixed up in the
principal city of each diocese, during two months previous to the first
day of September. And by a very easy connection of ideas, the word
indiction was transferred to the measure of tribute which it prescribed,
and to the annual term which it allowed for the