o adopt virtue and merit for her own wheresoever they were
found, among slaves or strangers, enemies or barbarians. During the most
flourishing aera of the Athenian commonwealth, the number of citizens
gradually decreased from about thirty to twenty-one thousand. If, on the
contrary, we study the growth of the Roman republic, we may discover,
that, notwithstanding the incessant demands of wars and colonies, the
citizens, who, in the first census of Servius Tullius, amounted to
no more than eighty-three thousand, were multiplied, before the
commencement of the social war, to the number of four hundred and
sixty-three thousand men, able to bear arms in the service of their
country. When the allies of Rome claimed an equal share of honors
and privileges, the senate indeed preferred the chance of arms to an
ignominious concession. The Samnites and the Lucanians paid the severe
penalty of their rashness; but the rest of the Italian states, as they
successively returned to their duty, were admitted into the bosom of the
republic, and soon contributed to the ruin of public freedom. Under
a democratical government, the citizens exercise the powers of
sovereignty; and those powers will be first abused, and afterwards lost,
if they are committed to an unwieldy multitude. But when the popular
assemblies had been suppressed by the administration of the emperors,
the conquerors were distinguished from the vanquished nations, only
as the first and most honorable order of subjects; and their increase,
however rapid, was no longer exposed to the same dangers. Yet the wisest
princes, who adopted the maxims of Augustus, guarded with the strictest
care the dignity of the Roman name, and diffused the freedom of the city
with a prudent liberality.

Chapter II: The Internal Prosperity In The Age Of The Antonines.--Part
II.

Till the privileges of Romans had been progressively extended to all
the inhabitants of the empire, an important distinction was preserved
between Italy and the provinces. The former was esteemed the centre of
public unity, and the firm basis of the constitution. Italy claimed the
birth, or at least the residence, of the emperors and the senate. The
estates of the Italians were exempt from taxes, their persons from
the arbitrary jurisdiction of governors. Their municipal corporations,
formed after the perfect model of the capital, * were intrusted, under
the immediate eye of the supreme power, with the execution of t