l. 386.

This language is ancient and constitutional; and we may observe, that
the clergy were not yet considered as a distinct order of the state.]

[Footnote 37: Either dilationes, or delationes would afford a tolerable
reading, but there is much more sense and spirit in the latter, to which
I have therefore given the preference.]

[Footnote 38: Ab externo hoste et a domestica clade liberavimus: by the
latter, Majorian must understand the tyranny of Avitus; whose death he
consequently avowed as a meritorious act. On this occasion, Sidonius
is fearful and obscure; he describes the twelve Caesars, the nations of
Africa, &c., that he may escape the dangerous name of Avitus (805-369.)]

[Footnote 39: See the whole edict or epistle of Majorian to the senate,
(Novell. tit. iv. p. 34.) Yet the expression, regnum nostrum, bears
some taint of the age, and does not mix kindly with the word respublica,
which he frequently repeats.]

The private and public actions of Majorian are very imperfectly known:
but his laws, remarkable for an original cast of thought and expression,
faithfully represent the character of a sovereign who loved his people,
who sympathized in their distress, who had studied the causes of the
decline of the empire, and who was capable of applying (as far as such
reformation was practicable) judicious and effectual remedies to
the public disorders. [40] His regulations concerning the finances
manifestly tended to remove, or at least to mitigate, the most
intolerable grievances. I. From the first hour of his reign, he was
solicitous (I translate his own words) to relieve the weary fortunes of
the provincials, oppressed by the accumulated weight of indictions and
superindictions. [41] With this view he granted a universal amnesty, a
final and absolute discharge of all arrears of tribute, of all debts,
which, under any pretence, the fiscal officers might demand from the
people. This wise dereliction of obsolete, vexatious, and unprofitable
claims, improved and purified the sources of the public revenue; and the
subject who could now look back without despair, might labor with hope
and gratitude for himself and for his country. II. In the assessment and
collection of taxes, Majorian restored the ordinary jurisdiction of the
provincial magistrates; and suppressed the extraordinary commissions
which had been introduced, in the name of the emperor himself, or of the
Praetorian praefects. The favorite servants, wh