bbon tells us that, in the time
of Constantine, in Gaul it amounted to _nine pounds sterling of gold_ on
every freeman.[24] The periodical distribution of grain to the populace
of Rome, all of which, from its greater cheapness, was brought by the
government from Egypt and Africa, utterly extinguished the market for
corn to the Italian farmers, though Rome, at its capture by Alaric,
still contained 1,200,000 inhabitants. "All the efforts of the Christian
emperors," says Michelet, "to arrest the depopulation of the country,
were as nugatory as those of their heathen predecessors had been.
Sometimes alarmed at the depopulation, they tried to mitigate the lot of
the farmer, to shield him against the landlord; upon this the proprietor
exclaimed, _he could no longer pay the taxes_. At other times they
strove to chain the cultivators to the soil; but they became bankrupts
or fled, and the land became deserted. Pertinax granted an immunity of
taxes to such _cultivators from distant provinces_ as would occupy the
deserted lands of Italy. Aurelian did the same. Probus, Maximian, and
Constantine, were obliged to transport men and oxen from Germany to
cultivate Gaul. But all was in vain. _The desert extended daily._ The
people in the fields surrendered themselves in despair, as a beast of
burden lies down beneath his load and refuses to rise."[25]

Gibbon has told us what it was which occasioned this constant
depopulation of the country, and ruin of agriculture in the Italian
provinces. "The Campagna of Rome," says he, "about the close of the
sixth century, was reduced to a state of _dreary wilderness_, in which
the air was infectious, the land barren, and the waters impure. Yet the
number of citizens still exceeded the measure of subsistence; _their
precarious food was supplied from the harvests of Lybia and Egypt_; and
the frequent recurrence of famine, betrayed the inattention of the
emperor at Constantinople to the wants of a distant province."[26] Nor
was Italy the only province in the heart of the empire which was ruined
by those foreign importations. Greece suffered not less severely under
it. "In the latter stages of the empire," says Michelet, "_Greece was
supported almost entirely by corn raised in the plains of Poland_."[27]

These passages, to which, did our limits permit, innumerable others to
the same purpose might be added, explain the causes of the decay and
ultimate ruin of agriculture in the central provinces of t