he Roman
empire, as clearly as if one had arisen from the dead to unfold it. It
was the weight of _direct taxation_, and the want of remunerating prices
to the _grain cultivators_, which occasioned the evil. The first arose
from the experienced impossibility of raising additional taxes on
industry by indirect taxation: the unavoidable consequence of the
contraction of the currency, owing to the habits of hoarding which the
frequent incursions of the barbarians produced; and of the free
importation of African grain, which the extension of the empire over its
northern provinces, and the clamours of the Roman populace for cheap
bread, occasioned. The second arose directly from that importation
itself. The Italian cultivator, oppressed with direct taxes, and tilling
a comparatively churlish soil, found himself utterly unable to compete
with the African cultivators, with whom the process of production was so
much cheaper owing to the superior fertility of the soil under the sun
of Lybia, or the fertilizing floods of the Nile. Thence the increasing
weight of direct taxation, the augmented importation of foreign grain,
the disappearance of free cultivators in the central provinces, the
impossibility of recruiting the legions with freemen, and the ruin of
the empire.

And that it was something pressing upon the cultivation of _grain_, not
of agriculture generally, which occasioned these disastrous results, is
decisively proved by the fact, that, down to the fall of the empire, the
cultivation of land _in pasturage_ continued to be a _highly profitable_
employment in Italy. It is recorded by Ammianus Marcellinus, that when
Rome was taken by Alaric, it was inhabited by 1,200,000 persons, who
were maintained almost entirely by the expenditure of 1780 patrician
families holding estates in Italy and Africa, many of whom had above
L160,000 yearly of rent from land. Their estates were almost entirely
managed in pasturage, and conducted by slaves.[28] Here, then, is
decisive evidence, that down to the very close of the empire, the
managing of estates _in pasturage_ was not only profitable, but
eminently so in Italy--though all attempts at raising grain were
hopeless. It is not an unprofitable cultivation which can yield L160,000
a-year, equivalent to above L300,000 annually of our money, to a single
proprietor, and maintain 1700 of them in such affluence that they
maintained, in ease and luxury, a city not then the capital of the
empi