at last wholly ceased, insomuch that the
country relapsed entirely into a state of nature, or was devoted to the
mere raising of grass for sheep and cattle, _agriculture was flourishing
in the highest degree in the remoter provinces of the Empire_; and the
exportation of grain from Africa had become so great and regular, that
it had come to be regarded as the granaries of Rome and of the world!
The government was the same, the slavery was the same, in Africa as in
Italy. Yet in the one country agriculture rose, during four centuries,
to the highest point of elevation; while in the other, during the same
period, it sunk to the lowest depression, until it became wellnigh
extinct, so far as the raising of grain was concerned. How did this come
to pass? It could not have been that the labour of slaves was too costly
to raise grain; for it was raised at a great profit, and to a prodigious
extent, _almost entirely by slaves_, in Egypt and Lybia. What was it,
then, which destroyed agriculture in Italy and Greece, while, under
circumstances precisely similar in all respects _but one_, it was, at
the very same time, rising to the very highest prosperity in Egypt,
Lybia, and Spain? Evidently _that one circumstance_, and that was--that
Italy and Greece were the heart of the empire, the theatre of
long-established civilization, the abode of opulence, the seat of
wealth, the centre to which riches flowed from the extremities of the
empire. Pounds were plentiful there, and, consequently, labour was dear;
in the provinces pence were few, and, therefore, it was cheap. It was
impossible, under a free trade in grain, for the one to compete with the
other. It is for the same reason that agricultural labour is now
sixpence a-day in Poland, tenpence in Ireland, and two shillings in
Great Britain.

The peculiar conformation of the Roman empire, while it facilitated in
many respects its growth and final settlement under the dominion of the
Capitol, led by a process not less certain, and still more rapid, to its
ruin, when that empire was fully extended. If any one will look at the
map, he will see that the Roman empire spread outwards from the shores
of the Mediterranean. It embraced all the monarchies and republics
which, in the preceding ages of the world, had grown up around that
inland sea. Water, therefore, afforded the regular, certain, and cheap
means of conveying goods and troops from one part of the empire to the
other. Nature had sp