esolated God's fair world
in the same way as rivers glisten in different colours, but a common
sewer everywhere looks like itself, so the Italy of the Ciceronian epoch
resembles substantially the Hellas of Polybius and still more decidedly
the Carthage of Hannibal's time, where in exactly similar fashion
the all-powerful rule of capital ruined the middle class, raised trade
and estate-farming to the highest prosperity, and ultimately led to a--
hypocritically whitewashed--moral and political corruption of the nation.
All the arrant sins that capital has been guilty of against nation
and civilization in the modern world, remain as far inferior
to the abominations of the ancient capitalist-states as the free man,
be he ever so poor, remains superior to the slave; and not until
the dragon-seed of North America ripens, will the world have again
similar fruits to reap.

Reforms of Caesar

These evils, under which the national economy of Italy
lay prostrate, were in their deepest essence irremediable,
and so much of them as still admitted of remedy depended essentially
for its amendment on the people and on time; for the wisest government
is as little able as the more skilful physician to give freshness
to the corrupt juices of the organism, or to do more in the case
of the deeper-rooted evils than to prevent those accidents
which obstruct the remedial power of nature in its working.
The peaceful energy of the new rule even of itself furnished
such a preventive, for by its means some of the worst excrescences
were done away, such as the artificial pampering of the proletariate,
the impunity of crimes, the purchase of offices, and various others.
But the government could do something more than simply abstain
from harm. Caesar was not one of those over-wise people who refuse
to embank the sea, because forsooth no dike can defy some sudden influx
of the tide. It is better, if a nation and its economy follow
spontaneously the path prescribed by nature; but, seeing that they
had got out of this path, Caesar applied all his energies to bring back
by special intervention the nation to its home and family life,
and to reform the national economy by law and decree.

Measures against Absentees from Italy
Measures for the Elevation of the Family

With a view to check the continued absence of the Italians from Italy
and to induce the world of quality and the merchants to establish
their homes in their native land, not only was th