be pleased to direct,' said the prefect
Florentius, 'what we are to do in those towns _where three magistrates
cannot be found_?' The order was upon this revoked."[49]

The disastrous state of the rural districts amidst this accumulation of
evils is thus forcibly described by Mr Finlay:--"In many provinces, the
higher classes had been completely exterminated. The loss of their
slaves and serfs, who had often been carried away by the invaders, had
reduced many to the humble condition of labourers. Others had emigrated,
and abandoned their land to the cultivators, from being unable to obtain
any revenue from it in the miserable state to which the capture of the
stock, the loss of a market, and the destruction of the agricultural
buildings had reduced the country. In many of the towns, the diminished
population was reduced to misery by the ruin of the rural districts in
their neighbourhood. The higher classes in the country disappeared under
the weight of the municipal duties they were called upon to perform.
Houses remained unlet; and even when let, the portion of rent which was
not absorbed by the imperial taxes was insufficient to supply the
demands of the local expenditure. The labourer and the artisan alone
could find bread; the walls of cities were allowed to fall into ruins;
the streets were neglected, public buildings had become useless;
aqueducts remained unrepaired; internal communications ceased; and with
the extinction of the wealthy and educated classes in the provincial
towns, the local prejudices of the lower orders became the law of
society."[50]

Such, on a nearer survey, was the condition of the Roman empire which
preceded its fall. From it may be seen how widely the real causes of its
decline differed from the vague generalities of Montesquieu, that the
ruin of the empire was the necessary consequence of its extension; or
the still vaguer declamations of the scholars, that it was the
corruption incident to great and long-continued wealth which enervated
the people, and rendered them incapable of defending themselves against
the Northern nations. In truth, both these causes did operate, and that
too in a most powerful manner, in bringing about the ruin of the empire;
but they did so, not in the way supposed by these authors, but in an
_indirect way_, by inducing a new set of evils, which destroyed industry
in the most important of its provinces, by depriving the industrious of
a market for their industr