periods of the empire.

The resource so well known, and so often had recourse to with the
happiest effects, in modern times, to supply the void produced by a
temporary or permanent drain of the precious metals, was unknown in
antiquity. _They had no paper currency._ Even bills of exchange were
unknown. They, as is well known, were a contrivance of the Jews, in the
middle ages, to transport their wealth in a commodious form, when
threatened with persecution, from one country to another. To what an
extent paper of these various kinds has come to supply the place of gold
and silver, may be judged of by the fact, that during the war, the paper
currency of Great Britain and Ireland rose to L60,000,000 sterling; and
that, at the present time, the private bills in circulation in it are
estimated at L132,000,000 sterling. But this admirable resource, by
which an accidental or temporary dearth of the precious metals is
supplied by a paper currency, circulating at par with it, and fully
supplying, as long as credit lasts, its place, was unknown in the
ancient world. Gold, silver, and copper were their sole circulating
mediums; and consequently, when they were progressively withdrawn, by
the causes which have been mentioned, from the currency, there was
nothing left to supply their place. Instantly, as if by the stroke of a
fell necromancer, disasters of every kind accumulated on the wretched
inhabitants. Credit was violently shaken; money disappeared; prices
fell to a ruinous degree; industry could obtain no remuneration; the
influence and ascendancy of realized capital became irresistible; and
the only efficient power left in the state was that of the emperor, who
wrenched his taxes out of the impoverished hands of his subjects, or of
the creditors and landlords, who, by legal process, exacted their debts
from their debtors, and drove them to desperation. This was exactly the
social state of the empire in its declining days. We can appreciate its
horrors, from having had a foretaste of them during the commercial
crises with which, during the last twenty-five years, this country has
been visited.

From what has now been said, it is evident that the two circumstances
which occasioned the fall of the Roman empire, were _the destruction of
its domestic agriculture, by the importation of grain from its distant
provinces, and the accumulation of debts and taxes, arising from the
contraction of the currency_. If these causes be attent