ne in which property was invested with a
view to profit, and the concentration of capital in hordes of slaves,
and the farm of the public revenues of conquered provinces and
tributary states, were, with the land, the great basis of the
aristocracies of Rome, and the Roman world generally. The senatorial
and equestrian orders were supported chiefly by lending out their
slaves as gladiators and artificers, and by farming the revenues, and
lending money to the oppressed subjects of the provinces, and to
vanquished princes, at an exorbitant interest, to enable them to pay
what the state or its public officers demanded. The slaves throughout
the Roman empire were about equal in number to the free population,
and they were for the most part concentrated in the hands of the
members of the upper and middle classes, who derived their incomes
from lending and employing them. They were to those classes in the
old world what canals, railroads, steam-engines, &c., are to those of
modern days. Some Roman citizens had as many as five thousand slaves
educated to the one occupation of gladiators for the public shows of
Rome. Julius Caesar had this number in Italy waiting his return from
Gaul; and Gordianus used commonly to give five hundred pair for a
public festival, and never less than one hundred and fifty.

In India slavery is happily but little known;[a] the church had no
hierarchy either among the Hindoos or Muhammadans; nor had the law
any high interpreters. In all its civil branches of marriage,
inheritance, succession, and contract, it was to the people of the
two religions as simple as the laws of the twelve tables; and
contributed just as little to the support of the aristocracy as they
did. In all these respects, China is much the same; the land belongs
to the sovereign, and is minutely subdivided among those who farm and
cultivate it--the great works in canals, aqueducts, bridges, roads,
&c., are made by Government, and yield no private income. Capital is
nowhere concentrated in expensive machinery; their church is without
a hierarchy, their law without barristers-their higher classes are
therefore composed almost exclusively of the public servants of the
Government. The rule which prescribes that princes of the blood shall
not be employed in the government of provinces and the command of
armies, and that the reigning sovereign shall have the nomination of
his successor, has saved China from a frequent return of the scenes