are insular in their habits of thought, and insular in the range of
their acquired knowledge. They do not appear as yet to be thoroughly
alive to the new position created for British trade by foreign
competition. It is greatly to be hoped that they will awake to the
realities of the situation before any permanent harm is done to British
trade, for the loss of trade involves as its ultimate result the
pauperisation of the proletariat, the adoption of reckless expedients
based on the _Panem et Circenses_ policy to fill the mouths and quell
the voices of the multitude, and finally the suicide of that Empire
which is the offspring of trade, and which can only continue to exist so
long as its parent continues to thrive and to flourish.

5. _The Destruction of the Middle Class by the Fiscal Oppression of the
Curiales._--Leaving aside points of detail, which were only of special
application to the circumstances of the time, this cause of Roman decay
may, for all purposes of comparison and instruction, be stated in the
following terms: funds, which should have been spent by the
municipalities on local objects, were, from about the close of the third
century, diverted to the Imperial Exchequer, by which they were not
infrequently squandered in such a manner as to confer no benefit of any
kind on the taxpayers, whether local or Imperial. Thus, the system of
local self-government, which, Mr. Hodgkin says, was, during the early
centuries of the Empire, "both in name and fact Republican," was
shattered.

It does not appear probable that an attempt will ever be made to divert
the public revenues of the outlying dependencies of Great Britain to the
Imperial Exchequer. The lesson taught by the loss of the American
Colonies has sunk deeply into the public mind. Moreover, the example of
Spain stands as a warning to all the world. The principle that local