was no more Senatorial, but Papal.

And why did these Goths perish, in spite of all their valour and
patriotism, at the hands of mercenaries?

They were enervated, no doubt, as the Vandals had been in Africa, by
the luxurious southern climate, with its gardens, palaces, and wines.
But I have indicated a stronger reason already:- they perished
because they were a slave-holding aristocracy.

We must not blame them. All men then held slaves: but the original
sin was their ruin, though they knew it not. It helped, doubtless,
to debauch them; to tempt them to the indulgence of those fierce and
greedy passions, which must, in the long run, lower the morality of
slaveholders; and which, as Totila told them, had drawn down on them
the anger of heaven. But more; though they reformed their morals,
and that nobly, under the stern teaching of affliction, that could
not save them. They were ruined by the inherent weakness of all
slaveholding states; the very weakness which had ruined, in past
years, the Roman Empire. They had no middle class, who could keep up
their supplies, by exercising for them during war the arts of peace.
They had no lower class, whom they dare entrust with arms, and from
whom they might recruit their hosts. They could not call a whole
population into the field, and when beaten in that field, carry on,
as Britain would when invaded, a guerilla warfare from wood to wood,
and hedge to hedge, as long as a coign of vantage-ground was left.
They found themselves a small army of gentlemen, chivalrous and
valiant, as slaveholders of our race have always been; but lessening
day by day from battle and disease, with no means of recruiting their
numbers; while below them and apart from them lay the great mass of