France, has a few curious pages, on the causes of the decline of
civil society in Roman Gaul, and its consequent weakness and ruin.
He tells you how the Senators or Clarissimi did not constitute a true
aristocracy, able to lead and protect the people, being at the mercy
of the Emperor, and nominated and removed at his pleasure. How the
Curiales, or wealthy middle class, who were bound by law to fulfil
all the municipal offices, and were responsible for the collection of
the revenue, found their responsibilities so great, that they by
every trick in their power, avoided office. How, as M. Guizot well
puts it, the central despotism of Rome stript the Curiales of all
they earned, to pay its own functionaries and soldiers; and gave them
the power of appointing magistrates, who were only after all the
imperial agents of that despotism, for whose sake they robbed their
fellow-citizens. How the plebs, comprising the small tradesmen and
free artizans, were utterly unable to assert their own opinions or
rights. How the slave population, though their condition was much
improved, constituted a mere dead weight of helpless brutality.

And then he says, that the Roman Empire was dying. Very true: but
often as he quotes Salvian, he omits always to tell us what Roman
society was dying of. Salvian says, that it was dying of vice. Not
of bad laws and class arrangements, but of bad men. M. Guizot
belongs to a school which is apt to impute human happiness and
prosperity too exclusively to the political constitution under which
they may happen to live, irrespectively of the morality of the people
themselves. From that, the constitutionalist school, there has been
of late a strong reaction, the highest exponent, nay the very
coryphaeus of which is Mr. Carlyle. He undervalues, even despises,
the influence of laws and constitutions: with him private virtue,
from which springs public virtue, is the first and sole cause of