evil. Let us take, then, Salvian's own account of the cause of Roman
decay. He, an eye-witness, imputes it all to the morals of Roman
citizens. They were, according to him, of the very worst. To the
general dissoluteness he attributes, in plain words, the success of
the Frank and Gothic invaders. And the facts which he gives, and
which there is no reason to doubt, are quite enough to prove him in
the right. Every great man's house, he says, was a sink of
profligacy. The women slaves were at the mercy of their master; and
the slaves copied his morals among themselves. It is an ugly
picture: but common sense will tell us, if we but think a little,
that such will, and must, be the case in slave-holding countries,
wherever Christianity is not present in its purest and strongest
form, to control the passions of arbitrary power.

But there was not merely profligacy among these Gauls. That alone
would not have wrought their immediate ruin. Morals were bad enough
in old Greece and Rome; as they were afterwards among the Turks:
nevertheless as long as a race is strong; as long as there is
prudence, energy, deep national feeling, outraged virtue does not
avenge itself at once by general ruin. But it avenges itself at
last, as Salvian shews--as all experience shews. As in individuals
so in nations, unbridled indulgence of the passions must produce, and
does produce, frivolity, effeminacy, slavery to the appetite of the
moment, a brutalized and reckless temper, before which, prudence,
energy, national feeling, any and every feeling which is not centered
in self, perishes utterly. The old French noblesse gave a proof of
this law, which will last as a warning beacon to the end of time.
The Spanish population of America, I am told, gives now a fearful
proof of this same terrible penalty. Has not Italy proved it
likewise, for centuries past? It must be so, gentlemen. For