be compared with the worst despotisms of the East. The Emperors,
whether or not they called themselves Christian, like Constantine,
knew no law save the basest maxims of the heathen world. Several of
them were barbarians who had risen from the lowest rank merely by
military prowess; and who, half maddened by their sudden elevation,
added to their native ignorance and brutality the pride, cunning,
and cruelty of an Eastern Sultan. Rival Emperors, or Generals who
aspired to be Emperors, devastated the world from Egypt to Britain
by sanguinary civil wars. The government of the provinces had
become altogether military. Torture was employed, not merely, as of
old, against slaves, but against all ranks, without distinction.
The people were exhausted by compulsory taxes, to be spent in wars
which did not concern them, or in Court luxury in which they had no
share. In the municipal towns, liberty and justice were dead. The
curials, who answered somewhat to our aldermen, and who were
responsible for the payment of the public moneys, tried their best
to escape the unpopular office, and, when compelled to serve, wrung
the money in self-defence out of the poorer inhabitants by every
kind of tyranny. The land was tilled either by oppressed and
miserable peasants, or by gangs of slaves, in comparison with whose
lot that even of the American negro was light. The great were
served in their own households by crowds of slaves, better fed,
doubtless, but even more miserable and degraded, than those who
tilled the estates. Private profligacy among all ranks was such as
cannot be described in these or in any modern pages. The regular
clergy of the cities, though not of profligate lives, and for the
most part, in accordance with public opinion, unmarried, were able
to make no stand against the general corruption of the age, because-
-at least if we are to trust such writers as Jerome and Chrysostom--
they were giving themselves up to ambition and avarice, vanity and