Until the Augustan age, however, when the policy of the Roman government for the first time ceased to be one of violence, and usurpation, and had for its object the consolidation of the empire; the prosperity, and not, as before, the oppression and impoverishment, of the provinces, there is abundant proof of dispositions on the part of the vanquished nations, directly opposite to those of cheerful submission, or sympathy of views and character. A considerable part of the Roman force was unremittingly employed in suppressing insurrections, which, it is true, rarely failed to become a source of additional strength, and the pretexts of further usurpations. At almost every disturbance in the Comitia of Rome, the states of Italy, eager to take advantage of the smallest circumstance which seemed to increase the chances of success, for an attempt to recover their independence, made a general effort to this effect.-When Italy was convulsed within by the revolt of the slaves, the distant provinces alike watchful, and ready to avail themselves of the least glimmering of hope, were instantly in arms, and leagued with the enemies of Rome. The same thing took place during the social war, as it was called, and the civil wars of the Triumvirate.-As late as the 663d year after the foundation of the city, the Italian "allies," consisting of the Samnites, the Apuli, &c., revolted and combined against their former conquerors.-They elected civil and military officers of their own, to replace the political government at Rome, and assembled one hundred thousand men in arms. The historian Ferguson, in relating this insurrection, remarks, that "the Romans now found themselves in an instant brought back to the condition, in which they had been three hundred years before, reduced to a few miles of territory round their walls, and beset with enemies more united and more numerous, than ever had assailed them at once on the same ground."

He adds, that the senate found it necessary to compose the disorders of Italy by making the concessions demanded by the allies, principally from the consideration " that the distant parts of the empire were soon likely to receive the contagion of revolt, and ready to withdraw on the first opportunity, the

"If the Romans," says Polybius in his ninth book, "had only carried away the silver and gold from the countries which they conquered, they would have deserved no blame; for they could not in general have held the vanquished in subjection, unless they had deprived them of that source of their strength and added it to their own.-But with respect to the riches of a different kind," &c.

allegiance which they were supposed to own as conquered provinces."*

The conduct of Rome towards the nations subdued by her arms, was at all times no less tyrannical and rapacious, than that of France in relation to the victims of her ambition.-It was eminently fitted to keep alive the spirit of sedition and of hate, which so unequivocally manifested itself in all the provinces. These, after being mercilessly ravaged by the sword, were habitually subjected to oppressions and extortions that would seem incredible, if we had not seen them equalled in the deeds of revolutionary France. For the preservation as well as for the acquisition of her power, Rome was indebted solely to the irresistible strength of her arms, to the terrors of her name, and to the arts of deception in which je she was so consummately skilled. "There was scarcely," ac says Fisher Ames, "one of the twelve hundred which years, Rome subsisted, that her dominion was not odious or dangerous, and the greater part of the time both odious and dange rous, to her neighbours. The weight of her yoke was aggravated by her spirit. She not only chained conquered kings to her car of triumph, but, as her pro-consuls had to practise oppression in the provinces, that they might be able to practise bribery at Rome, she trod with the weight of a war-elephant, having a castle on his back, on the necks of her subjects.There was no measure, as there was no end, to Roman exactions."+

In the parallel between the Roman and French empires, the true question as concerns the probable permanence of the latter, is, whether Rome at the end of the first era of which we

* History of the Roman Republic, c. 13. See this work, and Livy, passim, for a full confirmation of the doctrine which we here maintain.

† See on this subject the orations of Cicero against Verres, the oration pro Manl: and almost every passage in his works referring to the foreign affairs of the republic.

"While," says Montesquieu, "the city of Rome paid the taxes as she pleased, or paid none at all, the provinces were plundered by the knights, who were farmers of the public revenue. All history abounds with their oppressive extortions.-Hence it was that the strength of the provinces made no addition to, but rather weakened that of the republic; hence it was that the provinces looked upon the loss of the liberty of Rome, as the epocha of their own freedom." Spirit of Laws, b. 9.

"All Asia," says Mithridates in a speech reported by Justin, "expects me as its deliverer, so great is the hatred which the rapaciousness of the proconsuls, the quirks and vexations of judicial proceedings, &c., have excited against the Romans." The oppressions exercised over the provinces by the triumvirate, almost surpass belief. The reader will find an account of them, and of the insurrections to which they gave rise, in the historians of the time.

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have spoken, was more propitiously circumstanced for the preservation and extension of her dominion, than France is at this moment relatively to the same objects, within the limits of the continent of Europe. We are decidedly of opinion that she was not; and we would scarcely hesitate to affirm the same of her situation, at the beginning of what may be called the third and more tranquil period of her greatness,-the interval of four hundred years which elapsed from the reign of Augustus, to that of Theodosius, the Great. The considerations which prompt us to adopt this conclusion, would, if we now undertook to detail them, involve us in a discussion much too long and intricate for this article. We may return to the subject in some future number, as one of liberal speculation, and not that we attach much importance, to any solution to which our researches might lead. In such inquiries as these, we are all liable either to be led into error by adhering too closely to analogy, and forgetting at the same time the vicissitudes of fortune, or to lose ourselves in what has been so justly styled "the infinite void" of the conjectural world. It is enough for us at present to have shown the mistake, which the writer of this pamphlet has committed, in relying upon the evidence of history to support his opinion, that the rapidity with which the power of France has been reared, furnishes a strong presumption against its permanence.

Nor is he, we think, more correct in supposing, that her pecuniary resources have entirely failed, or even that they are unequal to the exigencies of her situation.-We must premise on this point, that the apophthegm, which our author quotes, "that money constitutes the sinews of war," is not universally true. If it be meant by this maxim, that a nation must have either a full treasury, or ample pecuniary means within herself, in order to overcome her neighbours, or to retain them in subjection, nothing can be more opposite to the experience, both of ancient and modern times. France herself furnishes the strongest evidence to the contrary, in the history of her revolutionary wars, during which she supported her triumphant armies, in great part, as she does indeed at this moment, by the harvest of their swords. She, as well as her favourite model, Rome, exemplified the truth of the principle, that "war

* Ramel estimates the contributions levied on the countries occupied by the French arms, during a few years of the revolution, at five hundred millions of francs." Histoire des Finances de la Republique." The convention had no system of finance or regular revenue. During the civil wars of Rome, and at the accession of Augustus to the supreme authority, the state of things was the same with the Roman power. The plunder of the provinces was its only source of pecuniary supply.

feeds itself-bellum seipsum alit”—a principle unerringly sure, when systematically acted upon, by a government whose armies are well constituted, and whose ruling passion is the subjugation of its neighbours.*

In the first part of this pamphlet, much is said about the expenditure of France in the time of the Convention. There can be no doubt but that this was immense, but it does not follow, as our author would infer, that an equal amount of treasure is now necessary, to the support of her military power.-France is no longer engaged in a doubtful war on her own territory, against the united strength of the rest of Europe;—she no longer arrays and supports fourteen hundred thousand men on her own frontiers, nor does she purchase, as she then did, at an immense price, the neutrality of foreign powers.—The recollection of the sums expended, and of the military successes obtained, by the jacobin government, would naturally lead to conclusions rather favourable than otherwise, to the supposition of the permanence of her present ascendency.

"The republic of regicides," writes Mr. Burke, in 1796, -"with an annihilated revenue, with defaced manufactures, with a ruined commerce, with an uncultivated and half depopulated country, with a discontented, distressed, enslaved and famished people, passing with wild eccentric course from the wildest anarchy to the sternest despotism, has actually conquered the finest parts of Europe, has distressed, disunited, deranged and broke to pieces all the rest." If this representation be correct, and most undoubtedly it is,-if the rulers of France under such circumstances, and when civil war was raging at home, could-before the year 1796-collect supplies both of men and money to enable them to achieve thus much-would it not seem at this time, when her territory and population are both doubled, when the dread of her power is still more universal and profound, when the greater part of the continent has, as it were, become habituated to her grinding dominion, when she possesses a regular, well-organized system of finance, when the military spirit prevails still more diffusively and actively, among her inhabitants,would it not seem, we say, to be quite practicable for her present government, possessing as it does the most ready, complete, absolute command over all her resources of every description, and in itself of a character, if possible still more restless, ambitious, enterprising, audacious, perfidious, re

* See the chapter of Machiavel (discorsi lib. 2, chap. x.) on the maxim that "money constitutes the sinews of war."

morseless, energetic and prompt, than any of its predecessors, to collect the means of retaining the share of empire already won, and even of subduing in time what there yet remains of adverse strength on the continent?

The French Budget for 1811 estimates the receipts of that year, at 954 millions of francs, near forty millions sterling net revenue, collected from a population of forty millions of souls, without including the kingdom of Italy for a larger sum than thirty millions of francs. There is certainly no exaggeration in this estimate. We are indeed thoroughly persuaded that it is below the real amount.-The expenses of every description for the army, during 1809, amounted to 640 millions of francs, of which only 350 were defrayed by the treasury, the remainder being paid out of the foreign contributions.

According to the budget of 1810, the expenses of the army for that year, were defrayed nearly in the same proportions by the domestic and foreign fund.-The budget of 1811 appropriates the sum of four hundred and sixty millions of francs to the army, for that year, out of the public treasury.-The deficit to be supplied from abroad for the same object amounted probably, to two or three hundred millions.

It is to be collected from the reports of the minister of finance, that during the fifty-one months preceding the first of January 1810, the external receipts amounted to the sum of 1136 millions of francs. If we admit that the military force cost the imperial exchequer, during 1811, one half of the revenue collected from the empire for that year, there will still remain a sum of 577 millions francs, for the other branches of public expenditure; a sum considerably greater than the whole revenue in 1801, and nearly equal to the whole expenditure of the French monarchy in 1780, which greatly exceeded the receipts.

From the foregoing detail the reader will perceive, that although the revenue drawn from the empire, is insufficient both to support the civil establishment and to maintain the armies, yet the deficit is not so great as that it may not be collected from the "allies" without much difficulty. We have seen that this was actually the case as late as the year 1810.-We believe that France, as well as the rest of the continent subject to the power of Bonaparte, is in a career of impoverishment, and this may be proved from a comparison of particular branches, and of the whole amount of the imperial revenue, during some years past. We believe also that Bonaparte cannot make any material reduction, either in his civil or military establishment, without endangering the security of his throne. We know, however, that this impoverishment is not so rapid as