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 256 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

eighteen centuries later Spain recapitulated this feature in her history by drawing still larger sums from the silver mines of Peru and the gold mines of Mexico, and the Spaniards were still more merciless in forcing the natives to work in the South Ameri- can mines. In 1676 Bacon's rebellion in Virginia repeated the English rebellion of the forties; and in 1686 James Colleton, a governor of South Carolina, imitated Cromwell by expelling refractory members from the legislature. The English revolution of 1688 was repeated on the banks of the Ashley and the Cooper, as in New England. Even in the details of a colonial loan the repetition may be observed. A loan of two millions sterling was contracted in 1894 by the Bank of New Zealand and guaranteed by the government, and of this sum one million was appropriated by the government; just as in 1857 the Bank of France was allowed to add one hundred million francs to its capital on condi- tion of handing it over to the government.

Forgotten or obscure stages in the development of the mother- country have already been recovered in the records of colonial evolution. A few examples may be cited. The close connection between the constitutional history of a country and the develop- ment of landed property in mediaeval times has been shown by von Maurer and Maine. It was doubtless no less true of the ancient than of the modern world, but the materials for exhibiting the relationship were scanty and imperfect. Two inscriptions not long since discovered in Tunisia reveal the gradual develop- ment of serfage in the Roman Empire, and prove that, so far from having been created all of a piece by a law of Constantine, it was almost in existence in the time of Commodus, was already in germ in a statute of Hadrian, and probably goes back to a custom that dates from the origin of Rome. The heredity of the military profession was enacted by the emperors ; African inscrip- tions found at Lambese prove that, as a matter of fact, soldiering was already hereditary, and that the law merely confirmed a prac- tice that had insensibly grown up. The same and contiguous inscriptions throw fresh light on the Roman army, and enable us to reconstruct its organization and ranks. They also show us more clearly than before the oppressive incidence of the require-