Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/304

 286 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, avowedly preferred to every consideration of justice or humanity, the dignity of age, and the tenderness of youth, were ahke exposed to the most cruel tortures; and the terrors of a malicious information, which might select them as the accomplices, or even as the wit- nesses, perhaps, of an imaginary crime, perpetually hung over the heads of the principal citizens of the Roman world ^ Finances. These evils, however terrible they may appear, were confined to the smaller number of Roman subjects, whose dangerous situation was in some degree com- pensated by the enjoyment of those advantages, either of nature or of fortune, which exposed them to the jealousy of the monarch. The obscure millions of a great empire have much less to dread from the cruelty than from the avarice of their masters ; and their hum- ble happiness is principally affected by the grievance of excessive taxes, which gently pressing on the wealthy, descend with accelerated weight on the meaner and more indigent classes of society. An ingenious philo- sopher^ has calculated the universal measure of the public impositions by the degrees of freedom and ser- vitude ; and ventures to assei't, that, according to an invariable law of nature, it must always increase with the former, and diminish in a just proportion to the latter. But this reflection, which would tend to alle- viate the miseries of despotism, is contradicted at least by the history of the Roman empire ; which accuses the same princes of despoiling the senate of its autho- rity, and the provinces of their wealth. Without abolishing all the various customs and duties on mer- chandizes, which are imperceptibly discharged by the apparent choice of the purchaser, the pohcy of Con- f Aicadius Charisius is the eldest lawyer quoted in the Pandects to justify 'he universal practice of torture in all cases of treason ; but this maxim of tyranny, which is admitted by Ammianus (1. xix. c. 12.) with the most re- spectful terror, is enforced by several laws of the successors of Constantine. See Cod. Theod. 1. ix. tit. xxxv. In majestatis crimine omnibus aequa est conditio. F Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, 1. xii. c. 13.