Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/357

 10. BRYCE: ROME AND ENGLAND 343 pacitj and vigour in the persons of Diocletian and Constan- tine enabled reforms to be effected which gave the imperial government a new lease of life, and made its character more purely despotic. Therewith came the stopping of the persecu- tion of the Christians, and presently the recognition of their religion as that which the State favoured, and which it before long began to protect and control. The civil power admitted and supported the authority of the bishops, and when doc- trinal controversies distracted the Church, the monarchs, beginning from Constantine at the Council of Nicaea, endea- voured to compose the differences of jarring sections. These changes told upon the law as well as upon institu- tions. New authorities grew up within the Church, and these authorities, after long struggles, obtained coercive power. Not only was the spirit of legislation in such subjects as slavery and the family altered — marriage and divorce, for instance, began to be regarded with new eyes — but a fresh field for legislation was opened up in the regulation of various ecclesiastical or semi-ecclesiastical matters, as well as in the encouragement or repression of certain religious opinions. The influence on law of Greek customs, which seemed to have been expunged by the extension of citizenship to all subjects a century before Constantine, makes itself felt in his legislation. Besides these influences belonging to the sphere of politics and religion, economic causes, less conspicuous, but of grave moment, had also been at work in undermining the social basis of the State and inducing efforts to apply new legisla- tive remedies. Slavery and the decline of agriculture, par- ticularly in the Western half of the Empire, throughout which there seems to have been comparatively little manu- facturing industry, had reduced the population and the prosperity of the middle classes, and had exhausted the source whence native armies could be drawn. Thus social conditions were changing. The growth of that species of serfdom which the Romans called colonatus belongs to this period. The financial strain on the government became more severe. New expedients had to be resorted to. All these phenomena, coupled with the more autocratic character which the central government of the Empire took from