Note return — FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION

And for a decisive proof that it was the superior advantages which Egypt and Lybia enjoyed in the production of grain, and not any other causes, which occasioned the ruin of Italian agriculture, and with it the fall of the Roman empire, we have only to look to the condition of the Italian fields in the last stages of the government of the Caesars. Already, in the time of the elder Pliny, it had become a subject of complaint that the great properties were ruining Italy16—a sure proof, when the great division of estates in the days of the Republic—when, literally speaking, "every rood had its man"—that some general and irresistible cause, affecting the remuneration of their industry, was exterminating the small proprietors. Erelong, cultivators ceased entirely in the country, and the huge estates of the nobles were cultivated exclusively in pasturage, and by means of slaves. "La classe," says Michelet, "des petits cultivateurs peu à pee a disparu; les grands proprietaires qui leur succedèrent y suppleèrent par des esclaves."17It is recorded by Ammianus Marcellinus, that when Rome was taken by the Goths, it contained 1,200,000 inhabitants, and was mainly supported by 1780 great families, who cultivated their ample estates in Italy in pasturage, by means of slaves.18 For centuries before, the threat of blockading the Tiber had been found to be the most effectual way of coercing the Roman populace; and whenever it took place, famine ensued, not only in Rome, but the Italian provinces. The diminution of its agricultural produce had, long before, been stated by Columella at nine-tenths, and by Varro at three-fourths, of what at one period had been raised. Yet such was the wealth of the Roman nobles, derived from pasturage, that some of them had L.160,000 a-year.19 Agriculture, therefore, was destroyed; grain was no longer raised in Italy; Rome was wholly dependent on foreign supplies—but pasturage was undecayed; and colossal fortunes were enjoyed by a wealthy race of great proprietors, who managed their vast estates by means of slaves, and had bought up and absorbed the properties of the whole free cultivators in the country. Such was the effect—such was the result—of a free trade in grain in ancient times.