tendency to inequality, which had been combated with various devices by
Grecian sages and statesmen, worked its result, and Grecian valor, art,
and literature became things of the past. And so in the rise and
extension, the decline and fall, of Roman civilization, may be seen the
working of these two principles of association and equality, from the
combination of which springs progress.

Springing from the association of the independent husbandmen and free
citizens of Italy, and gaining fresh strength from conquests which
brought hostile nations into common relations, the Roman power hushed
the world in peace. But the tendency to inequality, checking real
progress from the first, increased as the Roman civilization extended.
The Roman civilization did not petrify as did the homogeneous
civilizations where the strong bonds of custom and superstition that
held the people in subjection probably also protected them, or at any
rate kept the peace between rulers and ruled: it rotted, declined and
fell. Long before Goth or Vandal had broken through the cordon of the
legions, even while her frontiers were advancing, Rome was dead at the
heart. Great estates had ruined Italy. Inequality had dried up the
strength and destroyed the vigor of the Roman world. Government became
despotism, which even assassination could not temper; patriotism became
servility; vices the most foul flouted themselves in public; literature
sank to puerilities; learning was forgotten; fertile districts became
waste without the ravages of war--everywhere inequality produced decay,
political, mental, moral, and material. The barbarism which overwhelmed
Rome came not from without, but from within. It was the necessary
product of the system which had substituted slaves and colonii for the
independent husbandmen of Italy, and carved the provinces into estates
of senatorial families.