grew more and more in power, and while the wealth of Crassus enabled
him to obtain the control of the East, enormous loans gave to Cæsar
the command of the West, leaving to Pompey and his moneyed friends the
power to tax the centre and the South. Next, Augustus finds the city
of brick and leaves it of marble; and Herodes Atticus appears upon the
stage sole improver, and almost sole owner, in Attica, once so free,
while bankers and nobles accumulate enormous possessions in Africa,
Gaul, and Britain, and the greater the extent of absentee ownership
the greater becomes the wretchedness and the crime of the pauper mob
of Rome. Still onward the city grows, absorbing the wealth of the
world, and with it grow the poverty, slavery, and rapacity of the
people, the exhaustion of provinces, and the avarice and tyranny of
rulers and magistrates, until at length the empire, rotten at the
heart, becomes the prey of barbarians, and all become slaves
alike,--thus furnishing proof conclusive that the community which
desires to command respect for its own rights _must_ practise respect
for those of others; or in other words, must adopt as its motto the
great lesson which lies at the base of all Christianity--"Do unto
others as ye would that they should do unto you."

A survey of the British Empire at the present moment presents to view
some features so strongly resembling those observed in ancient Rome as
to warrant calling the attention of the reader to their careful
observation. Like Rome, England has desired to establish political
centralization by aid of fleets and armies, but to this she has added
commercial centralization, far more destructive in its effects, and
far more rapid in its operation. Rome was content that her subjects
should occupy themselves as they pleased, either in the fields or in
the factories, provided only that they paid their taxes. England, on
the contrary, has sought to restrict her subjects and the people of