But the taxation of the empire, _when coupled with the free importation of grain_ from these distant dependencies, does afford a most satisfactory, and, in truth, the true explanation of the ruin of Italian and Grecian cultivation. It was a fixed principle of Roman taxation, that the duties allotted on a particular district should remain fixed, how much lower the inhabitants or industry of the province might decline. When, therefore, by the constant importation of Egyptian and African grain, raised at half the cost at which they could produce it, the Italian cultivators were deprived of a remunerating return, and the taxes exacted from each district underwent no diminution, it is not surprising that the small farmers and proprietors were ruined; that they took refuge in the industry and crowds of cities, and that the race of freemen disappeared from the country. A similar process is now going on in the Turkish provinces. But without undervaluing--on the contrary, attaching full weight to this circumstance--nothing can be clearer than that it was the ruinous competition of foreign grain, raised cheaper than they could produce it, which rendered the same taxation crushing on the Italian farmers, which was borne with comparative facility in the remoter provinces, where land was more fertile, and labour less expensive. An example, _à fortiori_, applied to the British empire, where the free traders wish us to admit a free importation of grain from Poland and the Ukraine, where not only is labour cheap but taxation trifling, into the British islands, where not only is labour dear but taxation is five times more burdensome.