"When Rome extended, what did it do? Follow its history, and you will find that it was everlastingly engaged in conquering or founding cities. It was with cities that it fought--with cities that it contracted--into cities that it sent colonies. The history of the conquest of the world by Rome, is nothing but the history of the conquest and foundation of a great number of cities. In the East, the expansion of the Roman power assumed, from the very outset, a somewhat dissimilar character; the population was differently distributed from the West, and much less concentrated in cities; but in the European world, the foundation or conquest of towns was the uniform result of Roman conquest. In Gaul and Spain, in Italy, it was constantly towns which opposed the barrier to Roman domination, and towns which were founded or garrisoned by the legions, or strengthened by colonies, to retain them when vanquished in a state of subjection. Great roads stretched from one town to another; the multitude of cross roads which now intersect each other in every direction, was unknown. They had nothing in common with that multitude of little monuments, villages, churches, castles, villas, and cottages, which now cover our provinces. Rome has bequeathed to us nothing, either in its capital or its provinces, but the _municipal character_, which produced immense monuments on certain points, destined for the use of the vast population which was there assembled together. "From this peculiar conformation of society in Europe, under the Roman dominion, consisting of a vast conglomeration of cities, with each a dependent territory, all independent of each other, arose the absolute necessity for a central and absolute government. One municipality in Rome might conquer the world: but to retain it in subjection, and provide for the government of all its multifarious parts, was a very different matter. This was one of the chief causes of the general adoption of a strong concentrated government under the empire. Such centralized despotism not only succeeded in restraining and regulating all the incoherent members of the vast dominion, but the idea of a central irresistible authority insinuated itself into men's minds every where, at the same time, with wonderful facility. At first sight, one is astonished to see, in that prodigious and ill-united aggregate of little republics, in that accumulation of separate municipalities, spring up so suddenly an unbounded respect for the sacred authority of the empire. But the truth is, it had become a matter of absolute necessity, that the bond which held together the different parts of this heterogeneous dominion should be very powerful; and this it was which gave it so ready a reception in the minds of men.