When this entire dependence of the great cities in the northern parts of the empire, for centuries together, on Spain, Sicily, Africa, and Egypt, is considered, it must with every rational mind cease to be a matter of surprise that its west and northern provinces declined in industry and population; that these grain provinces to the south of the Mediterranean alone retained their numbers and prosperity; and that under the constant decline, in the European provinces, in the market for agricultural produce, the rural population disappeared, and the recruiting of the army in the country became impossible. It is not surprising that while they were enrolling slaves in Italy, and enlisting barbarians on the Danube and the Rhine, to defend the frontiers, from Africa and Spain alone they drew supplies both of money and soldiers, without requiring to send back any. The latter provinces were the granary and garden of the empire; the only part of it where rural industry met with remunerating prices or adequate encouragement. And the same circumstances explain in a great degree how it happened, that while the _rural_ districts of Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, and Romelia, were continually declining in population, rental, and revenue, their _towns_, especially on the sea-coast, were, down to the last days of their existence, in a flourishing condition. These towns were the seat of manufactures and commerce. It was by their capital that the vast corn trade by which all the cities of the empire were fed was carried on. It was their fabrics which mainly furnished the means of purchasing the immense proportion of this grain, which, being imported by private importers, required to be paid for in some species of manufactured produce. And the reason why grain was raised so much cheaper, and therefore profitably, in Egypt, Lybia, and Spain, than in Italy and Greece, was, partly, that the former of these countries were by nature blessed with a more prolific soil and a warmer sun than the latter; and, partly, that as Rome and Constantinople were the two capitals of the empire, the greater part of its wealth was attracted, either by taxes, tribute, or the concourse of the rich, to them, and, consequently, the abundance of riches rendered money cheap, labour dear, and cultivation, when exposed to foreign competition, unprofitable. But there was more in the case than this. Simultaneously with the vast and increasing importation of foreign grain, which at length destroyed cultivation in all the northern provinces of the empire, a _continual diminution of its circulating medium_ was going forward; and it was to the combined and cotemporaneous operation of these two causes, that the ruin of the empire is beyond all question to be ascribed.