So early as the days of Tiberius, the abstraction of the gold and silver currency of the empire by the incessant drain of foreign commerce, was loudly complained of by the Roman writers; and there is the most decisive proof, that in the course of time the supply of the precious metals on the empire became so inadequate to the wants of its inhabitants, that their value was enhanced to a great and ruinous degree. It was the commerce of the East which first induced this destructive drain upon the metallic treasures of the empire. "The objects," says Gibbon, "of oriental traffic were splendid and trifling; silk--a pound of which was esteemed worth a pound of gold--precious stones, and a variety of aromatics, were the chief articles. The labour and risks of the voyage were rewarded with almost incredible profit; but it was made on Roman subjects, and at the expense of the public. As the nations of Arabia and India were contented with the produce and manufactures of their own country, silver, on the side of the Romans, was the principal, if not the only instrument of commerce. It was a complaint worthy of the gravity of the senate, that in the pursuit of female ornaments, the wealth of the state was irrecoverably given away to foreign and hostile nations. The annual loss is computed by a writer of an inquisitive but censorious temper, (Pliny,) at £800,000 sterling. Such was the style of discontent brooding over the dark prospect of approaching poverty."[61] Eight hundred thousand pounds a-year, equivalent to about two millions of our money, must have been a severe drain upon the supply of the precious metals in the Roman empire; and we, who have seen in 1839 the Bank of England reel, and the United States bank fall, under the effect of an exportation of six or seven millions of sovereigns to buy foreign grain in a single year, can appreciate the effect of such a constant drain upon a state, the metallic resources of which were much less considerable than those of England at this time.