The cities of the same province might be divided into half a dozen classes, each of which had different degrees of self-government. But there was none in which a man could so little do what he liked as in modern Paris. M. de Champagny accounts for this:-- 'The liberties of the Roman Empire consisted not in its laws, but in something greater or less than laws--in facts, and these facts may be summed up in one. The art of government was not then brought to perfection as it is now. There was more freedom because there was less civilization. Not to say that Cæsar had neither telegraphs nor railroads, he had not even any system of administration. This was his first want. He had no hierarchy of functionaries, depending upon each other, each subject to be promoted or dismissed by some other, or by the common master.... Then (a second want), he neither had nor could have a police; all he had was a set of volunteer spies, called _delators_, inconvenient and even dangerous instruments. The heart of Tiberius would have bounded at the very idea of a great system of administrative _délation_ and _espionage_ [thank God English writers are compelled to use Latin or French words to express a thought so foreign to our manners] organised from above, and extending its branches everywhere below, such as that for which I believe we are indebted to M. de Sartines.[2] His heart would have bounded, but his purse would have failed, for (his third want) Cæsar had no budget. The art of finance was in its infancy. Those vast regions, on an average as rich as they are now, and which now pay to their actual sovereigns, without much complaint, at least two hundred millions sterling, did not produce to Cæsar sixteen millions sterling, and inasmuch as the contributions which produced these sixteen millions had to pass through the hands of some fifty thousand publicans and agents of finance, the contributors, who paid perhaps twice as much as the Emperor received, cried out fearfully. Lastly, if Cæsar, wishing to compel his people, had brought on any serious rising, he would have had no means of putting it down, for (a fourth want) Cæsar, having no budget, had no army. Those countries, which now furnish not less than three millions of soldiers, in those days, without being much less populous than they are now, did not furnish more than 300,000 men, and these 300,000 were absorbed by the guard on the frontiers. There were whole provinces without a single soldier. This Empire, without administration, without police, without budget, without army, would make the lowest clerk in the prefecture of police, the prefecture of the Seine, the offices of the Minister of War, or the Minister of Finance, shrug his