When Rome extended, what were her proceedings? Peruse her history, and you will see that she conquered or founded towns; it was against towns she fought, or with towns she made treaties, and also into towns she sent colonies. The history of the conquest of the world by Rome, is the history of the conquest and founding of a great number of cities. In the East, the extension of the Roman sway does not quite bear this character; the population was there distributed differently from the western: being under another social system, it was much less concentrated in towns. But as it is only with the European population that we are interested, what was passing in the East is of little importance. Confining ourselves to the West, we everywhere discern the fact that I have pointed out. In Gaul, in Spain, we meet with nothing but towns; at a distance from them, the territory is covered with marshes and forests. Examine the character of the Roman monuments, of the Roman roads. We find great roads leading from one town to another; that multitude of small roads which now intersect the country in every direction had no existence. There was nothing resembling that countless throng of small monuments, villages, country-houses, churches, dispersed over the land since the middle ages. Rome has transmitted to us only colossal monuments impressed with the municipal character, suited for a numerous population collected at one point. Under whatever aspect the Roman world may be considered, this almost exclusive preponderance of cities, and the consequent non-existence of a country, socially speaking, will be found. This municipal character in the Roman world evidently rendered the unity and social bond of a great state extremely difficult to establish and maintain. A municipality like Rome had been able to conquer the world, but it was not so easy a task to govern and organise it. Thus, when the work seemed consummated, when all the West, and a great part of the East, had fallen under the Roman sway, we find this prodigious accumulation of cities, of small states instituted for isolation and independence, disunited, detached from each other, and slipping the noose, as it were, in all directions. {44} This was one of the causes which led to the necessity of an empire of a more concentrated form of government, and one more capable of holding elements so slightly coherent in a state of union. The empire endeavoured to introduce unity and connection into this scattered society. It succeeded to a certain extent. Between the reigns of Augustus and Diocletian, a civil legislation was developed, coincidental with that vast system of administrative despotism which spread over the Roman world a network of functionaries upon a hierarchical form of distribution, closely linked amongst themselves, and to the imperial court, and solely employed in giving effect to the decrees of power in society, and in rendering available to power the tributes and capabilities of society.