When such a displacement has occurred in the moral order of things, it speedily becomes consummated in the material order also. The conversion of Constantine, in fact, declared the triumph of Christian society, and accelerated its progress. Thenceforward, power, jurisdiction, and wealth poured in upon the churches and bishops, as upon the only centres around which men were spontaneously disposed to group themselves, and which could exercise the virtue of attraction upon all the forces of society. It was no longer to his town, but to his church that the citizen desired to bequeath his property. It was no longer by the construction of circuses and aqueducts, but by the erection of Christian temples, that the rich man endeavoured to rest his claim to public affection. The parish took the place of the _municipium;_ the central power itself, hurried on by the course of the events with which it had become associated, used all its efforts to swell the stream. The emperors deprived the communes of a portion of their property, and gave it to the churches; they deprived the municipal magistrates of a portion of their authority, and gave it to the bishops. When the victory had been thus avowed, interest combined with faith to increase the society of the conquerors. The clergy were exempted from the burden of municipal functions; and it became necessary to pass laws to prevent all the decurions from making themselves clerks. Without these laws, municipal society would have been entirely dissolved; its existence was protracted that it might continue to bear the burden to which it was condemned; and, strange to say, the emperors most favourable to the ecclesiastical order, and most liberal in augmenting its advantages, were compelled at the same time to struggle against the tendency which induced men to leave every other association, in order to enter into the only one in which they could find honour and protection. {191} Decay Of The Municipia. Such then, was, in truth, the state of things. Despotism, urged by its own necessities, incessantly aggravated the condition of the _curia_. That of the church flourished and improved as incessantly, either by the aid of the peoples, or by the action of despotism itself, which had need of the support of the clergy. It was therefore necessary continually to relegate to the _curia_ the decurions who were ever anxious to leave it. In proportion as their number decreased, and as those who remained became ruined and unable to bear the burden, their condition became less and less endurable. Thus, evil sprang from evil; oppression rendered ruin certain by its efforts to delay it; and the municipal system which, as I have said, had become an actual gaol to one class of citizens, daily hastened onwards to its own destruction, and to that of the class which was chained to its destiny.