lighter, in the ratio of 72 to 45, which, as it was a very great relief to the rate payers and to those who were in debt, was a very wise measure. On the whole, there are among his laws not a few sensible and beneficial ones. Others, on the contrary, are mischievous; for instance, he pressed very hardly upon the municipalities. Historians say that in the beginning of his reign, Constantine was _optimis principibus accensendus_; but afterwards _mediis_, or _vix mediis_. Gibbon judged of him with great fairness; otherwise, he has met with scarcely any but fanatical admirers or detractors, and the manner in which he was idolized by the Eastern church is so bad, that one might easily go into the other extreme. The war against Maxentius was a benefit, and the subjects also of Licinius were freed by his defeat from a very harsh master. The death of Licinius, on the other hand, and that of Crispus, are very ugly facts: but we ought not, after all, to be harder upon Constantine than upon others. His motives in establishing the Christian religion are something very strange indeed. The religion there was in his head, must have been a rare jumble. On his coins, he has the _Sol invictus_; he worships pagan deities, consults the _haruspices_, holds heathen superstitions; and yet he shuts up the temples and builds churches. As the president of the Nicene council, we can only look upon him with disgust: he was himself no Christian at all, and he would only be baptized when in _articulo mortis_. He had taken up the Christian Faith as a superstition, which he mingled with all his other superstitions. When therefore eastern writers speak of him as an ἰσαπόστολος, they do not know what they are saying; and to call him even a saint, is a profanation of the word.