the balances may be supposed to have gone forth. This is stated by Mr. Gibbon (i. 91) as one of the important causes which contributed to the downfall of the empire. “The personal characters of the emperors, their victories, laws, and fortunes,” says he, “can interest us no farther than they are connected with the general history of the decline and fall of the monarchy. Our constant attention to that object will not suffer us to overlook a most important edict of Antoninus Caracalla, which communicated to all the free inhabitants of the empire the name and privileges of Roman citizens. His unbounded liberality, however, flowed not from the sentiments of a generous mind; it was the sordid result of avarice,” &c. He then proceeds at length to state the nature and operations of that law, by which a heavy tax, under the pretence of liberality, was in fact imposed on all the citizens of the empire――a fact which, in its ultimate results, the historian of the _Decline and Fall_ regards as so closely connected with the termination of the empire. See Gibbon, i. pp. 91‒95. After noticing the laws of Augustus, Nero, and the Antonines, and the real privileges conferred by them on those who became entitled to the rank of Roman citizens――privileges which were a compensation in the honour, dignity, and offices of that rank for the measure of taxation which it involved――he proceeds to notice the fact that the _title_ of “Roman citizen” was conferred by Caracalla on all the free citizens of the empire, involving the subjection to all the heavy taxes usually imposed on those who sustained the rank expressed by the title, but with nothing of the compensation connected {153} with the title when it was confined to the inhabitants of Italy. “But the favour,” says he, “which implied a distinction, was lost in the prodigality of Caracalla, and the reluctant provincials were compelled to assume _the vain title_, and the real _obligations_, of Roman citizens. Nor was the rapacious son of Severus [Caracalla] contented with such a measure of taxation as had appeared sufficient to his moderate predecessors. Instead of a twentieth, he exacted a tenth of all legacies and inheritances; and during his reign he crushed alike every part of the empire under the weight of his iron sceptre,” i. 95. So again (_Ibid._), speaking of the taxes which had been lightened somewhat by Alexander, Mr. Gibbon remarks: “It is impossible to conjecture the motive that engaged him to spare so trifling a remnant of the evil; but the noxious weed, which had not been totally eradicated, again sprung up with the most luxuriant growth, and in the succeeding age darkened the Roman world with its deadly shade. In the course of this history we shall be too often summoned to explain the land-tax, the capitation, and the heavy contributions of _corn_, _wine_, _oil_, and meat, which were exacted from the provinces for the use of the court, the army, and the capital.”