Mendicants alone escaped, where nothing could be wrenched, and whom misfortune and misery had made incapable of farther oppression. These the impious wretch affecting to pity, that they might not suffer want, ordered to be assembled, borne off in vessels, and plunged into the sea.” See Lord on the Apoc., pp. 128, 129. These facts in regard to the severity of taxation, and the rigid nature of the law enforcing it; to the sources of the révenue exacted in the provinces, and to the care that none {154} of those sources should be diminished; and to the actual and undoubted bearing of all this on the decline and fall of the empire, are so strikingly applicable to the symbol here employed, that if it be supposed that it was _intended_ to refer to them, no more natural or expressive symbol could have been used; if it were supposed that the historian _meant_ to make a record of the fulfilment, he could not well have made a search which would more strikingly accord with the symbol. Were we _now_ to represent these things by a symbol, we could scarcely find one that would be more expressive than that of a rider on a black horse with a pair of scales, sent forth under a proclamation which indicated that there would be a most rigid and exact administration of severe and oppressive laws, and with a special command, addressed to the people, not for the purposes of concealment, or from opposition to the government, to injure the sources of revenue. It may serve further to illustrate this, to copy one of the usual emblems of a Roman procurator or questor. It is taken from Spanheim, _De Usu Num. Diss._, vi. 545. See Elliott, i. 169. It has a balance as a symbol of exactness or justice, and an ear of grain as a symbol employed with reference to procuring or exacting grain from the provinces. Illustration: Emblem of a Roman Procurator. 7 And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. 7. _And when he had opened the fourth seal._ See Notes, ch. v. 1. ¶ _I heard the voice of the fourth beast say._ The flying eagle. Notes, ch. iv. 7. As in the other cases, there does not appear to have been any particular reason why the _fourth_ of the living creatures should have made this proclamation rather than either of the others. It was poetic and appropriate to represent each one in his turn as making proclamation. ¶ _Come and see._ See Notes, ver. 1. 8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given [219]unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill [220]with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.