In this field of paternalism of which we have been speaking another important issue of modern times has its counterpart in the history of Roman politics. I mean the attitude of the central government toward the municipalities within its territory. Within recent years this question has taken an acute form in the states of New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. To what extent may the legislature or the governor interfere to correct local evils in the city of New York, in Pittsburgh, or in Chicago? The Romans under the Republic were not much concerned with the welfare of the cities under their control. With the establishment of the Empire a change in their attitude is noticeable. The improvement in the general administration of the provinces naturally brought into relief certain evils in the local governments of provincial cities, especially financial mismanagement. The letters which Pliny, the governor of Bithynia, wrote to Trajan in the early part of the second century are very illuminating in this respect. He asks his imperial master what shall be done at Nicaea, where 10,000,000 sesterces have been spent on an unfinished theatre whose walls have already begun to crack.[39] May he inspect the accounts of the city of Apamea? Is it proper for him to check the extravagance shown at civic festivals? Out of these comparatively small beginnings there developed the imperial policy of supervising the finances of the municipalities of the Empire, and curators were sent out to them, who took entire charge of all the land and other property belonging to a city, and were responsible not to the citizens of the town, but to the governor of the province. The exercise by the curator of these large powers encroached on the authority of the local officials, lessened the feeling of civic responsibility among the people, and in the end completely undermined local self-government. If we make a possible exception of the censorship of morals in the second century before our era, all the experiments in paternalism which the Romans made failed:--the fixing of prices, the control of the labor market, state ownership, and the supervision of local government. 7. GROWTH OF CITIES