Democratic government in the modern sense of the term had not yet been born. Sir Henry Maine claims that the modern doctrines of popular government based on democracy are essentially of late English origin. It is certain that nothing like them had existed in the Roman empire, either in the East or West. Any traditions of self-government which the Greeks had retained--a form of self-government which was never upon modern democratic lines--had been entirely overshadowed, not merely by the autocratic government of the emperors, but by that of the Church. The government was that of an absolute sovereign moderated by irresponsible nobles. Without, however, seeking further to discover the reasons for the internal divisions and the consequent civil wars, their existence and baneful effects are the most manifest, though not the most important, of the evils which weakened the Empire. [Sidenote: Divisions of race in Balkan peninsula.] The second fact associated with the mischief caused by the Latin conquest, which contributed to the decay of the empire, is that such conquest prevented the assimilation of the various peoples occupying the Balkan peninsula. Even at the best period of the empire that population had always been strangely diversified. Albanians and Slavs had been there from very early times, side by side with Greeks and the race known as Wallachs, each of the four races having a distinct language. The influence of good administration and the strong hand of the central power kept these races in order. They had the usual tendency to hostility one towards the other, but until the Latin conquest good government and the Greek language, that of the Church and administration, were always a force tending to break down the boundaries between them and to incorporate isolated sections in the Greek-speaking community. But at all times their mutual jealousies constituted, as indeed they do now, the most difficult factor in the problem of the government of the Balkan peninsula.[168] This difficulty had been enormously increased by the Latin conquest. The populations were harassed everywhere by native rebellions and by foreign invaders: Greek pretenders to the empire who refused to recognise the crusading kings: crusading knights who settled in Greece after the expulsion of Baldwin: adventurous soldiers of fortune from Italy: freebooters from the Catalan Grand Company: Venetians and Turks: and lastly by dissensions between the emperors themselves, the most hurtful of which were between Cantacuzenus and John.