There are writers who look with favor upon this establishment of the Roman empire, just as there are those of the same caliber who, if some form of a dictatorship should be substituted for our present republican form of government, would be loudest in their approval of the change. Dr. Hirschfeld, of the University of Berlin, gives us the following roseate picture of the benefits which Rome received from the change: "The reorganization of the government by Augustus, open to criticism as it is in many respects, was a blessing to the Roman empire. The view which prevailed under the republic, that the provinces had been conquered only to be sucked dry by senators and knights, governors, and tax-farmers in league or in rivalry of greed (we have one example out of hundreds in Verres, condemned to immortality by the eloquence of Cicero), this view was laid aside with the advent of the empire, and even if extortion did not wholly cease in the senatorial provinces, yet the provincial administration of the first two centuries A.D. is infinitely superior to the systematic spoliation of the republic. The governors are no longer masters armed with absolute authority, constrained to extort money as fast as possible from the provincials committed to their charge in order to meet debts contracted by their own extravagance and, more especially, by that bribery of the populace which was indispensable to their advancement. They are officials under strict control, drawing from the government salaries fully sufficient to their needs. It was a measure imperatively called for by the altered circumstances of the time and fraught with most important consequences to create, as Augustus did, a class of salaried imperial officials and definitely break with the high-minded but wrong-minded principle of the republic by which the higher posts were bestowed as honorary appointments, and none but subordinate officials were paid, thus branding the latter with the stigma of servitude.