Even so early as the latter days of the Republic, the system was introduced of feeding the Roman people with grain derived by tribute from the provinces. In the time of Augustus, the annual quantity distributed to the poorer citizens of Rome was 1,200,000 modii, or 35,156 quarters. But Tiberius went a step further, and actually gave bounties on the importation of foreign grain. "An enormous quantity," says Finlay, "of grain was distributed in this way, which was received as tribute from the provinces. Cæsar found 320,000 persons receiving this gratuity. It is true he reduced the number to one-half. The greater part of this grain was drawn from Sicily, Africa, and Egypt. In the time of Alexander, generally 75,000 modii was distributed daily. This distribution enabled the poor to live in idleness, and was itself extremely injurious to industry; but another arrangement was adopted by the Roman government, which rendered the cultivation of land around Rome unprofitable to the proprietors. A large sum was annually employed by the state in purchasing grain in the provinces, and in transporting this supply to Rome, where it was sold at a fixed price to the bakers. Augustus appointed an officer, styled Prefectus Annonæ, whose duty was to provide by government purchases for the subsistence of the people. An allowance was also made to the private importers of grain, in order to ensure a constant supply.[51] In this way, a very large sum was expended to keep grain cheap in a city where a variety of circumstances tended to make it dear. This singular system of annihilating capital, and ruining agriculture and industry, was so deeply rooted in the Roman administration, that similar gratuitous distributions of grain were established at Antioch and Alexandria, and introduced into Constantinople when that city became the capital of the empire."[52]
The necessary effect of this system was the cessation of agriculture in Italy, the ruin of the small proprietors, and the engrossing of the land in the provinces by a few great landholders, who cultivated their extensive estates by means of slaves. "Riches, far exceeding the wealth of modern sovereigns, flowed into the hands of the great proprietors; villas and parks were formed over all Italy on a scale of the most stupendous grandeur; and land became more valuable as hunting-ground than as productive farms. The same habits were introduced into the provinces. In the neighbourhood of Rome, agriculture was ruined by the public distribution of grain received as tribute from the provinces, and by the bounty granted to merchants importing to secure a maximum price of bread. The same system proceeded in the provinces; and similar distributions at Alexandria and Antioch must have been equally injurious."[53] When Constantine established his new capital on the shores of the Bosphorus, he was under the necessity of adopting, and even extending, the same ruinous system. "Wealthy individuals from the provinces were compelled to keep up houses at Constantinople, pensions were conferred upon them, and a right to distributions of provisions to a considerable amount was annexed to those dwellings. These rations consisted of bread, oil, wine, meat, and formed an important branch of revenue even to the better class of citizens. These distributions were entirely different from the public ones at Rome, which were established as a gratification by the state to the poor citizens who had no other means of livelihood. The tribute of grain from Egypt was appropriated to supply Constantinople, and that of Africa was left for the consumption of Rome. This was the tie which bound the capital to the emperors, and the cause of the toleration shown to its factions. They both felt they had a common interest in supporting the despotic power by which the provinces were drained of money to support the expenditure of the court, and supply provisions for the people."[54]
Although, however, these public distributions of grain in the chief towns of the empire had some effect in checking the cultivation of corn in Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor, by depriving its cultivators of their best market, yet the private importation of grain from these great corn countries must have been a far more serious and general evil. Gibbon states the number who received rations at Constantinople daily in the time of Constantine at 80,000, and in Rome in the time of Tiberius it was 180,000. Supposing the other great towns were fed in the same proportion, perhaps a million of persons in the Roman world were nourished at the expense of the state on Egyptian or African grain. But a million of persons consume annually a million of quarters of grain; not a sixtieth part of the annual consumption of the British empire at this time, and probably not a two-hundredth part required by the 120,000,000 souls who composed the Roman empire in the days of the Antonines. But though the state paupers were thus but a small fraction of the whole consumers of foreign grain, yet the general importation was immense, and became erelong so great as to constitute the entire source from which the population of Italy, as well as Constantinople and the adjacent provinces of Romelia, Macedonia, and Greece, were fed. It was this general importation, not the gratuitous distributions, which ruined Italian agriculture; for it alone was on a scale commensurate with the population of the Italian peninsula, and could alone account for its general ruin. Tacitus expressly says, it was the preference given to African agriculture, not the gratuitous distributions, which destroyed Italian cultivation. "At, Hercule, olim ex Italia legionibus longinquas in provincias commeatus portabantur: nec nunc infecunditate laboratur; sed Africam POTIUS et Egyptum excercemus, navibusque et casibus vita populi Romani permissa est.[55]" The supply of grain for the Roman world was entirely obtained from Spain, Sicily, Africa, and Egypt, while Greece was maintained by corn imported from Poland.[56] It was not that the Italian and Grecian fields had become sterile: Tacitus expressly says the reverse,—"nec nunc infecunditate laboratur." But the country in which grain produced fifteen fold, as Italy did, could not compete with that which produced sixty or eighty fold, on the banks of the Nile. Nor could the industry of the centre of the empire, where money was plentiful, comparatively speaking, and labour was therefore dear, stand against the competition of the remoter provinces, where it was scarce, and labour was therefore cheap.
The ruin of Italian and Grecian agriculture from this cause is so evident, that it is admitted by the ablest advocates of an unlimited freedom in the corn trade. "The first effect of this system," says a late able and learned writer on the liberal side, "was the ruin of Italian agriculture. The natural market for the corn of the Italian farmer was, to a great extent, destroyed by the artificial supplies obtained from the provinces. Hence, as Dureau de la Malle has remarked, (ii. 218,) the history of the seventh and eighth centuries of Rome presents this singular contrast—that the agriculture, the population, and products of Italy, diminish progressively as she extends her conquests and power. The fatal influence which the gratuitous supplies from the provinces would exercise upon the native agriculture, was perceived by Augustus; but he abandoned his intention of altering the system, from a conviction it would be restored by his successor. The result was, that southern and central Italy, instead of being tilled by a race of hardy active farmers, themselves freemen, and working on their own land, was divided into plantations cultivated by slaves."[57] This explains how it came to pass that Spanish agriculture took such a start from the time of Tiberius; and how, in the general ruin of the empire, Spain, Africa, and Egypt, were the only provinces which retained their prosperity. It will be recollected that it was in the reign of Tiberius that bounties were first given by the Roman government to the private importers of foreign grain.
Of the main dependence of the Western empire in its declining days on Africa, not merely for the necessary supply of food, but even for the chief resources and strength of the state in the midst of the desolation of its European fields, Sismondi gives a striking account—"The loss of Africa was at this period, (439 after Christ,) perhaps the greatest calamity which the empire of the West could have undergone. It was its only province the defence of which cost no trouble; the only one from which they drew money, arms, and soldiers, without its ever requiring any back. It was at the same time the granary of Rome and of Italy. The gratuitous distributions of grain at Rome, Milan, and Ravenna, had, over the whole Italian peninsula, destroyed the cultivation of grain. Experience had proved that the return could not pay its expense; and the reason was, that the more fertile fields of Africa furnished a part of the harvest destined for the nourishment of the people of Italy. The sudden stoppage of that supply by the conquest of Africa by the Vandals, caused a cruel famine in Italy; which still further reduced its wretched inhabitants."[58] And so entirely did Constantinople become dependent on foreign importation of sea-borne grain from Egypt and the Ukraine for its support, that "when the Persians, in the year 618, overran Egypt, and stopped the usual supplies of grain from that province, the famine became so alarming, that the government determined upon transferring the seat of empire to Carthage in Africa, as the most likely point from whence the dominion of Syria and Egypt might be regained."[59] The latter of these had long been regarded as the most valuable province of the empire.[60]
When this entire dependence of the great cities in the northern parts of the empire, for centuries together, on Spain, Sicily, Africa, and Egypt, is considered, it must with every rational mind cease to be a matter of surprise that its west and northern provinces declined in industry and population; that these grain provinces to the south of the Mediterranean alone retained their numbers and prosperity; and that under the constant decline, in the European provinces, in the market for agricultural produce, the rural population disappeared, and the recruiting of the army in the country became impossible. It is not surprising that while they were enrolling slaves in Italy, and enlisting barbarians on the Danube and the Rhine, to defend the frontiers, from Africa and Spain alone they drew supplies both of money and soldiers, without requiring to send back any. The latter provinces were the granary and garden of the empire; the only part of it where rural industry met with remunerating prices or adequate encouragement. And the same circumstances explain in a great degree how it happened, that while the rural districts of Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, and Romelia, were continually declining in population, rental, and revenue, their towns, especially on the sea-coast, were, down to the last days of their existence, in a flourishing condition. These towns were the seat of manufactures and commerce. It was by their capital that the vast corn trade by which all the cities of the empire were fed was carried on. It was their fabrics which mainly furnished the means of purchasing the immense proportion of this grain, which, being imported by private importers, required to be paid for in some species of manufactured produce. And the reason why grain was raised so much cheaper, and therefore profitably, in Egypt, Lybia, and Spain, than in Italy and Greece, was, partly, that the former of these countries were by nature blessed with a more prolific soil and a warmer sun than the latter; and, partly, that as Rome and Constantinople were the two capitals of the empire, the greater part of its wealth was attracted, either by taxes, tribute, or the concourse of the rich, to them, and, consequently, the abundance of riches rendered money cheap, labour dear, and cultivation, when exposed to foreign competition, unprofitable.
But there was more in the case than this. Simultaneously with the vast and increasing importation of foreign grain, which at length destroyed cultivation in all the northern provinces of the empire, a continual diminution of its circulating medium was going forward; and it was to the combined and cotemporaneous operation of these two causes, that the ruin of the empire is beyond all question to be ascribed.
So early as the days of Tiberius, the abstraction of the gold and silver currency of the empire by the incessant drain of foreign commerce, was loudly complained of by the Roman writers; and there is the most decisive proof, that in the course of time the supply of the precious metals on the empire became so inadequate to the wants of its inhabitants, that their value was enhanced to a great and ruinous degree. It was the commerce of the East which first induced this destructive drain upon the metallic treasures of the empire. "The objects," says Gibbon, "of oriental traffic were splendid and trifling; silk—a pound of which was esteemed worth a pound of gold—precious stones, and a variety of aromatics, were the chief articles. The labour and risks of the voyage were rewarded with almost incredible profit; but it was made on Roman subjects, and at the expense of the public. As the nations of Arabia and India were contented with the produce and manufactures of their own country, silver, on the side of the Romans, was the principal, if not the only instrument of commerce. It was a complaint worthy of the gravity of the senate, that in the pursuit of female ornaments, the wealth of the state was irrecoverably given away to foreign and hostile nations. The annual loss is computed by a writer of an inquisitive but censorious temper, (Pliny,) at £800,000 sterling. Such was the style of discontent brooding over the dark prospect of approaching poverty."[61] Eight hundred thousand pounds a-year, equivalent to about two millions of our money, must have been a severe drain upon the supply of the precious metals in the Roman empire; and we, who have seen in 1839 the Bank of England reel, and the United States bank fall, under the effect of an exportation of six or seven millions of sovereigns to buy foreign grain in a single year, can appreciate the effect of such a constant drain upon a state, the metallic resources of which were much less considerable than those of England at this time.
The immense importation also of African and Egyptian grain, which continued from the time of Tiberius down to the very close of the empire, must have occasioned a great additional abstraction of the precious metals from the Roman world. It has already been shown that a very small proportion of the grain imported from these distant provinces was remitted in the shape of tribute. By far the greater part, probably nineteen-twentieths of the whole supply, was imported by private merchants for sale, as it could be got from them cheaper than it could be raised at home. This imported corn, of course, required to be paid for in something. But the inhabitants of the countries from which it came—Spain, Sicily, Africa, and Egypt—for the most part slaves, blessed with a fine climate, requiring little covering, and nearly destitute of artificial wants, did not require, and could not consume, any considerable amount of Italian or Grecian fabrics. Thus, by far the greatest part of the price of the imported grain was paid in gold and silver, for which there is a constant demand in all countries, savage or civilized. A nation which imports foreign grain largely, must in all ages export the precious metals as largely; because the corn, of course, is brought from those countries where it is raised the cheapest—and the countries where this is the case, are those where labour is cheap, money scarce, and artificial wants unknown. Money is what these countries want, and money is what their surplus produce is nearly all exchanged for. And this explains how it happened, that in the decline of the empire, Spain, Africa, and Egypt, alone retained their flourishing aspect, and were the only provinces from which money and soldiers could be obtained, while they required none. The whole commerce between them and Italy, or Greece, was one in which grain was exchanged for the precious metals; and when they once got these, great part was hoarded, as it now is in the East, and very little ever returned.