CHAP. each other in value,* The ten thousand EuVI. boic or Phoenician talents, about four millions

sterlingt, which vanquished Carthage was conof Africa, demned to pay within the term of fifty years,

of Spain.

were a slight acknowledgment of the superiority of Rome ‡, and cannot bear the least proportion with the taxes afterwards raised both on the lands and on the persons of the inhabitants, when the fertile coast of Africa was reduced into a province §.

Spain, by a very singular fatality, was the Peru and Mexico of the old world. The discovery of the rich western continent by the Phoenicians, and the oppression of the simple natives, who were compelled to labour in their own mines for the benefit of strangers, form an exact type of the more recent history of Spanish America ||, The Phoenicians were acquainted only with the sea-coast of Spain; avarice, as well as ambition, carried the arms of Rome and Carthage into the heart of the country, and almost every part of the sorl was found pregnant with copper, silver, and gold. Mention is made of a mine near Carthagena which yielded every day twenty-five thousand

Velleius Paterculus, 1. ii. c. 39. He seems to give the preference to the revenue of Gaul.

+ The Euboic, the Phoenician, and the Alexandrian talents. were double in weight to the Attic. See Hooper on ancient weights and measures, p. iv. c. 5. It is very probable, that the same talent was carried from Tyre to Carthage.

Polyb. 1. xv. c. 2. § Appian in Punicis, p. 84. Diodorus Siculus, 1. v. Cadiz was built by the Phoenicians a little more than a thousand years before Christ. See Vell. Paterc. i. 2.

thousand drachms of silver, or about three hun- CHA P. dred thousand pounds a year *. Twenty thou- VI. sand pound weight of gold was annually received from the provinces of Asturia, Gallicia, and Luvsitania +.

of Gyarus.

We want both leisure and materials to pursue of the isle this curious inquiry through the many potent >states that were annihilated in the Roman empire. Some notion, however, may be formed of the revenue of the provinces where considerable wealth had been deposited by nature, or collected by man, if we observe the severe attention that was directed to the abodes of solitude and sterility. Augustus once received a petition from the inhabitants of Gyarus, humbly praying that they might be relieved from one-third of their excessive impositions. Their whole tax amounted indeed to no more than one hundred and fifty drachms, or about five pounds: but Gyarus was a little island, or rather a rock, of the gean sea, destitute of fresh water and every necessary of life, and inhabited only by a few wretched fishermen .

From the faint glimmerings of such doubtful Amount and scattered lights we should be inclined to of the reve believe, 1st, That (with every fair allowance for

nue.

S2

the

* Strabo, 1. iii. c. 148.

+ Plin. Hist. Natur. 1. xxxiii. c. 3. He mentions likewise a silver mine in Dalmatia, that yielded every day fifty pounds to the state.

1

1

Strabo, l. x. p. 485. Tacit. Annal. iii. 69. and iv. 30. See in Tournefort (Voyages au Levant, I.ettre viii.) a very lively picture of the actual misery of Gyarus.

CHA P. the difference of times and circumstances) the VI.

Taxes on

Roman ci

tizens insti

tuted by Augustus,

general income of the Roman provinces could seldom amount to less than fifteen or twenty millions of our money *; and, adly, That so ample a revenue must have been fully adequate, to all the expences of the moderate government instituted by Augustus, whose court was the modest family of a private senator, and whose military establishment was calculated for the defence of the frontiers, without any aspiring views of conquest, or any serious apprehension of a foreign invasion.

Notwithstanding the seeming probability of both these conclusions, the latter of them at least is positively disowned by the language and conduct of Augustus. It is not easy to determine whether, on this occasion, he acted as the common father of the Roman world, or as the oppressor of liberty; whether he wished to relieve the provinces, or to impoverish the senate and the equestrian order. But no sooner had he assumed the reins of government, than he frequently intimated the insufficiency of the tributes, and the necessity of throwing an equitable proportion of the public burden upon Rome and Italy. In the prosecution of this unpopular design, he advanced, however, by cautious and well-weighed steps. The introduction of customs was followed by the establishment of an excise,

and

*Lipsius de magnitudine Romana, (l. ii. c. 3.) computes the revenue at an hundred and fifty millions of gold crowns; but his whole book, though learned and ingenious, betrays a very heated imagination.

1.

toms.

વનું

A

and the scheme of taxation was completed by an c H A P. artful assessment of the real and personal pro- vi. perty of the Roman citizens, who had been exempted from any kind of contribution above a century and a halfed svad tum sunston & ingma 110In a great empire like that of Rome, a The cus natural balance of money must have gradually established itself. It has been already observed, that as the wealth of the provinces was attracted to the capital by by the stron strong hand of conquest and ower so a considerable part of it was restored power; so to the industrious provinces by the gentle indengut eine gent! fluence of commerce and arts. In the reign of Augustus and his successors, duties were imposed on every kind of merchandise, which through a thousand channels flowed the great centre of opulence and luxury; and in whatsoever manner the law was expressed, it was the Roman puschaser, and not the provincial merchant, who paid the tax *. The rate of the customs varied from the eighth to the fortieth part of the value of the commodity; and we have a right to suppose that the variation was directed by the unalterable maxims of policy; that a higher duty was fixed on the articles of luxury than on those of necessity, and that the productions raised or manufactured by the labour of the subjects of the empire, were treated with more indulgence than was shewn to the pernicious, or at least the unpopular commerce of XEi % Arabia

Tacit. Annal. xiii. 31.

vi.

CHA P. Arabia and India*. There is still extant a long but imperfect catalogue of eastern commodities, which about the time of Alexander Severus were subject to the payment of duties; cinnamon, myrrh, pepper, ginger, and the whole tribe of aromatics, a great variety of precious stones, among which the diamond was the most remarkable for its price, and the emerald for its beauty 4: Parthian and Babylonian leather, cottons, silks, both raw and manufactured, ebony, ivory, and eunuchs. We may observe that the use and value of those effeminate slaves gradually rose with the decline of the empire.

'The excise.

II. The excise, introduced by Augustus after the civil wars, was extremely moderate, but it was general. It seldom exceeded one per cent,; but it comprehended whatever was sold in the markets or by public auction, from the most considerable purchase of lands and houses, to those minute objects which can only derive a value from their infinite multitude, and daily consumption. Such a tax, as it affects the body of the people, has ever been the occasion of clamour and discontent. An emperor well acquainted with

*See Pliny. (Hist. Natur. I. vi. c. 23. 1. xii. c. 18.) His observation, that the Indian commodities were sold at Rome at a hundred times their original price, may give us some notion of the produce of the customs, since that orignal price amounted to more than eight hundred thousand pounds.

+ The ancients were unacquainted with the art of cutting diamonds.

M. Bouchaud, in his treatise de l'Impot chez les Romains, has transcribed this catalogue, from the Digest, and attempts to illustrate it by a very prolix commentary.