I. The distinction of ranks and persons is the firmest basis of a mixed and limited government.  The perfect equality of men is the point in which the extremes of democracy and despotism are confounded; since the majesty of the prince or people would be offended, if any heads were exalted above the level of their fellow-slaves or fellow-citizens.  In the decline of the Roman Empire, the proud distinctions of the republic were gradually abolished, and the reason or instinct of Justinian completed the simple form of an absolute monarchy.  The Emperor could not eradicate the popular reverence which always waits on the possession of hereditary wealth or the memory of famous ancestors.  He delighted to honor with titles and emoluments his generals, magistrates, and senators; and his precarious indulgence communicated some rays of their glory to the persons of their wives and children.  But in the eye of the law all Roman citizens were equal, and all subjects of the empire were citizens of Rome.  That inestimable character was degraded to an obsolete and empty name.  The voice of a Roman could no longer enact his laws or create the annual ministers of his power:  his constitutional rights might have checked the arbitrary will of a master, and the bold adventurer from Germany or Arabia was admitted, with equal favor, to the civil and military command which the citizen alone had been once entitled to assume over the conquests of his fathers.  The first Caesars had scrupulously guarded the distinction of ingenuous and servile birth, which was decided by the condition of the mother; and the candor of the laws was satisfied if her freedom could be ascertained during a single moment between the conception and the delivery.  The slaves who were liberated by a generous master immediately entered into the middle class of libertines or freedmen; but they could never be enfranchised from the duties of obedience and gratitude:  whatever were the fruits of their industry, their patron and his family inherited the third part, or even the whole of their fortune if they died without children and without a testament.

Justinian respected the rights of patrons, but his indulgence removed the badge of disgrace from the two inferior orders of freedmen:  whoever ceased to be a slave obtained without reserve or delay the station of a citizen; and at length the dignity of an ingenuous birth, which nature had refused, was created or supposed by the omnipotence of the Emperor.  Whatever restraints of age, or forms, or numbers had been formerly introduced to check the abuse of manumissions and the too rapid increase of vile and indigent Romans, he finally abolished; and the spirit of his laws promoted the extinction of domestic servitude.  Yet the eastern provinces were filled in the time of Justinian with multitudes of slaves, either born or purchased for the use of their masters; and the price, from ten to seventy pieces of gold, was determined by their age, their strength, and their education.  But the hardships of this dependent state were continually diminished by the influence of government and religion, and the pride of a subject was no longer elated by his absolute dominion over the life and happiness of his bondsman.