states suddenly finds herself thrust back into her primitive condition, stripped of the dominion which has been her strength, and thrown entirely upon her own resources.  Then the whole task of reconstruction has to be commenced anew—­one by one the rebel countries are overrun, and the rebel monarchs chastised—­tribute is re-imposed, submission enforced, and in fifteen or twenty years the empire has perhaps recovered itself.  Progress is of course slow and uncertain, where the empire has continually to be built up again from its foundations, and where at any time a day may undo the work which it has taken centuries to accomplish.

To discourage and check the chronic disease of rebellion, re-course is had to severe remedies, which diminish the danger to the central power, at the cost of extreme misery and often almost entire ruin to the subject kingdoms.  Not only are the lands wasted, the flocks and herds carried off, the towns pillaged and burnt, or in some cases razed to the ground, the rebel king deposed and his crown transferred to another, the people punished by the execution of hundreds or thousands as well as by an augmentation of the tribute money; but sometimes wholesale deportation of the inhabitants is practised, tens or hundreds of thousands being carried away captive by the conquerors, and either employed in servile labor at the capital or settled as colonists in a distant province.  With this practice the history of the Jews, in which it forms so prominent a feature, has made us familiar.  It seems to have been known to the Assyrians from very early times, and to have become by degrees a sort of settled principle in their government.  In the most flourishing period of their dominion—­the reigns of Sargon, Sennacherib, and Esar-haddon—­it prevailed most widely, and was carried to the greatest extent.  Chaldaeans were transported into Armenia, Jews and Israelites into Assyria and Media, Arabians, Babylonians, Susianians, and Persians into Palestine—­the most distant portions of the empire changed inhabitants, and no sooner did a people become troublesome from its patriotism and love of independence, than it was weakened by dispersion, and its spirit subdued by a severance of all its local associations.  Thus rebellion was in some measure kept down, and the position of the central or sovereign state was rendered so far more secure; but this comparative security was gained by a great sacrifice of strength, and when foreign invasion came, the subject kingdoms, weakened at once and alienated by the treatment which they had received, were found to have neither the will nor the power to give any effectual aid to their enslaver.