the Nemesis which attended Roman misrule.  If the reverse is the case, the British Empire will deserve to fall, and of a surety it will ultimately fall.  There is truth in the saying, of which perhaps we sometimes hear rather too much, that the maintenance of the Empire depends on the sword; but so little does it depend on the sword alone that if once we have to draw the sword, not merely to suppress some local effervescence, but to overcome a general upheaval of subject races goaded to action either by deliberate oppression, which is highly improbable, or by unintentional misgovernment, which is far more conceivable, the sword will assuredly be powerless to defend us for long, and the days of our Imperial rule will be numbered.

To those who believe that when they rest from their earthly labours their works will follow them, and that they must account to a Higher Tribunal for the use or misuse of any powers which may have been entrusted to them in this world, no further defence of the plea that Imperialism should rest on a moral basis is required.  Those who entertain no such belief may perhaps be convinced by the argument that, from a national point of view, a policy based on principles of sound morality is wiser, inasmuch as it is likely to be more successful, than one which excludes all considerations save those of cynical self-interest.  There was truth in the commonplace remark made by a subject of ancient Rome, himself a slave and presumably of Oriental extraction, that bad government will bring the mightiest empire to ruin.[2]

Some advantage may perhaps be derived from inquiring, however briefly and imperfectly, into the causes which led to the ruin of that political edifice, which in point of grandeur and extent, is alone worthy of comparison with the British Empire.  The subject has been treated by many of the most able writers and thinkers whom the world has produced—­Gibbon, Guizot, Mommsen, Milman, Seeley, and others.  For present purposes the classification given by Mr. Hodgkin of the causes which led to the downfall of the Western Empire has been adopted.  They were six in number, viz.: 

1.  The foundation of Constantinople.

2.  Christianity.

3.  Slavery.

4.  The pauperisation of the Roman proletariat.

5.  The destruction of the middle class by the fiscal oppression of the
   Curiales.

6.  Barbarous finance.

1. The Foundation of Constantinople.—­It is, for obvious reasons, unnecessary to discuss this cause.  It was one of special application to the circumstances of the time, notably to the threatening attitude towards Rome assumed by the now decadent State of Persia.

2. Christianity.—­That the foundation of Christianity exercised a profoundly disintegrating effect on the Roman Empire is unquestionable.  Gibbon, although he possibly confounds the tenets of the new creed with the defects of its hierarchy, dwells with characteristic emphasis on this congenial subject.[3] Mr. Hodgkin, speaking of the analogy between the British present and the Roman past, says: