Highness, your Grace, your Excellency, your Immensity, your Honor, your Majesty, then first became current in the European world; men grew ashamed of a plain name; and one person could not address another without following the custom of the Syrians, and calling him Rabbi, Master.
It is a calumny to charge the devastation of Italy upon the barbarians. We say again, the large Roman plantations, tilled by slave labor, were the ruin of Italy. Verum con-fitentibus, latifundia Italiam perdidere. From the days of Gracchus, morals, courage, force of character, and agriculture had been declining. The productiveness of the country was constantly diminishing; Italy, for centuries, had not produced corn enough to meet the wants of its inhabitants. Rome was chiefly supplied from Sicily and Africa, and the largest number of its inhabitants had, for centuries, been fed from the public magazines.
The barbarians did not ruin Italy. The Romans themselves ruined it. Slavery had made it a waste and depopulated land, before a Scythian or a Scandinavian had crossed the Alps.
"When Alaric led the Goths into Italy, even after the conquest of Rome, he saw that he could not sustain his army in the beautiful but desert territory, unless he could also conquer Sicily and Africa, whence alone daily bread could be obtained. His successor was, therefore, easily persuaded to abandon the unproductive region, and invade the happier France.
Attila had no other object than a roving pilgrimage after plunder; and as his cupidity was little excited, and the climate was ungenial, the wild, unlettered Calmuck was easily overawed by the Roman priesthood, and diverted from the indigent Italy to the more prosperous North. Rome still remained an object for plunderers, but none of the barbarians were tempted to make Italy the seat of empire, or Rome a metropolis. Slavery had destroyed the democracy, had destroyed the aristocracy, had destroyed the empire; and now at last it left the traces of its ruinous power deeply furrowed on the face of nature herself.
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CHAPTER VI.
Christian Slavery in Northern Africa.
Barbary is the general and somewhat vague denomination adopted by Europeans to designate that part of the northern coast of Africa which, bound-ed on the south by the desert of Sahara, is comprised between the frontiers of