The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863, page 159 by Various Authors
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eous and complex. Such are the social and political systems of Middle and Western Europe. There was nothing of the kind in the ancient world. Then the people were more simple and less versatile in their mental habitudes; and a simple, though despotic government was the inevitable outgrowth. Rome was but a military despotism, and it conquered and ruled with military stringency. It was not till the reign of Diocletian that the civil functions were divorced from the military, and then only to a partial extent. It remained for Constantine to carry out more fully what Diocletian had begun, and to divide, or, if you please, to differentiate the governmental functions to an extent which had been altogether unknown before.
The people of the provinces subject to Roman dominion had no recognized rights, no voice in their own government, but were dominated by the central power at Rome. The right of representation, so sacred in modern times as an element of confederate policy, they did not desire nor appreciate; for, when seven provinces of the south of Gaul were commanded by the emperor Honorius to send a representation of their chief men to the city of Arles for the supervision of interests which concerned themselves, they disregarded the mandate. A central despotism maintained Roman unity; and, whenever its iron arm should by any means become weakened, the empire must fall into fragments.
The dissolution of the Roman Empire in the West was the end of one cycle; thence began another--that in which we now are, and which should be of absorbing interest to us. A state of affairs quite unlike anything known before was then inaugurated. Hundreds of years have been required to develop results so as to enable the human mind to divine at all definitely the law of its movement; and hundreds more may be required to develop the full fruition of what was then so inauspiciously begun.
As we are all aware, the Roman Empire of the West was overrun by hordes of barbarians from the North, who annihilated a great por