In the latter days of the empire, when the invasions of the barbarians began, and its provinces were liable to be pierced through and overrun by columns of their predatory hordes, the universal and well-founded terror produced a general _hoarding_ of the precious metals, which entirely withdrew them from circulation, until they were forced from the trembling inhabitants by threats of massacre or conflagration. The effect of this, in contracting the currency, and causing the little that remained to disappear altogether from the circulation, of course was prodigious. It lowered to almost nothing the money-price of every species of industry, and proportionally augmented the weight of public and private debts--the subject of such loud and constant complaints from ancient historians. Nor was this evil confined to the latest periods of the empire of the West--the years which immediately preceded its fall. From the time of Commodus, who succeeded Marcus Antoninus, the incursions of the barbarians into the northern provinces of the empire had been severely felt; and from the time of the separation of the empires of the East and West, they were almost perpetual, and sometimes extended far into its interior provinces. The effect of these alarms and dangers, in producing a universal disposition to hoard, and consequently rendering money every where scarce, prices cheap, and debts and taxes oppressive, was very great, and may be regarded as one of the chief causes of the excessive and crushing weight which the direct burdens of the state acquired in the later periods of the empire.
The resource so well known, and so often had recourse to with the happiest effects, in modern times, to supply the void produced by a temporary or permanent drain of the precious metals, was unknown in antiquity. _They had no paper currency._ Even bills of exchange were unknown. They, as is well known, were a contrivance of the Jews, in the middle ages, to transport their wealth in a commodious form, when threatened with persecution, from one country to another. To what an extent paper of these various kinds has come to supply the place of gold and silver, may be judged of by the fact, that during the war, the paper currency of Great Britain and Ireland rose to £60,000,000 sterling; and that, at the present time, the private bills in circulation in it are estimated at £132,000,000 sterling. But this admirable resource, by which an accidental or temporary dearth of the precious metals is supplied by a paper currency, circulating at par with it, and fully supplying, as long as credit lasts, its place, was unknown in the ancient world. Gold, silver, and copper were their sole circulating mediums; and consequently, when they were progressively withdrawn, by the causes which have been mentioned, from the currency, there was nothing left to supply their place. Instantly, as if by the stroke of a fell necromancer, disasters of every kind accumulated on the wretched inhabitants. Credit was violently shaken; money disappeared; prices fell to a ruinous degree; industry could obtain no remuneration; the influence and ascendancy of realized capital became irresistible; and the only efficient power left in the state was that of the emperor, who wrenched his taxes out of the impoverished hands of his subjects, or of the creditors and landlords, who, by legal process, exacted their debts from their debtors, and drove them to desperation. This was exactly the social state of the empire in its declining days. We can appreciate its horrors, from having had a foretaste of them during the commercial crises with which, during the last twenty-five years, this country has been visited.