The various trades and professions may be roughly divided into three classes with respect to the relation in which they stood to these munera. The first class includes all those, whether individuals or colleges, who received immunity from these personal obligations. This class contains, besides members of the learned professions, some thirty-five or thirty-six trades granted immunity by Constantine, — including doctors, architects and builders, stone-cutters, wood-carvers, workers in brass, carpenters, dyers, potters, goldsmiths, carriage-makers, white-washers, painters, sculptors, and in general all those engaged in the more luxurious arts. C. Hegel, in his Geschichte der Städteverfassung von Italien,1 enumerates the immunity granted these colleges above their fellows among the causes for the decay of the empire after Constantine. It must be remembered, however, that all these colleges were still liable to the chrysargyron; and I think it more correct to attribute the decline of the arts to the actual burdens which still overwhelmed all alike, rather than to any relief from those burdens, however unequally granted. This view is borne out by the fact that the immunity was not granted to all the members of these colleges promiscuously, but only to the actual working members (artificibus); and that even the artifices, if they had acquired property sufficient to bear the state burdens, were forbidden to shelter themselves under the immunity granted to their poorer brethren.2 The second class of industries were those whose members were liable to the munera extraordinaria. Such were the various mercantile and commercial colleges, the traders of various sorts, the wealthier ship-owners and those engaged in river transport, the larger merchants of wine, cattle, leather, etc., and in general all those colleges the wealth of whose members was sufficient to furnish satisfactory guarantees. The third class consisted of the various petty colleges liable to munera sordida, such as the petty tradesmen, retail dealers, shoemakers, fishermen, and in general all those coarser handicrafts not included in the list of the thirty-five colleges granted immunity by Constantine. 1 Bd. I, S. 94. 2 Digest, 50, 6, 5, § 12. Outside of these there was probably still another class, consisting of all those who were not members of colleges at all; such for example as the keepers of petty booths, and laborers working by the day. This class, however, was probably not large, and its condition must have been very wretched. A member of a college had at least his position, such as it was, guaranteed to him. The members of this fourth class might at any moment be seized and set to work in the state workshops or wherever else the central authority might deem their services needed. Any one who worked solely for his own profit was, in the eyes of the state, otiosus an idle man. "Let no one," runs a law of 369, "pursuing his private gain as a retail dealer, a huckster, or a shop-keeper, be suffered to hold aloof from the service of the colleges, if their members seem too few in number." It is not strange, under these circumstances, that the numbers of the fourth class should have been small. The' college organization pervaded everything. Like the practice of commendation in the middle ages, it had grown up as a means of protecting the laborer against outside abuses, and ended by becoming the chain which bound him to a more grinding slavery. Through the colleges the state was enabled to reach the individual in a way which would otherwise in such an age have been impossible. For not only did the laws forbid the desertion of their post by all collegiati and command the imperial authorities to seek out and return all fugitives, but by establishing a solidarity of interest between members of the same college and holding all the members responsible for the fault of each, they succeeded in compelling the members to control each other. It was not only by statutes retaining each man in his place that the state strove to control industry. But the subject of state regulation of prices, though interesting, is too difficult and obscure to be entered upon here. It will be sufficient to say that on many occasions the prices of special articles were fixed by law; and once at least, under Diocletian, a general tariff of 2 Codex Theod., 12, 19, L. 1 Codex Theod., II, 10, 1. 8 Codex Just., 11, 9, 5. prices was established, with a death penalty for any one who should refuse to conform thereto.1 The sincerity of the government was attested by the decapitation of numerous refractory tradesmen; but the attempt met with no more success than such attempts generally do. The state also interfered with the free course of trade, not only by the customs duties to which I have referred, but by the direct prohibition of certain exports, chief among which were gold, iron, salt, corn, wine, and arms.2 I have indicated in outline the various means by which the emperors of the fourth century tried to cure the evils which the vicious system of their predecessors, added to their own extravagance, had caused in the economic condition of the empire. Their efforts failed, as in the nature of things such efforts must fail. The remedies applied served only to aggravate the disease. The longer the old organization limped on, the lamer it became, and the more utter and disastrous had to be its final downfall. It is only remarkable, in face of all the evils, external as well as internal, with which it had to contend, that it lasted as long as it did. Of the details of the break-up we know little. But by the beginning of the fifth century the old organization was splitting on all sides. In a law of the year 400, directed to the prefect of Gaul, we read as follows: "Communities deprived of the proper services have lost the splendor for which formerly they were renowned, especially where very many of the members of the colleges, leaving the care (cultum) of the cities, and seeking a country life, have hidden themselves in secret and desert places.' The emperors, however, were still unable to read the signs of the times. The law continues: "But we have put a stop to such devices (ingenia) by commanding that wherever in the world the fugitives may be found, they be dragged back to their duties without a single exception." But such regulations could not much longer retard the inevitable break-up. They are only the last despairing cry of a dissolving system. WM. ADAMS BROWN. 1 On this subject, see Dureau de la Malle, livre i, ch. xii; Levasseur, pp. 82, 83. 2 See Pancirollus, on comites commerciorum in Notitia. 8 Codex Theod., 12, 19, I. REVIEWS. Geschichte, Theorie und Technik der Statistik. - 8vo, ix, 214 PP. Jubilee Volume of the Statistical Society, June 22-24, 1885. London, Edward Stanford, 1885. 8vo, xv, 372 pp. Le 25 Anniversaire de la Société de statistique de Paris, 18601885. Paris, Berger-Levrault et Cie, 1886. — 8vo, xii, 444 PP. Bulletin de L'Institut international de statistique. Tome I, Ire et 2me Livraisons, Année 1886. Rome, Imprimerie Héritiers Botta, 1886. 8vo, 288 pp. There has occurred during the last few years a distinct revival of interest in the study of statistics. This has shown itself in the very successful anniversary meetings of the London and Paris statistical societies, in the foundation of the International Statistical Institute and in renewed critical attempts to define the scope and method of statistics as a science. The four volumes given above are the first fruit of this revival, and almost a library in themselves — furnish a new and valuable basis for the study of the history, theory, method and practical results of statistics according to the latest scholarship. It is proposed in the following review to point out what this basis is, to explain the modern conception of statistical science and to give an analysis of the new material offered us in these volumes, so far as it is of scientific interest. The history of statistics1 is a very curious one. It started as a purely practical branch of administration; developed into what we would now call descriptive sociology; was then differentiated from political science, geography and political economy, and assumed the position of a particular scientific method or, according to others, of a special branch of social science using a particular method. At the same time its opera 1 The first part of Meitzen's book is an admirably clear and concise history of statistics both theoretical and practical. The Jubilee and Paris volumes contain histories of the two societies. The third part of the Paris volume contains an invaluable series of papers by officials describing the statistical bureaux of Europe. See also Neumann-Spallart's history of the statistical congresses in the Jubilee volume, and his opening address before the International Institute at Rome in the Bulletin. tions have increased enormously, so that its administrative character has returned to it strengthened a hundred fold. Enumerations of the people are as old as the history of Egypt, Judea, China, Persia, Greece and Rome. Through the middle ages we find statistical surveys of property and enumeration of possessors such as Domesday book in England and the Grundbücher of Germany. As powerful states grew up, administrative measures for military and financial purposes demanded statistical knowledge of the resources of the state, and the official statistics were greatly extended. These efforts were encouraged by such monarchs as Louis XIV and Friedrich II, and resulted in the establishment of bureaux of statistics in all the principal European states about the beginning of this century. In the meantime the purely administrative statistics were brought into scientific form at German universities; first by Conring at Helmstedt in 1660, and later by Achenwall at Marburg in 1746. Statistics, as read by these German professors and their followers, meant what we call descriptive sociology or comparative political science, and included a description by words as well as by figures of all the important institutions of a state. The field was too broad, and the development of political science, political economy, administrative law and geography made the treatment by the older statistical science superficial. The method of description by words was a false one, because it failed to distinguish statistics from history and other branches of social science which covered the same field. The way out of this difficulty was suggested by the mathematicians, who declared that the real mark of statistics was the employment of figures and that description by words was altogether out of place. This certainly served to distinguish statistics from history and from descriptive social and political science, but it left to statistics only the barren and ungrateful task of drawing up tables of figures, without allowing the science to say what those tables meant or proved. The statistician was neither the Paul that planted nor the Apollos that watered the garden of human knowledge, nor was he to enjoy the increase. This view has found favor in England down even to the present day and was expressed as late as 1881 by Mr. Wynnard Hooper in a paper read before the London Statistical Society. Mr. Hooper said that statistics always meant statistics of something, as so many bags of coffee in the London warehouses, and that we could only speak of statistical science in the sense that we can speak of a science of microscopy, - that is, skill in using and manipulating an instrument.1 The continental statisticians were not content with this position. 1 Mr. Hooper has just reiterated these views in the article on statistics in volume xxii of the Encyclopædia Britannica, 1887. |