Excerpt from Proceedings of a Conference on Taxation in Indiana, Vol. 12: Held at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana February 5 and 6, 1914 The Latin historian Livy relates that when the Gauls were about to capture and destroy Rome some four hundred years be fore Christ, the people decided to have the best of their young men go into the impregnable citadel with the remaining food supply so that they could survive and perpetuate the Roman name, while the rest of the people, commoners and senators, would re main and die by the hand of the Gauls. This, he says, was done. Commoner and Senator accepted death together so that a few of their blood might survive to maintain the Roman State. Eight hundred years later the Roman Empire was invaded and overwhelmed by new breeds of barbarians from the North, the Goths and the Vandals. Two Roman historians of the latter period, Ammianus and Orosius, declare that when the Goths and Vandals invaded the Empire they were aided by large numbers of the Roman people who preferred the rule of the invaders to the burden of taxes which the Empire imposed upon them. That is to say: Four hundred years before Christ there was a Roman patriotism of such force and quality that it had in it the potential conquest of the world; four hundred years. After Christ that patriotism was dead, - killed by injustice. Rome was killed, said a historical scholar tome, by unjust taxation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.