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THE CONDITION OF CONSTANTINOPLE IN 1200. 213 had remained. The courts of law were no longer unreserved- ly trusted. The administration of every department of the government, as well as that of the courts of justice, was at times tainted with corruption. The imperial family itself shared directly in the profits of this corruption. We have seen how one emperor sent out his emissaries without scrip or purse to plunder his subjects, and how another emperor is charged with taking a share in the profits, if he did not actually fit out six vessels to engage in piracy upon the ships of his own people. Prisoners were let out of jail to work, and no doubt on occa- sions to steal, for the jailer. Judges purchased their offices, and as a consequence sold their judgments. Alexis the Third, who came to the throne in 1195, pub- lished an edict to the effect that public offices would no longer be sold, but would be given free to the fittest men ; but his historian, while adding that such a reform would be one of the most praiseworthy that could be conceived, is care- ful to add that his good intentions were not seconded by those nearest to him. The ring of Byzantine nobles rendered him for the time as powerless as the ring of pashas ^vould to-day render a reforming sultan. Nicetas states that the men who formed this ring became immensely rich from the presents of those who wished to obtain any concessions from the govern- ment through their intervention. The highest offices both in the cities and in the provinces were publicly sold. Money- changers, ignorant men, and even Scythians, were allowed to buy the title of csesar. Creditors were paid by delegations — or, to employ the word too well known in Constantinople now, fiavales — upon the pi'ovinces. The population which would tolerate such a government and such humiliation was as far from the manliness of the barons who, a few years later, were to figure at Runnymede as they were from the virtue of the Roman legions of the re- public during its best period, or from that of the Greek re- publics. In truth, it was not only the spirit which would resent a national injury which had disappeared from the Byzantine nobles, but the virtues of self-respect, patriotism, and courage. The ruling classes had lost all trace of either