Roman manners had established a kind of sacred relation, as inviolable as that of blood.* All the officers were taught to look up to the prætor as their father, and to regard each other as brethren; a firm and useful bond of concord in a virtuous administration; a dangerous and oppressive combination in a bad one. But, like all the Roman institutions, it operated strongly towards its principal purpose, the security of dominion; which is by nothing so much exposed as the factions and competitions of the officers, when the governing party itself gives the first example of disobedience. On the overthrow of the commonwealth, a remarkable revolution ensued in the power and the subordination of these magistrates. For as the prince came alone to possess all, that was, by a proper title, either imperial or prætorial authority, the ancient prætors dwindled into his legates; by which the splendour and importance of that dignity were much diminished. The business of the quæstor at this time seems to have been transferred to the emperour's procurator. The whole of the publick revenue became part of the fisc, and was considered as the private estate of the prince. But the old office under this new appellation rose in proportion as the prætorship had declined. For the procurator seems to have drawn to himself the cognizance of all civil, while capital cases alone were reserved for the judgment of the legate.† And though his power was at first restrained within narrow bounds, and all his judgments were subject to a review and reversal by the prætor and the senate, he gradually grew into independence of both, and was at length by Claudius invested with a jurisdiction absolutely uncontroulable. Two cases, I imagine, joined to produce this change; first, the sword was in the hands of the legate; the policy of the emperours, in order to balance this dangerous authority, thought too much weight could not be thrown into the scale of the procurator; secondly, as the government was now entirely despotical, a connexion between the inferiour officers of the empire and the senate was found to shock the reason of that absolute mode of government, which extends the sovereign power in all its fulness to every officer in his own dictrict, and renders him accountable to his master alone for the abuse of it.

every where present. I speak here only of the military colonies, because no other, I imagine, were ever settled in Britain.

There were few countries of any considerable extent, in which all these different modes of government, and different shades and gradations of servitude, did not exist together. There were allies municipia, provinces, and colonies in this island as elsewhere; and those dissimilar parts, far from being discordant, united to make a firm and compact body, the motion of any member of which could only serve to confirm and establish the whole; and when time was given to this structure to coalesce and settle, it was found impossible to break any part of it from the empire.

By degrees the several parts blended and softened into one another. And as the remembrance of enmity on the one hand wore away by time, so on the other the privileges of the Roman citizens at length became less valuable. When nothing throughout so vast an extent of the globe was of consideration but a single man, there was no reason to make any distinction amongst his subjects. Claudius first gave the full rights of the city to all the Gauls. Under Antoninus Rome opened her gates still wider. All the subjects of the empire were made partakers of the same common rights. The provincials flocked in; even slaves were no sooner enfranchised than they were advanced to the highest posts; and the plan of comprehension, which had overturned the republick, strengthened the monarchy.

Before the partitions were thus broken down, in order to support the empire, and to prevent commotions, they had a custom of sending spies into all the provinces; where, if they discovered any provincial laying himself out for popularity, they were sure of finding means, for they scrupled none, to repress him. It was not only the prætor with his train of lictors and apparitors, the rods and the axes, and all the insolent parade of a conqueror's jurisdiction; every private Roman seemed a kind of magistrate; they took cognizance of all their words and actions; and hourly reminded them of that jealous and stern authority, so vigilant to discover, and so severe to punish, the slightest deviations from obedience.

Cic. in Verrem, J.

↑ Duobus insuper inserviendum tyrannis; quorum legatus in sanguinem, procurator in bona sæviret. Tacit. Annal. 12. c. 60.

Ne principatus vim resolveret, cuncta ad senatum vocando;

come to think, that their merit or demerit consisted in the good or ill opinion of the people, over whom they ruled. They dreaded either a relaxation of government, or a dangerous influence in the legate, from the exertion of a humanity too popular.

These are some of the civil and political methods eam conditionem esse imperandi, ut non aliter ratio constet, quam si uni reddatur. Tacit. Annal. 1.

Tacit. Annal. 1. 15. c. 21, 22.

by which the Romans held their dominion over conquered nations; but even in peace they kept up a great military establishment. They looked upon the interiour country to be sufficiently secured by the colonies; their forces were therefore generally quartered on the frontiers. There they had their Stativa, or stations, which were strong intrenched camps, many of them fitted even for a winter residence. The communication between these camps, the colonies, and the municipal towns, was formed by great roads, which they called military ways. The two principal of these ran, in almost straight lines, the whole length of England from north to south. Two others intersected them from east to west. The remains shew them to have been in their perfection noble works, in all respects worthy the Roman military prudence, and the majesty of the empire. The AngloSaxons called them streets. Of all the Roman works they respected and kept up these alone. They regarded them with a sort of sacred reverence, granting them a peculiar protection and great immunities. Those who travelled on them, were privileged from arrests in all civil suits.

As the general character of the Roman government was hard and austere, it was particularly so in what regarded the revenue. This revenue was either fixed or occasional. The fixed consisted, first, of an annual tax on persons and lands; but in what proportion to the fortunes of the one, or the value of the other, I have not been able to ascertain. Next was the imposition called decuma, which consisted of a tenth, and often a greater portion, of the corn of the province, which was generally delivered in kind. Of all other products a fifth was paid. After this tenth had been exacted on the corn, they were obliged to sell another tenth, or a more considerable part, to the prætor at a price estimated by himself. Even what remained was still subject to be bought up in the same manner, and at the pleasure of the same magistrate; who, independent of these taxes and purchases, received for the use of his household a large portion of the corn of the province. The most valuable of the pasture grounds were also reserved to the publick; and a considerable revenue was thence derived, which they called Scriptura. The state made a monopoly of almost the whole produce of the land, which paid several taxes, and was further enhanced by passing through several hands, before it came to popular consumption.

The third great branch of the Roman revenue was the Portorium, which did not differ from those impositions, which we now call customs and duties of export and import.

This was the ordinary revenue; besides which there were occasional impositions for shipping, for military stores, and provisions, and for defraying the expence of the prætor and his legates on the various circuits they made for the administration of the province. This last charge became fre

The four roads they called Watling-street, Ikenild-street, Ermin-street, and the Fosseway.

quently a means of great oppression; and several ways were from time to time attempted, but with little effect, to confine it within reasonable bounds.† Amongst the extraordinary impositions must be reckoned the obligation they laid on the provincials to labour at the publick works, after the manner of what the French call the corvée, and we term statute-labour.

As the provinces, burthened by the ordinary charges, were often in no condition of levying these occasional taxes, they were obliged to borrow at interest. Interest was then to communities at the same exorbitant rate as to individuals. No province was free from a most onerous publick debt; and that debt was far from operating like the same engagement contracted in modern states, by which, as the creditor is thrown into the power of the debtor, they often add considerably to their strength, and to the number and attachment of their dependants. The prince in this latter case borrows from a subject, or from a stranger. The one becomes more a subject, and the other less a stranger. But in the Roman provinces the subject borrowed from his master, and he thereby doubled his slavery. The overgrown favourites, and wealthy nobility of Rome, advanced money to the provincials and they were in a condition both to prescribe the terms of the loan, and to enforce the payment. The provinces groaned at once under all the severity of publick imposition, and the rapaciousness of private usury. They were overrun by publicans, farmers of the taxes, agents, confiscators, usurers, bankers, those numerous and insatiable bodies, which always flourished in a burthened and complicated revenue. In a word, the taxes in the Roman empire were so heavy, and, in many respects, so injudiciously laid on, that they have been not improperly considered as one cause of its decay and ruin. The Roman government, to the very last, carried something of the spirit of conquest in it; and this system of taxes seems rather calculated for the utter impoverishment of nations, in whom a long subjection had not worn away the remembrance of enmity, than for the support of a just commonwealth.

CHAP. IV.

THE FALL OF THE ROMAN POWER IN BRITAIN.

AFTER the period which we have A. D. 117. just closed, no mention is made of the affairs of Britain until the reign of Adrian. At that time was wrought the first remarkable change in the exteriour policy of Rome. Although some of the emperours contented themselves with those limits which they found at their accession, none before this prince had actually contracted the

↑ Cod. lib. XII. tit. LXI.

This plan particularly affected BriA. D. 121. tain. All the conquests of Agricola to the northward of the Tyne were relinquished; and a strong rampart was built from the mouth of that river, on the east, to Solway frith on the Irish sea, a length of about eighty miles. But in the reign of his successour, Antoninus A. D. 140. Pius, other reasonings prevailed, and other measures were pursued. The legate, who then commanded in Britain, concluding that the Caledonians would construe the defensive policy of Adrian into fear, that they would naturally grow more numerous in a larger territory, and more haughty when they saw it abandoned to them, the frontier was again advanced to Agricola's second line, which extended between the friths of Forth and Clyde, and the stations which had been established by that general, were connected with a continued wall.

From this time those walls become the principal object in the British history. The Caledonians, or (as they are called) the Picts, made very frequent and sometimes successful attempts upon this barrier, taking advantage more particularly of every change in government, whilst the soldiery throughout the empire were more intent upon the choice of a master, than the motions of an enemy. In this dubious state of unquiet peace and unprosecuted war the province continued, until Severus came to the purple; who, finding that A. D. 207. Britain had grown into one of the most considerable provinces of the empire, and was at the same time in a dangerous situation, resolved to visit that island in person, and to provide for its security. He led a vast A. D. 208. army into the wilds of Caledonia; and was the first of the Romans who penetrated to the most northern boundary of this island. The natives, defeated in some engagements, and wholly unable to resist so great and determined a power, were obliged to submit to such a peace as the emperour thought proper to impose. Contenting himself with a submission, always cheaply won from a barbarous people, and never long regarded, Severus made no sort of military establish

ment in that country. On the conA. D. 209. trary he abandoned the advanced work, which had been raised in the reign of Antoninus; and limiting himself by the plan of Adrian, he either built a new wall near the former, or he added to the work of that emperour such considerable improvements and repairs, that it has since been called the wall of Severus.

Severus with great labour and charge terrified the Caledonians; but he did not subdue them. He neglected those easy and assured means of subjection, which the nature of that part of Britain

friths, and lakes, with which it is every where pierced, and in some places almost cut through. A few garrisons at the necks of land, and a fleet to connect them, and to awe the coast, must at any time have been sufficient irrecoverably to subdue that part of Britain. This was a neglect in Agricola occasioned probably by a limited command; and it was not rectified by boundless authority in Severus. The Caledonians again resumed their arms, and renewed their ravages on the Roman frontier. Severus died before he could take any new measures; and from his death there is an almost total silence concerning the affairs of Britain until the division of the empire.

Had the unwieldy mass of that overgrown dominion been effectively divided, and divided into large portions, each forming a state separate, and absolutely independent, the scheme had been far more perfect. Though the empire had perished, these states might have subsisted; and they might have made a far better opposition to the inroads of the barbarians, even than the whole united; since each nation would have its own strength solely employed in resisting its own particular enemies. For, notwithstanding the resources, which might have been expected from the entireness of so great a body, it is clear from history, that the Romans were never able to employ with effect, and at the same time, above two armies; and that on the whole they were very unequal to the defence of a frontier of many thousand miles in circuit.

But the scheme which was pursued, the scheme of joint emperours, holding by a common title, each governing his proper territory, but not wholly without authority in the other portions, this formed a species of government, of which it is hard to conceive any just idea. It was a government in continual fluctuation from one to many, and from many again to a single hand. Each state did not subsist long enough independent to fall into those orders and connected classes of men, that are necessary to a regular commonwealth; nor had they time to grow into those virtuous partialities, from which nations derive the first principle of their stability.

The events, which follow, sufficiently illustrate these reflections; and will shew the reason of introducing them in this place, with regard to the empire in general, and to Britain more particularly.

In the division which Dioclesian first made of the Roman territory, the western provinces, in which Britain was included, fell to Maximian. It was during his reign, that Britain, by an extraordinary revolution, was for some time entirely separated from the body of the empire. Carausius, a man of obscure birth, and a barbarian, (for now not only the army but the senate was filled with foreigners,) had obtained the government of Bologne. He was also intrusted with the command of a fleet, stationed in that part to oppose the Saxon pirates, who then began cruelly to infest the north-west parts of Gaul, and the opposite shore of Britain.

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But Carausius made use of the power with which he had been intrusted, not so much to suppress the pirates, as to aggrandize himself. He even permitted their depredations, that he might intercept them on their return, and enrich himself with the retaken plunder. By such methods he acquired immense wealth, which he distributed with so politick a bounty among the seamen of his fleet, and the legions in Britain, that by degrees he disposed both the one and the other to a revolt in his favour.

As there were then no settled principles either of succession or election in the empire, and all depended on the uncertain faith of the army, Carausius made his attempt, perhaps, with the less guilt, and found the less difficulty in prevailing upon the provincial Britains to submit to a sovereignty, which seemed to reflect a sort of dignity on themselves. In this island he established the seat of his new dominion, but he kept up and augmented his fleet, by which he preserved his communication with his old government, and commanded the intermediate seas. He entered into a close alliance A. D. 286. with the Saxons and Frisians, by which he at once preserved his own island from their depredations, and rendered his maritime power irresistible. He humbled the Picts by several defeats; he repaired the frontier wall, and supplied it with good garrisons. He made several roads equal to the works of the greatest emperours. He cut canals with vast labour and expence through all the low eastern parts of Britain; at the same time draining those fenny countries, and promoting communication and commerce. On these canals he built several cities. Whilst he thus laboured to promote

A. D. 290. the internal strength and happiness of his kingdom, he contended with so much success against his former masters, that they were at length obliged not only to relinquish their right to his acquisition, but to admit him to a participation of the imperial titles. He reigned after this for seven years prosperously, and with great glory, because he wisely set bounds to his ambition, and contented himself with the possession of a great country, detached from the rest of the world, and therefore easily defended. Had he lived long enough, and pursued this plan with consistency, Britain, in all probability, might then have become, and might have afterwards been, an independent and powerful kingdom, instructed in the Roman arts, and freed from their dominion. But the same distemper of the state, which had raised Carausius to power, did not suffer him long to enjoy it. The Roman soldiery at that time was wholly destitute of military principle. That religious regard to their oath, the great bond of ancient discipline, had been long worn out; and the want of it was not supplied by that punctilio of honour and loyalty, which is the support of modern armies. Carausius was assassinated, A. D. 293. and succeeded in his kingdom by Alectus, the captain of his guards. But the mur

derer, who did not possess abilities to support the power he had acquired by his crimes, was in a short time defeated, and in his turn put to death by Constantius Clorus. In about three years from the death of Carausius, Britain, after a short experiment of independency, was again united to the body of the empire.

Constantius, after he came to the A. D. 304. purple, chose this island for his residence. Many authors affirm, that his wife Helena was a Britain. It is more certain, that his son Constantine the Great was born here, and enabled to succeed his father principally by the helps which he derived from Britain.

A. D. 306.

Under the reign of this great prince there was an almost total revolution in the internal policy of the empire. This was the third remarkable change in the Roman government since the dissolution of the commonwealth. The first was that, by which Antoninus had taken away the distinctions of the municipium, province, and colony, communicating to every part of the empire those privileges, which had formerly distinguished a citizen of Rome. Thus the whole government was cast into a more uniform and simple frame, and every mark of conquest was finally effaced. The second alteration was the division of the empire by Dioclesian. The third was the change made in the great offices of the state, and the revolution in religion under Constantine.

The præfecti prætorio, who, like the commanders of the Janizaries of the Port, by their ambition and turbulence had kept the government in continual ferment, were reduced by the happiest art imaginable. Their number, only two originally, was encreased to four, by which their power was balanced and broken. Their authority was not lessened, but its nature was totally changed; for it became from that time a dignity and office merely civil. The whole empire was divided into four departments under these four officers. The subordinate districts were governed by their vicarii; and Britain accordingly was under a vicar, subject to the præfectus prætorio of Gaul. The military was divided nearly in the same manner; and it was placed under officers also of a new creation, the magistri militiæ. Immediately under these were the duces, and under those the comites, dukes and counts, titles unknown in the time of the republick, or in the higher empire; but afterwards they extended beyond the Roman territory, and having been conferred by the northern nations upon their leaders, they subsist to this day, and contribute to the dignity of the modern courts of Europe.

But Constantine made a much greater change with regard to religion by the establishment of Christianity. At what time the gospel was first preached in this island, I believe it impossible to ascertain; as it came in gradually, and without, or rather contrary to, publick authority. It was most probably first introduced among the legionary soldiers; for we find St. Alban, the first British