Volume VII Part 9 (2/2)

Thus was Britain, after a struggle of fifty-four years, entirely bent under the yoke, and moulded into the Roman Empire. How so stubborn an opposition, could have been so long maintained against the greatest power on earth by a people ill armed, worse united, without revenues, without discipline, has justly been deemed an object of wonder. Authors are generally contented with attributing it to the extraordinary bravery of the ancient Britons. But certainly the Britons fought with armies as brave as the world ever saw, with superior discipline, and more plentiful resources.

To account for this opposition, we must have recourse to the general character of the Roman politics at this time. War, during this period, was carried on upon principles very different from, those that actuated the Republic. Then one uniform spirit animated one body through whole ages. With whatever state they were engaged, the war was so prosecuted as if the republic could not subsist, unless that particular enemy were totally destroyed. But when the Roman dominion had arrived to as great an extent as could well be managed, and that the ruling power had more to fear from disaffection to the government than from enmity to the Empire, with regard to foreign affairs common rules and a moderate policy took place. War became no more than a sort of exercise for the Roman forces.[17] Even whilst they were declaring war they looked towards an accommodation, and were satisfied with reasonable terms when they concluded it. Their politics were more like those of the present powers of Europe, where kingdoms seek rather to spread their influence than to extend their dominion, to awe and weaken rather than to destroy.

Under unactive and jealous princes the Roman legates seldom dared to push the advantages they had gained far enough to produce a dangerous reputation.[18] They wisely stopped, when they came to the verge of popularity. And these emperors fearing as much from the generals as their generals from them, such frequent changes were made in the command that the war was never systematically carried on. Besides, the change of emperors (and their reigns were not long) almost always brought on a change of measures; and the councils even of the same reign were continually fluctuating, as opposite court factions happened to prevail. Add to this, that during the commotions which followed the death of Nero the contest for the purple turned the eyes of the world from every other object. All persons of consequence interested themselves in the success of some of the contending parties; and the legates in Britain, suspended in expectation of the issue of such mighty quarrels, remained unactive till it could be determined for what master they were to conquer.

On the side of the Roman government these seem to have been some of the causes which so long protracted the fate of Britain. Others arose from the nature of the country itself, and from the manners of its inhabitants. The country was then extremely woody and full of mora.s.ses.

There were originally no roads. The motion of armies was therefore difficult, and communication in many cases impracticable. There were no cities, no towns, no places of cantonment for soldiers; so that the Roman forces were obliged to come into the field late and to leave it early in the season. They had no means to awe the enemy, and to prevent their machinations during the winter. Every campaign they had nearly the same work to begin. When a civilized nation suffers some great defeat, and loses some place critically situated, such is the mutual dependence of the several parts by commerce, and by the orders of a well-regulated community, that the whole is easily secured. A long-continued state of war is unnatural to such a nation. They abound with artisans, with traders, and a number of settled and unwarlike people, who are less disturbed in their ordinary course by submitting to almost any power than in a long opposition; and as this character diffuses itself through the whole nation, they find it impossible to carry on a war, when they are deprived of the usual resources. But in a country like ancient Britain there are as many soldiers as inhabitants. They unite and disperse with ease. They require no pay nor formal subsistence; and the hards.h.i.+ps of an irregular war are not very remote from their ordinary course of life. Victories are easily obtained over such a rude people, but they are rarely decisive; and the final conquest becomes a work of time and patience. All that can be done is to facilitate communication by roads, and to secure the princ.i.p.al avenues and the most remarkable posts on the navigable rivers by forts and stations. To conquer the people, you must subdue the nature of the country. The Romans at length effected this; but until this was done, they never were able to make a perfect conquest.

I shall now add something concerning the government the Romans settled here, and of those methods which they used to preserve the conquered people under an entire subjection. Those nations who had either pa.s.sively permitted or had been instrumental in the conquest of their fellow-Britons were dignified with the t.i.tle of allies, and thereby preserved their possessions, laws, and magistrates: they were subject to no kind of charge or tribute. But as their league was not equal, and that they were under the protection, of a superior power, they were entirely divested of the right of war and peace; and in many cases an appeal lay to Rome in consequence of their subordinate and dependent situation. This was the lightest species of subjection; and it was generally no more than a step preparatory to a stricter government.

The condition of those towns and communities called _municipia_, by their being more closely united to the greater state, seemed to partake a degree less of independence. They were adopted citizens of Rome; but whatever was detracted from their ancient liberty was compensated by a more or less complete possession of the privileges which const.i.tuted a Roman city, according to the merits which had procured their adoption.

These cities were models of Rome in little; their courts and magistrates were the same; and though they were at liberty to retain their old laws, and to make new at their pleasure, they commonly conformed to those of Rome. The _municipia_ were not subject to tribute.

When a whole people had resisted the Roman power with great obstinacy, had displayed a readiness to revolt upon every occasion, and had frequently broken their faith, they were reduced into what the Romans called the form of a province: that is, they lost their laws, their liberties, their magistrates; they forfeited the greatest part of their lands; and they paid a heavy tribute for what they were permitted to retain.

In these provinces the supreme government was in the praetor sent by the senate, who commanded the army, and in his own person exercised the judicial power. Where the sphere of his government was large, he deputed his legates to that employment, who judged according to the standing laws of the republic, aided by those occasional declarations of law called the praetorial edicts. The care of the revenue was in the quaestor.

He was appointed to that office in Rome; but when he acted in a judicial capacity, it was always by commission from the praetor of the province.[19] Between these magistrates and all others who had any share in the provincial government the Roman manners had established a kind of sacred relation, as inviolable as that of blood.[20] All the officers were taught to look up to the praetor 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 inst.i.tutions, it operated strongly towards its princ.i.p.al purpose, the security of dominion, which is by nothing so much exposed as the factions and compet.i.tions 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 t.i.tle either imperial or praetorial authority, the ancient praetors dwindled into his legates, by which the splendor and importance of that dignity were much diminished.

The business of the quaestor at this time seems to have been transferred to the emperor's procurator. The whole of the public 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 praetors.h.i.+p 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.[21] And though his power was at first restrained within narrow bounds, and all his judgments were subject to a review and reversal by the praetor and the senate, he gradually grew into independence of both, and was at length by Claudius invested with a jurisdiction absolutely uncontrollable. Two causes, I imagine, joined to produce this change: first, the sword was in the hands of the legate; the policy of the emperors, 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 connection between the inferior officers of the empire and the senate[22] 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 district, and renders him accountable to his master alone for the abuse of it.

The veteran soldiers were always thought ent.i.tled to a settlement in the country which had been subdued by their valor. The whole legion, with the tribunes, the centurions, and all the subordinate officers, were seated on an allotted portion of the conquered lands, which were distributed among them according to their rank. These colonies were disposed throughout the conquered country, so as to sustain each other, to surround the possessions that were left to the conquered, to mix with the _municipia_ or free towns, and to overawe the allies. Rome extended herself by her colonies into every part of her empire, and was everywhere 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 republic, strengthened the monarchy.

Before the part.i.tions 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 praetor, 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.

As they had framed the action _de pecuniis repetundis_ against the avarice and rapacity of the provincial governors, they made at length a law[23] which, one may say, was against their virtues. For they prohibited them from receiving addresses of thanks on their administration, or any other public mark of acknowledgment, lest they should 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 an humanity too popular.

These are some of the civil and political methods 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 interior 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 munic.i.p.al towns was formed by great roads, which they called military ways. The two princ.i.p.al 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 show them to have been in their perfection n.o.ble works, in all respects worthy the Roman military prudence and the majesty of the Empire. The Anglo-Saxons called them streets.[24] 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 _dec.u.ma_, 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 praetor, at a price estimated by himself. Even what remained was still subject to be bought up in the some 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 public, 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 pa.s.sing 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 s.h.i.+pping, for military stores and provisions, and for defraying the expense of the praetor and his legates on the various circuits they made for the administration of the province. This last charge became frequently a means of great oppression, and several ways were from time to time attempted, but with little effect, to confine it within reasonable bounds.[25] Amongst the extraordinary impositions must be reckoned the obligation they laid on the provincials to labor at the public works, after the manner of what the French call the _corvee_, and we term statute-labor.

As the provinces, burdened 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 public 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 the 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 favorites and wealthy n.o.bility 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 public 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 flourish in a burdened 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] There is a curious instance of a ceremony not unlike this in a fragment of an ancient Runic history, which it may not be disagreeable to compare with this part of the British manners. ”Ne vero regent ex improviso adoriretur Ulafus, admoto sacculo suo, eundem quatere cpit, carmen simul magic.u.m obmurmurans, hac verborum formula: Duriter increpetur c.u.m tonitru; stringant Cyclopia tela; injiciant manum Parcae; ... acriter excipient monticolae genii plurimi, atque gigantes ...

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