As long as the condition of the imperial city itself was tolerably easy, and the provinces had not yet been flooded with the vice, corruption and misery which called for and rendered possible the victories of the barbarians, the condition of the provincial decurions was on the whole one of honour and advantage. They formed a kind of nobility, a class distinguished from their fellow-citizens by a certain rank and privileges, as they were assuredly also distinguished from them by superior wealth: they resembled in fact an aristocracy of county families at this day, with its exclusive possession of the magistrature and other local advantages. On the other hand they were responsible for the public dues, the levies, the annona or victualling of forces, the tributum or raising of the assessed taxes; and thus they were rendered immediately subject to the exactions of the fiscal authorities, and especially exposed to the caprice and illegal demands of the Roman officials[[767]]—a class universally infamous for tyrannical extortion in the provinces: and in yet later times, when the land itself frequently became deserted, through the burthen of taxation and exaction[[768]], they were compelled to undertake the cultivation of the relinquished estates, that the fiscus might be no loser. Gradually as the bond which held the fragments of the empire together was loosened, and as limb after limb dropped away from the mouldering colossus, the condition of a Decurion became so oppressive that it was found necessary to press citizens by force into the office: some committed suicide, others expatriated themselves, in order to escape it. The state was obliged to forbid by law the sale of property for the purpose of avoiding it; freemen went into the ranks, or subjected themselves to voluntary servitude, as a preferable alternative; nay at length vagabonds, people of bad character, even malefactors, were literally condemned to it[[769]]. This tends perhaps more than any fact to prove the gradual ruin of the municipal as well as the social fabric, and the miserable condition of the provinces under the later emperors.
However, in the better days of Vespasian, Trajan and the Antonines we are not to look for such a state of society; and in the provinces, the Ordo, though exposed to many harsh and painful conditions, yet held a position of comparative dignity and influence. I have compared them to a county aristocracy, but there is perhaps a nearer parallel, for in the Roman empire it is difficult to distinguish the county from the town. The position of the Decurions can hardly be made clearer than by a reference to the Select (that is self-elected) Vestries of our great metropolitan parishes before the passing of Sir John Hobhouse’s Acts; or to the town-councillors and aldermen of our country-towns, before the enactment of the Municipal Corporations’ Bill. Whoso remembers these bodies with their churchwardens on the one hand, their mayors, borough-reeves and aldermen on the other,—their exclusive jurisdiction as a magistracy,—their exclusive possession of corporation property, tolls, rents and other sources of wealth,—their private rights in the common land, held by themselves or delegated to their clients,—their custody of the public buildings, and sole management of civic or charitable funds,—their patronage as trustees of public institutions,—their franchise as electors,—their close family alliances, and the methods by which they contrived to recruit their diminished numbers, till they became a very aristocracy among a people of commoners[[770]],—whoso, I say, considers these phænomena of our own day, need have little difficulty not only in understanding the condition of a Decurion in the better days of the Roman empire: but, if he will cast his thought back into earlier ages, he may find in them no little illustration of the nature, rights and policy of the Patriciate, under the Republic.
Other cities of a less favoured description were governed directly as præfectures, by an officer sent from Rome, who centred in himself all the higher branches of administration: in these cities the functions of the Ordo were greatly curtailed; little was left them but to attend to the police of the town and markets, the determination of trifling civil suits, the survey of roads or buildings; and, in conjunction with the heads of the guilds (“collegia opificum”) the vain and mischievous attempt to regulate wages and prices. On the other hand a few cities had what was called the Jus Italicum, or right to form a free corporation, in every respect identical with those of the cities of Italy, that is to say identical in plan with that of Rome itself. The provinces of the Roman empire must have contained many of these privileged states which thus enjoyed a valuable pre-eminence over their neighbours, the reward of public services: but history has been sparing of their names, and in western Europe, three only, Cologne, Vienne and Lyons are particularly mentioned[[771]]. In all the cities which had not this privilege, after the close of the fourth century we find a particular officer called the Defensor, who was not to be one of the curiales, who was to be elected by the whole body of the citizens and not by the curiales only, and who must therefore be looked upon in a great degree as the representative of the popular against the aristocratic element, as the support of the Cives against the Senatus and Duumvir. In the cities of Gaul, the bishops for the most part occupied this position, which necessarily led to results of the highest importance, from the peculiar relation in which it placed them to the barbarian invaders[[772]]. From all these details it appears that very different measures of municipal freedom were granted under different circumstances.
We have considered the general principles of Roman provincial government, and we now ask, how were these applied in the case of Britain? The answer is much more difficult to give than might be imagined. Wealthy as this country was, and capable of conducing to the power and well-being of its masters, it seems never to have received a generous, or even fair treatment from them. The Briton was to the last, as at the first, “penitus toto divisus orbe Britannus,” and his land, always “ultima Thule,” was made indeed to serve the avarice or ambition of the ruler, but derived little benefit to itself from the rule. “Levies, Corn, Tribute, Mortgages, Slaves”—under these heads was Britain entered in the vast ledger of the Empire. The Roman records do not tell us much of the details of government here, and we may justly say that we are more familiar with the state of an eastern or an Iberian city than we are with that of a British one. A few technical words, perfectly significant to a people who, above all others, symbolized a long succession of facts under one legal term, are all that remain to us; and unfortunately the jurists and statesmen and historians whose works we painfully consult in hopes of rescuing the minutest detail of our early condition, are satisfied with the use of general terms which were perfectly intelligible to those for whom they wrote, but teach us little. “Ostorius Scapula reduced the hither Britain to the form of a province[[773]],”—conveyed ample information to those who took the institutions of the Empire for granted wherever its eagles flew abroad: to us they are nearly vain words, a detailed explanation of which would be valuable beyond all calculation, for it would contain the secret of the weakness and the sudden collapse of the Empire. But what little we can gather from ancient sources does not induce us to believe that Britain met with a just or enlightened measure of treatment at the hands of her victors. Violence on the one hand, seduction on the other, were employed to destroy the spirit of resistance, but we do not learn that submission and docility were rewarded by the communication of a fair share of those advantages which spring from peace and cultivation. Agricola, whose information his severe and accomplished son-in-law must be considered to reproduce, tells us that, on the whole, the Britons were not difficult subjects to rule, as long as they were not insulted by a capricious display of power: “The Britons themselves are not backward in raising the levies and taxes, or filling the offices[[774]], if they are only not exposed to insult in doing it. Insult they will not submit to; for we have beaten them into obedience, but by no means yet into slavery.” In this peaceable disposition Agricola saw the readiest means of producing a complete and radical subjection to Rome; and on this basis he formed his plan of rendering resistance powerless. He entirely relinquished the forcible method of his predecessors and applied himself to break down the national spirit by the spreading of foreign arts and luxuries among the people; judging rightly that the seductive allurements of ease and cultivation would ere long prove more efficient and less costly instruments than the constant and dangerous exercise of military coercion. “Those who did not deeply sound the purposes of men, called this civilization; but it was part and parcel of slavery itself[[775]].” Temples there were, fora, porticoes, baths and luxurious feasts, Roman manners and Roman vices, and to support them loans, usurious mortgages and ruin. But we seek in vain for any evidence of the Romanized Britons having been employed in any offices of trust or dignity, or permitted to share in the really valuable results of civilization: there is no one Briton recorded of whom we can confidently assert that he held any position of dignity and power under the imperial rule: the historians, the geographers, nay even the novelists (who so often supply incidental notices of the utmost interest), are here consulted in vain; nor in the many inscriptions which we possess relating to Britain, can we point out one single British name. The caution of Augustus and Tiberius had from the first detected the difficulties which would attend the maintenance of the Roman authority in Britain: the feeling at home was, that it would be much more profitable to raise a small revenue in Gaul upon the British exports and imports, than to attempt to draw tribute from the island, which would require a considerable military force for its collection[[776]]. During their administration therefore the island was left undisturbed; and even after Claudius had relinquished this wise moderation, and engaged the Roman arms in a career of unceasing struggles, Nero felt anxious to abandon a conquest which promised little to the state and could only be maintained by the most exhausting efforts. That this reasonable object was defeated in part by the vanity of the Romans themselves is probable[[777]]: but a more cogent reason is to be found in the interests of the noble usurers, of which we have seen so striking an example in the philosophical Seneca. Against such motives even the moderation and justice of an Agricola could avail but little: and after his recall and disgrace by Domitian, it is easy to imagine that the Roman officials here would not be too anxious by their good government to attain a dangerous popularity. Selfish and thoroughly unprincipled as the Roman government was in all its dependencies, it is little to be thought that it would manifest any unusual tenderness in this distant, unprofitable and little known possession: and I think we cannot entertain the least doubt that the condition of the British aborigines was from the first one of oppression, and was to the very last a mere downward progress from misery to misery. But such a system as this—ruinous to the conquered, and beneficial even to the conquerors only as long as they could maintain the law of force—had no inherent vitality. It rested upon a crime,—a sin which in no time or region has the providence of the Almighty blessed,—the degradation of one class on pretext of benefiting another. And as the sin, so was also the retribution. The Empire itself might have endured here, had the Romans taught the Britons to be men, and reconstituted a vigorous state upon that basis, in the hour of ruin, when province after province was torn away from the city, and the curse of an irresponsible will in feeble hands was felt through every quarter of the convulsed and distracted body. But the Britons had been taught the arts and luxuries of cultivation that they might be enervated. Disarmed, except when a jealous policy called for levies to be drafted into distant armies,—congregated into cities on the Roman plan, that they might forget the dangerous freedom of their forests,—attracted to share and emulate the feasts of the victors, that they might learn to abhor the hard but noble fare of a squalid liberty,—supported and encouraged in internal war, that union might not bring strength, and that the Roman slave-dealer might not lack the objects of his detestable traffic,—how should they develop the manly qualities on which the greatness of a nation rests? How should they be capable of independent being, who had only been trained as instruments for the ambition, or victims to the avarice, of others? To crown all, their beautiful daughters might serve to amuse the softer hours of their lordly masters; but there was to be no connubium, and thus a half-caste race inevitably arose among them, growing up with all the vices of the victors, all the disqualifications of the vanquished. Nor under such circumstances can population follow a healthy course of development, and a hardy race be produced to recruit the power and increase the resources of the state. No price is indeed too great to pay for civilization,—the root of all individual and national power; but mere cultivation may easily be purchased far too dearly. It is not worth its cost if it is obtained only by the sacrifice of all that makes life itself of value.
Such, upon the severest and most impartial examination of the facts which we possess, seems to me to have been the condition of the British population under the Romans. No otherwise can we even plausibly account for the instantaneous collapse of the imperial authority: it fell, with one vast and sudden ruin, the moment the artificial supports upon which it relied, were removed. Had Britain not been utterly exhausted by mal-administration, had there remained men to form a reserve, and resources to victual an army, the last commander who received the mandate of recall, would probably have thrown off his allegiance, and proclaimed himself a competitor for empire. Many tried the perilous game; all lost it, because the country was incapable of furnishing the means to maintain a contest: and in the meanwhile, the Saxons proceeded to settle the question in their own way. As such a state of society supplied no materials for the support of the Roman power, so it furnished no elements of self-subsistence when that power was removed; when that hour at length arrived, the possibility of which the overweening confidence in the fortune of the city had never condescended to contemplate. Before the eyes of all the nations, and amidst the ruins of a world falling to pieces in confusion, was this awful lesson written in gigantic characters by the hand of God—that authority which rules ill, which rules for its own selfish ends alone, is smitten with weakness, and shall not endure. It was then that a long-delayed, but not the less awful retribution burst at last upon the enfeebled empire. Goth and Vandal, Frank and Sueve and Saxon lacerated its defenceless frontiers; the terrible Attila—the Scourge of God—ravaged with impunity its fairest provinces; the eternal city itself twice owed its safety to the superstition or the contemptuous mercy of the barbarians whose forefathers had trembled at its name even in the depths of their forest fastnesses; the legions, unable to maintain themselves, and called—but called in vain—to defend a state perishing by its own corruptions, left Britain exposed to the attack of fierce and barbarous enemies that thronged on every side. Without arms and discipline, and what is far more valuable than these, the spirit of self-reliance and faith in the national existence, the Britons perished as they stood: bowing to the inevitable fate, they passed only from one class of task-masters to another, and slowly mingled with the masses of the new conquerors, or fell in ill-conducted and hopeless resistance to their progress.
The Keltic laws and monuments themselves supply conclusive evidence of the justice of these general observations. Throughout all the ages during which these populations were in immediate contact with Rome, not a single ray of Keltic nationality is able to penetrate. It is only among the mountains of the Cymri, a savage race, as little subjugated by the Romans, as even to this moment by ourselves, that a trace of that nationality is to be found. There indeed, guarded by fortresses which nature itself made impregnable, the heartblood of Keltic society was allowed to beat; and the barbarians whom policy affected or luxury could afford to despise, grew up in an independence, features of which we can still recognize in their legal and poetical remains. The pride of the invaders might be soothed by the erection of a few castra, or praesidia or castella in the Welsh marches; the itinerary of an emperor might finish in a commercial city on the Atlantic; but in Wales the Romans had hardly a foot of ground which they did not overshadow with the lines of their fortresses; and to the least instructed eye, the chain of fortified posts which guard every foot of ground to the east of the Severn tells of a contemplated retreat and defence upon the base of that strong line of entrenchments.
And yet how insufficient are the laws and triads of the Cymri in point of mere antiquity! Let us do all honour to the praiseworthy burst of Keltic patriotism which has revived in our day: let us even concede that some few of the triads may carry us back to the sixth century: yet the earliest Cymric laws of which the slightest trace can be discovered, are those of Hywel in the tenth. And even, if with a courteous desire to do justice to the subject, we admit the historical existence of the fabulous Dynwall and fabulous Marcia[[778]], who has even insinuated that a single sentence of their codes survive; or that, if even if such existed, they had currency a single foot to the eastward of the Severn? Who can imagine that such laws ever had authority beyond the boundaries of a solitary sept, more fortunate than the rest, inasmuch as its record has not, like those of others, perished?
More directly to the purpose is the information we derive from Gildas, whose patriotism is beyond suspicion, and whose antiquity gives his assertions some claim to our respect[[779]]. He tells us that on the final departure of the Romans, including the armatus miles, militaires copiae, and rectores immanes (by which last words he may possibly intend the civil officers called rectores provinciarum), Britain was omnis belli usu penitus ignara, utterly ignorant of the practice of war[[780]]: the island was consequently soon overrun by predatory bands of Picts and Scots whose ravages reduced the inhabitants to the extremest degree of misery: and these incursions were followed at no great interval of time by so violent a pestilence that the living were hardly numerous enough to bury the dead[[781]]. Then having briefly noticed the savage invasion of the Saxons, and a defeat which he says they sustained at Bath, and which is supposed to have been given them by Arthur in the year 520, he thus continues: “But not even now, as before, are the cities of my country inhabited; deserted and destroyed, they lie neglected even unto this day: for civil wars continue, though foreign wars have ceased[[782]].” We can easily imagine that a nation in anything like the state which Gildas describes, might suffer severely from the brigandage of banditti in the interior; and on the frontier, from raids and forays of the Picts and Scots. Attacks which even the disciplined soldiery of Rome found it necessary to bridle by means of such structures as the walls of Hadrian, Antonine and Severus, must have had terror enough for a disarmed and disheartened population; nor is it in the least degree improbable that the universal disorder, the withdrawal of the legions and some new immigration of Teutonic adventurers set in motion populations, which in various parts of the country had hitherto rested quietly under the nominal control of the Roman arms. But still it is not without surprise that we notice the absence of all evidence that the Britons even attempted to maintain the cities the Romans had left them, or to make a vigorous defence behind their solid fortifications, inexpugnable one would think by rude undisciplined assailants. It is true, we are told that in half a century England had gone entirely out of cultivation, and that the land had again become covered with forests which alone supplied food for the inhabitants[[783]]: but if this were really the case—and it is not entirely improbable—it can only have had the effect of driving the population into the cities. That these were to a great extent still standing in the fifth century is certain, since Gildas, in the sixth, represents them as deserted and decaying; that the Saxons found them yet entire is obvious; in the tenth and twelfth centuries their ancient grandeur attracted the attention of observant historians[[784]]; and even yet their remains testify to the astonishing skill and foresight of their builders. I cannot therefore but believe that Britain really was, as described, disarmed and disheartened, and most probably so depopulated as to be incapable of any serious defence: a condition which throws a hideous light upon the nature of the Roman rule and the practices of Roman civilized life.
It is highly improbable that any large number of the Roman towns perished during the harassing period within which the Pictish invasions fall, at all events by violent means. The marauding forays of such barbarians are not accompanied with battering trains or supported by the skilful combinations of an experienced commissariat: wandering banditti have neither the means to destroy such masonry as the Romans erected, the time to execute, nor in general the motive to form such plans of subversion. One or two cities may possibly have fallen under the furious storm of the Saxons, and Anderida is recorded to have done so: more than this seems to me unlikely: Keltic populations have generally been found capable of making a very good defence behind walls, in spite of the ridiculous accounts which Gildas gives of their ineffectual resistance to the Picts[[785]]. The Roman cities perished, it is true, but by a far slower and surer process than that of violent disruption; they crumbled away under the hand of time, the ruinous consequences of neglect, and the operation of natural causes, which science finds no difficulty in assigning. We may believe that the gradual impoverishment of the land had driven the population to crowd into cities, even before the retreat of the legions; and that the troublous era of the tyrants[[786]] completely emptied the country into the towns. But even if we suppose that citizens remained and, what is rather an extravagant supposition, that they remained undisturbed in their old seats, we shall find that there are obvious reasons why they could not maintain themselves therein. There are conditions necessary to the very existence of towns, and without which it is impossible that they should continue to endure. They must have town-lands, and they must have manufactures and trade: in other words they must either grow bread or buy it: but to this end they must have the means of safe and ready communication with country districts, or with other towns which have this. It matters not whether that communication be by the sea, as in the case of Tyre and Carthage[[787]]; over the desert, as at Bagdad and Aleppo; down the river or canal, along the turnpike road, or yet more compendious railway: easy and safe communication is the condition sine qua non, of urban existence.
Let us apply these principles to the case before us. Even supposing that Gildas and other authors have greatly exaggerated the state of rudeness into which the country had fallen, yet we may be certain that one of the very first results of a general panic would be the obstruction of the ancient roads and established modes of communication. It is certain that this would be followed at first by a considerable desertion of the towns; since every one would anxiously strive to secure that by which he could feed himself and his family; in preference to continuing in a place which no longer offered any advantages beyond those of temporary defence and shelter. The retirement of the Romans, emigration of wealthy aborigines, general discomfort and disorganization of the social condition, and ever imminent terror of invasion, must soon have put a stop to those commercial and manufacturing pursuits which are the foundation of towns and livelihood of townspeople. Internal wars and merciless factions which ever haunt the closing evening of states, increased the misery of their condition; and a frightful pestilence, by Gildas attributed to the superfluity of luxuries, but which may far more probably be accounted for by the want of food, completed the universal ruin.