But he conquered Britain. Therefore he established his language. Add to this that where he established his own language, there the native tongue became obliterated. Therefore the British died off.
If so, the Angles—when they effected their conquest—must have displaced, by their own English, a Latin rather than a British, form of speech.
But is this the legitimate inference from the passage in question? No. On the contrary, it is a conclusion by no means warranted by the premises. Nevertheless, as far as external testimony is concerned, there are no better premises to be found.
But there is another element in our reasoning. In four large districts at least,—in the Spanish Peninsula, in France, in the Grisons, and in the Danubian Principalities—the present language is a derivative from the Latin, which was, undoubtedly and undeniably, introduced by the Roman conquest. From such clear and known instances, the reasoning to the obscure and unknown is a legitimate analogy, and the inference is that Britain was what Gallia, Rhætia, Hispania, and Dacia were.
In this we have a second reason for the fact that there are many who, with Arnold, hold, that except in the particular case of Greece, the Roman world, in general, at the date of the break-up of the Empire, was Latin in respect to its language. At any rate, Britannia is reasonably supposed to be in the same category with Dacia—a country conquered later.
On the other hand, however, there are the following considerations.
I. In the first place the Angle conquest was gradual; so gradual as to give us an insight into the character of the population that was conquered. Was this (in language) Latin? There is no evidence of its having been so. But is there evidence of its having been British? A little. How much, will be considered in the sequel.
II. In the next place the Angle conquest was (and is) incomplete; inasmuch as certain remains of the earlier and non-Angle population still exist. Are these Latin? Decidedly not; but on the contrary British,—witness the present Britons of Wales, and the all but British Cornish-men, who are now British in blood, and until the last century were, more or less, British in language as well.
But this is not all. There was a third district which was slow to become Angle, viz.: part of the mountain district of Cumberland and Westmoreland. What was this before it was Angle? Not Roman but British.