The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12)

mankind, seems to have made it a settled maxim of his reign not to extend the Empire. He found himself at the head of a new monarchy; and he was more s

maxims of an usurper. Having made it a rule never to remove far from the capital, and jealous of every reputation which seemed too great for the measure of a subject, he neither under

t of execution without reason. And adding ridicule to his disgrace, his soldiers returned to Rome loaded with shells. These spoils he displayed as the ornaments of a triumph which he celebrate

emote and little known, so that every exploit there, as if achieved in another world, appeared at Rome with double pomp and lustre; whilst the sea, which divided Britain from the continent, prevented a failure in that island from being followed by any consequences alarming to the body of the Empire. A pretext was not wanting to this war. The maritime Britons, while the terror of the Roman arms remained fresh

thward of the Thames, the best cultivated and most accessible parts of the island. But the inhabitants of the rough inland countries, the people called Cattivellauni, made a more strenuous opposition. They were under the command of Caractacus, a chief of great and just renown amongst all the British nations. This leader wisely adjusted his conduct of

m an opportunity, from a more comprehensive victory, to extend the Roman province a considerable way to the northern and western parts of the island. The frontiers of this acquisition, which extended along the rivers Severn and Nen, he secured by a chain of forts and stations; the inland parts he quieted by the settlement of colonies of his veteran troops at Maldon and Verulam: and such was the beginning of those establishments which afterwards became so numerous in Britain. This commander was the first who traced in this island a plan of settlement and civil policy to concur with his military operations. For, after he had settled thes

untouched by the war. He could expect to make no progress to the northward, whilst an enemy of such importance hung upon his rear,-especially as they were now commanded by Caractacus, who preserved

e naked bravery of this gallant people, and defeated them in a great battle. A.D. 51Caractacus was soon after betrayed into their hands, and conveyed to Rome. The merit of the prisoner was the sole ornament of a triumph celebra

ould not be too highly rated. Being brought before the emperor, he behaved with such manly fortitude, and spoke of his former actions and his present condition with so much plain sense and unaffected dignity, that he moved the compassion of the empe

e imprudent words of the legate, threatening to extirpate, or, what appeared to them scarcely less dreadful, to transplant their nation. Their natural bravery thus hardened into despair, and inhabiting a country very difficult of access, they presented an impenetr

r of merit and experience, who, when he came to view the theatre of his future operations, and had well considered the nature of the country, discerned evidently that the war must of necessity be protracted to a great length, if he

rsed among all the British nations. Paulinus proposed, in reducing this their favorite and sacred seat, to destroy, or at least greatly to weaken, the body of the Druids,

d order, their hair dishevelled, their garments torn, torches in their hands, and, with an horror increased by the perverted softness of their sex, howled out the same curses and incantations with greater clamor.[15] Astonished at this sight, the Romans for some time neither advanced nor returned the darts of the enemy. But at length, rousing from their trance, and animating each other with the shame of yielding to the impotence of female and fanatical fury, they found the resistance by no means proportioned to the horror and solemnity of the preparations. These overstrained efforts had, as frequently happens, exhausted the spi

concerns of his subjects, and which, by giving the prince a prospect of one day sharing in all the great estates, whenever he was urged by avarice or necessity, naturally pointed out a resource by an anticipation always in his power. This practice extended into the provinces. A king of the Iceni[16] had devised a considerable part of his substance to the emperor. But the Roman procurator, not satisfied with entering into his master's portion, seized upon the rest,-and pursuing his injustice to the most horrible outrages, publicly scourged Boadicea, queen to the deceased prince, and violated his daughters. These cruelties, aggravated by the shame and scorn that attended them,-the general severity of the governmen

ned dispersed in different garrisons, he formed an army of ten thousand men, and marched to attack the enemy in the height of their success and security. The army of the Britons is said to have amounted to two hundred and thirty thousand;

nd encouraged his troops not to dread a multitude whose weight was dangerous only to themselves, piercing into the midst of that

exercised. This method would probably have succeeded to subdue, but at the same time to depopulate the n

ontent, therefore, with recovering the Roman province, these generals compounded, as it were, with the enemy for the rest of the island. They caressed the troops; they indulged them in their licentiousness; and not being of a character to repress the seditions that continually arose, th

D.

ilures and Brigantes,-one the most warlike, the other the most numerous people in the island. But its final reduction and perfect settlement were reserved for Julius Agricola, a man by whom, it was a happiness for the Britons to be conquered. He was endued with all t

e British nations comprehended in what we now call England yielded themselves to the Roman government, as soon as they found that peace was no longer to be considered as a dubious blessing. Agricola carefully secured the obedience of the conquered people by building forts and stations in the most important and commanding places. Having taken these precautions for securing his rear, he advanced northwards, and, penetrating into Caledonia as far as the river Tay, he there built a pr?tentura, or line of forts, between the two friths, which are in that place no more than twenty miles asunder. The enemy, says Tacitus, was removed as it were into another island. And this line Agricola seems to have destined as the boundary of the Empire. For though in the following year he carried his arms further, and, as it is thought, to the foot of the Grampian Mountains, and there defeated a

y sensible that a proper choice of officers is almost the whole of government. He eased the tribute of the province, not so much by reducing it in quantity as by cutting off all those vexatious practices which attended the levying of it, far more grievous than the imposition itself. Every step in securing the subjection of the conquered country was attended with the utmost care in providing for its peace and internal order. Agricola reconciled the Britons to the Roman government by reconciling them to the Roman manners. He moulded that fierce nation by degrees to soft and social customs, leading them imperceptibly

t 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 attribu

ecame 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

rk 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 ther

ellow-Britons were dignified with the title 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 wer

ed from their ancient liberty was compensated by a more or less complete possession of the privileges which constituted a Roman city, according to the merits which had procured their adoption. These cities were models of Rome in

uently broken their faith, they were reduced into what the Romans called the form of a province: that is, they lost their laws, their libert

tor. He was appointed to that office in Rome; but when he acted in a judicial capacity, it was always by commission from the pr?tor 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 pr?tor as their father, and to re

t the old office under this new appellation rose in proportion as the pr?torship 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 pr?tor 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 produ

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 mu

s, 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

xtent 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 t

they were sure of finding means, for they scrupled none, to repress him. It was not only the pr?tor, with his train of lictors and apparitors, the rods and the axes, and all the insolent parade of a conqueror's jurisdiction; every privat

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

d 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 show them to have been in their pe

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 pr?tor, 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

torium, which did not differ from those impositions whi

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 bo

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 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 public imposition and the rapaciousness of private usury. They were overrun by publicans, farmers of the taxes, agents, confiscators, usurers, b

TNO

o regent ex improviso adoriretur Ulafus, admoto sacculo suo, eundem quatere c?pit, carmen simul magicum obmurmurans, hac verborum formula: Duriter increpetur cum tonitru; stringant Cyclopia tela;

nts of Norfol

provectam, ut externis quoque gentibus

um insigni sufficere res suas crediderant

tiquo Jure Provinc

c. in V

s; quorum legatus in sanguinem, procurat

ocando, eam conditionem esse imperandi, ut non aliter

. Annal. X

Watling Street, Ikenild Street

lib. XII.