terest 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 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, 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. CHAPTER IV. THE FALL OF THE ROMAN POWER IN BRITAIN. A. D. 117. AFTER the period which we have 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 exterior policy of Rome. Although some of the emperors contented themselves with those limits which they found at their accession, none before this prince had actually contracted the bounds of the Empire: for, being more perfectly acquainted with all the countries that composed it than any of his predecessors, what was strong and what weak, and having formed to himself a plan wholly defensive, he purposely abandoned several large tracts of territory, that he might render what remained more solid and compact. A. D. 121. A. D. 140. This plan particularly affected Britain. 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 successor, Antoninus 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 estab lished by that general were connected with a continued wall. A. D. 207 A. D. 208. 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 Britain had grown into one of the most considerable provinces of the Empire, and was at the same time in a danger ous situation, resolved to visit that island in person, and to provide for its security. He led a vast 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 emperor 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 establishment in that country. On the contrary, 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 emperor such considerable improvements and repairs that it has since been called the Wall of Severus. A. D. 209. Severus with great labor 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 affords to a power master of the sea, by the bays, friths, and lakes with which it is everywhere 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 af fairs 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 emperors, 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 show the reason of introducing them in this place, with regard to the Empire in general, and to Britain more particularly. It was In the division which Diocletian first made of the Roman territory, the western provinces, in which Britain was included, fell to Maximian. 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 Boulogne. 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 northwest parts of Gaul and the opposite shore of Britain. 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 |