VIII. that they assailed the liberties of Armorica2, but CHAP. none that they contested with the Britons the enjoyment of their independence. THE Britons, who had been strong enough to repulse from their island the barbarians who had overrun Gaul, or who had taken advantage of that calamity to molest them, could not have been subdued without a serious invasion. Even the exposed and inferior Armorica maintained a vigorous resistance. But the dismal aspect of the Roman state, during the fifth century, coincides with the absolute silence of authors to prove that the Romans forbore to invade the British independence. ; THE majesty of the capitol had departed; the world no longer crouched in submission before it and even its own subjects are said to have rejoiced over its ruin. The Goths conquered Spain; a rebel arose from the tomb of Honorius; another general repeated the treason of Stilicho; and the terrible Genseric embarked with his Vandals against Africa: even Ætius was a subject of dubious fidelity. At the head of 60,000 barbarians he extorted the honours he enjoyed, maintained his connection with the Huns and Alaric, and had to withstand the Francs and Suevi. The son of Alaric besieged Narbonne, the Belgic provinces were invaded by another event, which, he says, lately happened, "illustris nuper sacra comes additus aulæ :" marking this honour as a recent event in 416, implies that the others were not recent; hence there is no reason to place him in Britain after 409. 2 Du Bos, Hist. Crit. p. 213., thinks, that the revolt of Armorica contributed more than any other event to establish la monarchie Françoise in Gaul. Armorica comprehended five of the seventeen provinces of Gaul. On its struggles for liberty, see Du Bos, and 1 Mascou, 453. 476.; also 3 Gibbon, 275.—It had afterwards many unfavourable conflicts with the Francs. Greg. Tours. lib. iv. and v. Freculphus, lib. ii. c. 22. BOOK the Burgundians, and the desolating Attila at last burst upon Gaul." BUT whatever was the cause which induced Honorius to permit, or withhold his successors from molesting, the independence of Britain, it was an event which might have been made beneficial to every class of its inhabitants. The Romans had, in the beginning of their conquests in Britain, from motives of self-preservation, endeavoured to civilise it. When by their incentives, the national mind had been diverted from habits of warfare, to the enjoyments of luxury and the pursuits of commerce, the natives shared in the prosperity, the vices, and the institutions of the governing empire. At the end of the fourth century, the evils of corrupted civilisation, and of its invariable attendant, a weak, tyrannical, and oppressive government, were dissolving in every part the decaying fabric of the Roman dominion. Its state at this period has been described to us by a contemporary, who though he writes with the antithesis without the genius of Seneca, yet was a man of sense and piety, and saw clearly and felt strongly the mischiefs which he laments, and the ruin to which they tended. He, after detailing the social vices of the Roman world at that time-its general selfishness, rivalry, envy, profligacy, avarice, sensuality, and malignant competitions, expatiates on one important fact, which deserves our peculiar notice, from its destructive hostility to the stability of the empire, as well as to the welfare of every individual. This was not 3 See Gibbon, iii. p. 262-271., and 327–432. 4 This was Salvian, an ecclesiastic of Marseilles. It occurs in his treatise De Gubernatione Dei, which is published in the Magna Bibliotheca Patrum, vol. v. merely the weight and repetition of the taxations imposed by the government, but still more, the permitted and overwhelming oppressions of the authorised tax-gatherers, exceeding their authority, and converting their office into the means of the most arbitrary and ruinous oppressions. CHAP. VIII. Roman provinces. HE He says, "In all the cities, municipia, and vil- State of the lages, there are as many tyrants as there are officers of the government; they devour the bowels of the citizens, and their widows and orphans; public burthens are made the means of private plunder; the collection of the national revenue is made the instrument of individual peculation; none are safe from the devastations of these depopulating robbers. The public taxation is a continual destruction: the burthens, though severe, would be more tolerable, if borne by all equally and in common; but they are partially imposed and arbitrarily levied: hence many desert their farms and dwellings to escape the violence of the exactors; they seek exile to avoid punishment. Such an overwhelming and unceasing proscription hangs over them, that they desert their habitations, that they may not be tormented in them."5 SUCH were the evils under which the people of the Roman empire were groaning, from the conduct of the officers of the public revenue, who seem to have resembled Turkish Pashas. The disastrous consequences to the empire itself are as forcibly delineated. "FROM these oppressions many, and those not of obscure birth but of liberal education, fly to our national enemies (that is, the barbaric nations press 5 Salvian, p. 89. 91. II. BOOK ing on the Roman empire); that they may not perish under the afflictions of legal prosecutions. And although the people to whom they retire differ in religion, language, and ruder manners, yet they prefer to suffer the inconveniences of dissimilar customs among barbarians, than ruinous injustice among Romans. They emigrate to the Goths, to the Bagaudæ, and other ruling barbarians, and do not repent the change."" THIS preference given by the Roman people to the protection of the barbaric government, to that under which they had been brought up, explains impressively the facility, with which the German nations, at this period, overwhelmed the Roman empire. He mentions it repeatedly and emphatically. "THUS the name of Roman citizen, once so valued and bought so dearly, is now spontaneously repudiated and shunned: it is esteemed not only useless but abominable. What can be a greater evidence of the iniquity of the Roman administration, than that so many both noble and honourable families, and to whom the Roman state ought to be the means of the highest honour and splendour, are driven to this extremity, that they will be no longer Romans ?"7 His next assertion is, that, if they did not emigrate to the barbaric nations, they became part of those affiliated robbers who were called Bagaudæ. 7 Ibid. 8 6 Salv. p. 90. 8 To Scaliger's note on the Bagaudæ, Animad. Euseb. 243., we may add that Bagat, in the Armoric, is a troop or crew. Lhuyd Archaiol. 196. Bagach, in Irish, is warlike. Bagach, in Erse, is fighting. Bagad, in Welsh, is multitude. Du Cange mentions VIII. "THEY who do not fly to the barbarians, become CHAP. themselves barbarians. In this state is a large portion of Spain, and no small part of Gaul. Roman The Baoppression makes all men no longer Romans. The gauda. Bagaudæ are those who, plundered and maltreated by base and bloody judges, after they had been deprived of the right of Roman liberty, choose to lose the honours of the Roman name. We call them rebels and traitors, but we have compelled them to become criminal. By what other causes are they made Bagaudæ but by our iniquities; by the dishonesty of our judges; by the proscriptions and rapine of those who convert the public exactions into emoluments for themselves; who make the appointed taxations the means of their own plunder; — they fly to the public foe to avoid the tax-gatherer."" HE declares these feelings to have been universal. "HENCE there is but one wish among all the Romans; that they did not live subject to the Roman laws. There is one consenting prayer among the Roman population, that they might dwell under the barbarian government. Thus our brethren not only refuse to leave these nations for their own, but they fly from us to them. Can we then wonder that the Goths are not conquered by us, when the people would rather become Goths with them than Romans with us."10 bayeva, vagare, and Boguedim, Hebrew for rebellis. Glos. Med. Lat. i. p. 432. See their history in Du Cange, ib., and Du Bos, p. 204. 9 Salv. p. 90, 91. 10 Salv. 92. I cannot dismiss this author without noticing the intimation he gives us of the moral benefit which the irruptions of the |