and some succeeding reigns were both very limited and. very precarious.

Julius Agricola, who governed it in the reign of Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian, was the first who formed a regular plan for completing the conquest, and rendering the acquisition useful to the conquerors. Among the Britons he introduced the Roman civility and laws; he reconciled them to the Roman manners and language; he instructed them in learning and the arts; he taught them to know and to covet all the conveniences and delicacies of life; he employed every soothing contrivance to render their fetters easy, and even fashionable. The inhabitants, taught, by direful experience, how dispro. portioned their military strength and military skill were to the military strength and military skill of the Romans, and lulled by the flattering scenes of ease and elegance, which were exhibited to their views and wishes, acquiesced in the splendid dominion of their masters, and were gradually incorporated as a portion of the mighty empire of Rome. b

Agricola disseminated the modes of Roman education among the sons of the British nobility; and improved them so well, that, in a short time, those who had most despised the Roman language, applied with ardour, to the study and the profession of Roman eloquence. An affectation of the Roman dress was the natural consequence; and the gown was considered in Britain as a splendid distinction. Luxury succeeded splendour and refinement; and the Britons were Romanised, without reflecting that the arts and accomplishments which were

liberal in a Roman, were, in a Briton, servile; and that what they viewed as the accompaniments of politeness, were, in reality, nothing better or nobler than the instruments of subjection.

The Romans held the possession and the government of the most considerable part of Britain near four hundred years. During that long period, a very frequent and intimate intercommunication of marriages, manners, customs, and laws must have taken place.

In the whole province there are said to have been about one hundred and fifty Roman stations. These were connected by inferiour fortresses, erected at proper distances, and garrisoned by regular troops. Each of those garrisons attracted the neighbouring inhabitants; a town or village was begun; and a settlement was formed indiscriminately by Roman and by native families. As military service was often rewarded with possessions in land, the example of the Roman officers and soldiers must have spread the knowledge and practice of agriculture, while their industry in the management of their estates contributed to beautify and improve the face of the country.

The connexion with Britain, which the soldiers of the Roman army formed by living in the country, was seldom dissolved, even when they were discharged from the service. They had gradually acquired an attachment to the places where they had long resided, and chose to continue that residence where their attachment was now formed. Their offspring became natural inhabitants;

b Tac. Agric. c. 21.-Millar. 16. 17.

© Millar, 10.

and Britain, in this manner, received fresh accessions of Romans, to supply the place of such natives as were drawn from it, in order to recruit the army in other provinces of the empire.

It was the policy of Rome to extend her jurisprudence wherever she had extended her dominion. This policy promoted her influence and her interest among the vanquished people; and, at the same time, established among them tranquillity and order. This policy was peculiarly necessary in Britain, to prevent the private wars, and restrain the mutual acts of violence and outrage, to which the inhabitants were remarkably addicted. The introduction and establishment of the Roman laws was unavoidably, however, a work of time. For a considerable period, the Roman magistrates confined their operations to the publick administration of the province; while the British chiefs were permitted to retain their ancient jurisdiction in matters of private property, and to determine the controversies of their tenants and dependents.

Some writers are of opinion, that this jurisdiction was gradually circumscribed, and, at last, entirely annihilated; and that, during the long government of the Romans, the original laws and customs of the Britons were disused and forgotten. Perhaps the more probable opinion is, that, during this extended succession of time, the two nations became blended together in their laws and customs, as well as by their intermarriages; so as to be neither wholly Roman, nor wholly British. Those laws, indeed, which related to government and the adminis tration of publick affairs, were, it may be presumed, altogether Roman.

Accordingly, when the exhausted empire was obliged to collect her last expiring efforts around the immediate seat of life and existence; the departure of the Romans from Britain was fatal to all the institutions of government which had been formed, ripened, and established during the long lapse of time, which we have already mentioned. The officers, who directed and managed the administration of the province, and the judges, who, at least in matters relating to publick law, had acquired a complete jurisdiction, retired from a country, abandoned by its master. The courts of justice were shut: government, and the order attendant on government, were dissolved. The rudder of the state knew no hand, which had a right to hold it: the vessel was, therefore, tossed at the pleasure of the winds and waves.

Time, however, and necessity gradually introduced some form of government, though a very simple one. The country was broken into districts, and placed under chiefs. A general of their united forces was appointed. Voltigern was the last, who was promoted to that high dignity.

From the foregoing deduction, it is highly probable, that, at the period to which we have now brought our remarks, the system of law in Britain, if, at that period, any kind of law deserved the name of a system, was a motley mixture of Roman and British institutions. The language, at that time used in Britain, was, as we have every reason to believe, a composition of the Roman and British tongues.

Sir William Blackstone mentions three instances, in which the British jurisprudence bears a great resemblance

to some of the modern doctrines of the English law. One is, the very notion itself of an oral unwritten law, delivered down from age to age, by custom and tradition merely. This seems derived from the practice of the Druids, who never committed any of their instructions to writing. This observation suggests a claim, unquestionably, to the notion of a common law subsisting among the Britons. But it, by no means, authorizes an exclusive claim. We have seen that, in the pure times of the Roman commonwealth, a customary law was known and highly respected at Rome. At the time when the Roman law was translated to Britain, it retained its customary qualities in their full vigour and extent.

The second instance mentioned by Sir William Blackstone is, the partible quality of lands by the custom of gavelkind, which still obtains in many parts of England, and, till the reign of Henry the eighth, prevailed universally over Wales. This, says he, is undoubtedly of British original. But the partible quality of lands, if not entirely, yet nearly on the same principles, prevailed among the Romans, as well as among the Britons. Nor was it confined even to those two nations. The Greeks, the Romans, as we are informed in the Commentaries, the Britons, the Saxons, and even originally the feudists divided the lands equally; some among all the children at large, some among the males only.

e

The third instance, mentioned by Sir William Blackstone as of British original, is, the ancient division of the goods of an intestate between his widow and children, or next of kin; which has since been revived by the sta

2. Bl. Com. 215.