BOOKS.

ANCIENT ROME AND MODERN BRITAIN.*

WE welcome a third edition of this book, which began as a prize essay at Oxford and has since become famous. With it W. T. Arnold won the Arnold Prize, which was founded in honour of his grandfather, Arnold of Rugby, and in 1879 it was published in book form. All through his journalistic career W. T. Arnold continued to work at the subject that was dearest to him, dwelling especially on the parallels between Roman provincial administration and British rule in India. Several of the essays he wrote calling attention to this parallelism were published in the book called Studies in Roman Imperialism after his death. For years he entertained the hope of publishing an enlarged edition of his prize essay, and with that purpose he read widely and constantly the works of • The Roman System of Provincial Administration to thi Accession of Con- stantine the Great. By the late W. T. Arnold, M.A. Third Edition, Revised ttliX. S. Bo:tallier, Ma; Oxford: B. H. RisekwelL [5s. net.] researchers in French, German, and English, and kept in touch with all new epigraphic evidence. Ill-health and pre- mature death prevented the accomplishment • of his design, but a second edition of the prize essay, in which use was made of Arnold's notes, was edited by the late Dr. E. S. Shnckburgh and appeared in 1906. We have before us the third edition

arranged by Mr. E. S. Bouchier, who has made some slight alterations in the plan of the essay with a view to the needs.

of University students. Since Arnold's essay was written archaeological research and epigraphic discoveries have greatly increased knowledge of Roman administration, and, as Mr., Bouchier says, a thorough treatment of the subject would run te many volumes. But Arnold's essay remains the only work which treats of the general principles of the administration within e moderate compass, without too much detail, and without pursuing controversial matters. Mr. Bouchier has expanded the bibliography, added an appendix containing a useful.

summary of the principal facts about the provinces, and another appendix containing a chronological table of the chief events connected with the provincial system. We notice a few misprints—e.g., "Gault" for "Gaul," and "Rhone" for " Rhine."

Roman provincial administration was a wonderfully con- structed edifice. From one Italian town all the civilized world was governed. The principles on which this amazing feat.

was achieved fascinated Gibbon and Merivale before modern; epigraphic research clarified many things which were to then* mere matters of speculation. All administrative paths in

earlier history led to Rome, and from Rome all the paths of subsequent experience have radiated. What a subject, then,

for study ! The great merit of Arnold was that lie tried with

a remarkable degree of success to get inside the minds of the Roman administrators, and to make allowance for all the

preconceptions and prejudices which they bad inherited: Any one to-day can pick holes in their system, but this is possible because the long and hardly earned experience of the ages has proved to us what human nature requires, what it.

rejects, and of what it is capable and incapable. The Romans. had none of that experience to go upon. Arnold remembered.

that fact with more sympathy and justice than even such a con- siderable historian as Freeman. When Arnold. reflected on the- circumstances of the Roman experiments he could not with-- hold his deep admiration, although he was not in the leaat blind to the fact that the system contained the seeds of its own destruction. When he wrote his essay the discovery of the Spanish inscriptions, proving that the Spanish towns had much autonomy under freely elected Magistrates, were not

nearly so familiar as they are to-day to all readers of ancient history. Mommsen's epigraphic collections were still a cause of wonder, and Marquardt had only just published his Romische Staalsverwaltung.

The task of Rome in governing her provinces was in one sense an inversion of British experience. The Roman Republic was less successful in maintaining peace than the Emperors who followed it. But Britain has endowed her possessions with peace more and more as she has become more democratic. When we think of the results of a comparatively autocratic British rule our thoughts fly to George III. and the American Colonies. "Whether the British democracy will continue wisely to govern those dependencies which are not yet fit for autonomy—India, Egypt, and so forth—is a question, not yet answered. The strongest temptation of a democracy is to regard democracy as in itself a panacea for all other countries, no matter how backward or unversed in politica they may be. The analogy between Roman ,provinciab

administration and our own governance of India is.indeed, remarkable. The Romans tried to disturb the existing. conditions of a conquered territory as little as possible.. When we remember that one of the most learned and highly. organized of modern nations—Germany--has persistently die- regarded this principle in both Poland and the Reichaland, we must admit that history has given in recent years even- more point than before to Arnold's insistence on the perspi-. cacity of Rome. She deserves eternal credit. Her plan of leaving "client Princes," as Mommsen called them, in virtual charge of their own people, resembled exactly our scheme of governing the Native States of India through their own Princes. We think we are not mistaken in saying that one of the chief differences in policy between Henry Lawrence and his famous brother in India was that Heng was in favour

of an extension of the aristocratic system as suitable to the native mind, whereas John Lawrence believed in the possibility of generally planting the seeds of self-government. Our respect for native beliefs and institutions in India, again, is Roman tolerance in a high degree. When Queen Victoria issued her proclamation abolishing the East India Company's rule, she expressly undertook that the British Government should not officially attempt the evangelization of India—a promise that has been observed, though some of us may doubt whether our education of the people, since it has indirectly undermined their ancient creeds, ought not to make itself responsible for the religious instruction of Indian children in whatever creeds their parents select. Yet again, the Pax Romania was like the Pax Britannica in India. It was not freedom ; but it must be judged not by an ideal standard, but by what it superseded. The races which Rome con- quered and held in a general state of peace had been the victims of continual invasions or internecine quarrels. Directly the stern hand of Rome was relaxed the weaker became the prey of their stronger neighbours; and it is Certain that anarchy and massacre would similarly follow the removal of the Pax Britannica from India.

The 'Roman power of assimilation was very great, yet even the Romans were not equal to assimilating the Greek civiliza- tion of the East, which was in some respects superior to their own. The really typical Roman administrations arose where there was a very small groundwork of organization to build upon. Thus the type was in Africa, Gaul, and Spain, not in Achaia or Asia Minor. One of the chief reasons of Arnold's admiration, however, is that when Rome did .find national life she never killed it. It will be seen that Arnold was a convinced opponent of Freeman's conclusion that " from Mummins to Augustus the Roman city stands as the living mistress of the dead world, and from Augustus to Theodoric the mistress becomes as lifeless as her subjects." We may pass from the comparison with India and turn to one with a country which offered no analogy during Arnold's life—the Union of South Africa. Rome took away the freedom of many peoples, but gave them the opportunity of a wider and richer national life under Roman suzerainty. Our reason for taking away the national independence of the Dutch in South Africa, of course, resembled nothing in Roman history; 'but the fact remains that the Dutch of South Africa have now the prospect of helping to build up, and of enriching them- selves out of, a far larger country than the two Dutch Republics which have been merged in the Union. No country in the world has ever been the worse for the intervention of Great Britain, just as no country was ever the worse for conquest by Rome. We are sometimes tempted, indeed, to think that if Ireland had been conquered by Rome and drunk in some of the discipline of Roman institutions her later course would have been considerably less tempestuous.

All that we have said so far is to the credit account of Rome. What was it that made the downfall of the system inevitable? Why did so much sagacity maintain life in the political body for such a comparatively short time ? There are many answers, but the chief one is that the provinces were governed for the benefit of Rome and not for the good of the governed. This is the master difference between ancient Rome and modern Britain. The Roman provincial had more hopes of rising to the full franchise, and perhaps to a great position, than a Hindu has in India to-day; but that advan- tage could not counterbalance the fact that every province paid tribute to Rome, and that this tribute was spent on the glorification or amusement of Rome, and not on the development of the provinces. At one period the tribute was so great that a large section of Romans went almost untaxed, and had virtually free entertainments provided for them into the bargain. Eventually the doles of coin which were the last symptom of an enervated Rome, inhabited by people who had lost their personal independence and were rapidly losing their seif-respect, were made possible only by the provincial tribute. Under the Republic when the provinces were unable to pay in money they were required to pay in men for military service, by what was known as the blood-tax. Few Romans had any doubt that it must be the duty of provinces to pay heavily for the protection afforded to them. The fact that Rome in acquiring new territories had generally considered her strategic safety was not allowed to count. Cicero proffered a fine moral argument to show that the provinces ought obviously to pay. Julius Caesar and other wise Emperors remitted taxation. The Emperors, moreover, checked corrup- tion among the Governors by paying their officials well, and thus secured them from the grosser forms of temptation. But the system was much too imperfect in other respects tc be permanent. The Imperial system, like the Republican system, went down in ruin. Under the Republic the Senatorial control was inadequate, the taxation was unjust, and the Governors were changed annually, and regarded a year of office as merely a period of personal enrichment. The laws to control the Governors were not bad, but the Governors them- selves were. Finally, the executive and judicial functions were confused—a confusion which lasts to this day among races of Latin origin. Under the Empire there was a bureaucratic centralization. It is true that the provinces enjoyed longer periods of peace than under the Republic, but when the crisis came they could not stand because Rome was no longer strong enough to protect them, and under the centralized system they had not been trained to protect themselves. Their executive bodies were municipalities, not Parliaments. The provinces bad not been regarded as important enough to become federal units of an Empire; they had no representation at Rome, and no armies ready to rally to the Mother Country as the Dominions rally to Britain today. There was no reason why they should rally—there was _no affection. Rome had created a high mechanical organization, not a living fabric. As W. T. Arnold's uncle, Matthew Arnold, wrote "But ah ! its heart, its heart was stone And so it could not thrive!"

Italy—herself a province under the later Empire—and the other provinces were swallowed together by the tidal wave of barbarism which, had they been united in a common cause and held together by sympathy, they should have been strong enough to resist.