The Historians' History of the World 06

The latifundia of ancient Italy may in dimensions have been about equal to the gross landed estates of the English aristocracy, but with slaves to work them in antiquity they had a far more desolating effect, even though we must admit that owing to the villas and parks laid out for the great in England, a portion of the free peasantry are thrust out of their plot of ground and England has had to turn for the means of life, etc., to the foreigner.

Roman Matron

(From a statue in the Capitol)

Also the difference of political rights between the full citizen with full rights and the slave without any rights at all was as marked in England a hundred years ago as it was in Rome. The relations between the Roman and the Latin citizens might then have justly borne comparison with the conflicting elements furnished by Englishmen and Scotchmen, which to-day are ever growing less and less; but even to-day the Irish on the one hand, with their reluctance to obey, and the English colonies on the other, with their successful diffusion of the English language and English national feeling abroad, reflect most faithfully the picture of ancient Rome.

But above all, England belongs to the few modern states which still possess provinces in the antique sense of the word. The constitution of modern India, with its multiform variety, is the only one of our time that may be set side by side with the constitution of the subject territories of the Romans. In India, as in the latter, the contrasts—religious, ethnographical, and social—are great and very often immediate; by the side of an old and highly developed civilisation we find the simplest conditions of mountain or fisher folk, over whose heads a history of a thousand years has passed without leaving a trace. Again, the political situation of single portions of the country is as multiform as possible: Ceylon, for example, with its separate administration and its separate rights, forms a part of England, while the main continent is only directly or indirectly governed by English officials; its constitution, as in the ancient Roman Empire, defies juristic or political definition in a variety of ways. Only one portion of the country is directly subject to its foreign conquerors; in all the others has been preserved—often to the good luck of the nation—a remnant of the earlier national independence.

As in ancient Rome, England to-day allows the existence of native princes, great and small, who lighten for her the burden of rule and administration; and she permits them to tyrannise over their subjects and extort treasure from them if they fail in their duty to the empire, just as did the sultans of previous centuries. The real power is, for all this, in the hands of the English resident who is set to watch over them. If the evils of local misrule become too great, or the times are ripe for annexation, a stroke of the pen is enough to do away with the whole majesty of a local prince. England is not wont to meet with serious resistance in such a case, any more than did the Romans when they declared that any particular one of their tributary princes had ceased to reign.

Again, the position of the ruling nation in the very midst of the ruled is, in modern times, just what it was in the days of antiquity. The man who goes to India, whether as a merchant, an official, or a soldier, does so with the fixed intention of returning home as soon as his financial position allows of his doing so. Considering the immense disparity in numbers between rulers and ruled, the power of the single officials and people in command must naturally be very considerable. The viceroy of India may well be compared with a Roman proconsul; the range of his power is great, but by a time limit it is sought to forestall an abuse of it. Even after the reforms of Augustus, the means of control were inadequate in ancient times, just as they were in England a century ago. To-day it may be taken as the rule for the higher class of English officials to return home from India with clean hands.

Whether this parallel between the Roman Empire of antiquity and the England of to-day is to the credit of the latter or a subject for reproach, whether it will endure, or whether the modern conditions will develop on similar lines, are questions into which we have not here to inquire; it is enough to have indicated the parallel phenomena in the two great empires.b

THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION

The sanguinary civil wars with their appalling catastrophes had crippled the might of Rome; the staunchest and most faithful champions of republican principles lay mouldering on the coast of Thapsus or the plain of Philippi; the free state that had erstwhile been called into being by the elder Brutus had passed away—the reality on the day of Pharsalia, the ideal through the desperate deed of the younger Brutus.