ir
industry, made them soon forget their past miseries, and restored
to them great plenty of all the necessaries of life. No more can be
imagined to have been possessed by a people so rude, who had not,
without the assistance of the Romans, art of masonry sufficient to raise
a stone rampart for their own defence; yet the monkish historians,[*]
who treat of those events, complain of the luxury of the Britons
during this period, and ascribe to that vice, not to their cowardice or
improvident counsels, all their subsequent calamities.

[* Gildas, Bede, lib. i. cap. 14.]

The Britons, entirely occupied in the enjoyment of the present interval
of peace, made no provision for resisting the enemy, who, invited by
their former timid behavior, soon threatened them with a new invasion.
We are not exactly informed what species of civil government the Romans,
on their departure, had left among the Britons, but it appears probable
that the great men in the different districts assumed a kind of regal,
though precarious authority, and lived in a great measure independent of
each other.[*]

[* Gildas, Usher, Ant. Brit. p. 248, 347.]

To this disunion of counsels were also added the disputes of theology;
and the disciples of Pelagius, who was himself a native of Britain,
having increased to a great multitude, gave alarm to the clergy, who
seem to have been more intent on suppressing them, than on opposing the
public enemy.[*]

[* Gildas, Bede, lib. i. cap. 17. Constant, in Vita Germ.]

Laboring under these domestic evils, and menaced with a foreign
invasion, the Britons attended only to the suggestions of their present
fears, and following the counsels of Vortigern, prince of Dumnonium,
who, though stained with every vice, possessed the chief authority among
them,[*] they sent into Germany a deputation to invite over the Saxons
for their protection and assistance.

[* Gildas, W. Malms. p. 8.]

THE SAXONS.

Of all the barbarous nations, known either in ancient or modern times,
the Germans seem to have been the most distinguished both by their
manners and political institutions, and to have carried to the highest
pitch the virtues of valor and love of liberty; the only virtues which
can have place among an uncivilized people, where justice and humanity
are commonly neglected. Kingly government, even when established among
the Germans, (for it was not universal,) possessed a very limited
authority; and