the commissioners, who measured eight hundred paces of water and
morass.]

[Footnote 171: See the remarkable passage of the Eucharisticon of
Paulinus, 575, apud Mascou, l. viii. c. 42.]

[Footnote 172: This important truth is established by the accuracy of
Tillemont, (Hist. des Emp. tom. v. p. 641,) and by the ingenuity of the
Abbe Dubos, (Hist. de l'Etablissement de la Monarchie Francoise dans les
Gaules, tom. i. p. 259.)]

Whilst Italy was ravaged by the Goths, and a succession of feeble
tyrants oppressed the provinces beyond the Alps, the British island
separated itself from the body of the Roman empire. The regular forces,
which guarded that remote province, had been gradually withdrawn; and
Britain was abandoned without defence to the Saxon pirates, and
the savages of Ireland and Caledonia. The Britons, reduced to this
extremity, no longer relied on the tardy and doubtful aid of a declining
monarchy. They assembled in arms, repelled the invaders, and rejoiced
in the important discovery of their own strength. [173] Afflicted by
similar calamities, and actuated by the same spirit, the Armorican
provinces (a name which comprehended the maritime countries of Gaul
between the Seine and the Loire [174) resolved to imitate the example of
the neighboring island. They expelled the Roman magistrates, who acted
under the authority of the usurper Constantine; and a free government
was established among a people who had so long been subject to the
arbitrary will of a master. The independence of Britain and Armorica was
soon confirmed by Honorius himself, the lawful emperor of the West; and
the letters, by which he committed to the new states the care of their
own safety, might be interpreted as an absolute and perpetual abdication
of the exercise and rights of sovereignty. This interpretation was, in
some measure, justified by the event.

After the usurpers of Gaul had successively fallen, the maritime
provinces were restored to the empire. Yet their obedience was imperfect
and precarious: the vain, inconstant, rebellious disposition of the
people, was incompatible either with freedom or servitude; [175] and
Armorica, though it could not long maintain the form of a republic,
[176] was agitated by frequent and destructive revolts. Britain was
irrecoverably lost. [177] But as the emperors wisely acquiesced in the
independence of a remote province, the separation was not imbittered by
the reproach of tyranny or rebellion; and