ce and settle, it was found impossible to break any
part of it from the Empire.

By degrees the several parts blended and softened into one another. And
as the remembrance of enmity, on the one hand, wore away by time, so, on
the other, the privileges of the Roman citizens at length became less
valuable. When, nothing throughout so vast an extent of the globe was of
consideration but a single man, there was no reason to make any
distinction amongst his subjects. Claudius first gave the full rights of
the city to all the Gauls. Under Antoninus Rome opened her gates still
wider. All the subjects of the Empire were made partakers of the same
common rights. The provincials flocked in; even slaves were no sooner
enfranchised than they were advanced to the highest posts; and the plan
of comprehension, which had overturned the republic, strengthened the
monarchy.

Before the partitions were thus broken down, in order to support the
Empire, and to prevent commotions, they had a custom of sending spies
into all the provinces, where, if they discovered any provincial laying
himself out for popularity, they were sure of finding means, for they
scrupled none, to repress him. It was not only the praetor, with his
train of lictors and apparitors, the rods and the axes, and all the
insolent parade of a conqueror's jurisdiction; every private Roman
seemed a kind of magistrate: they took cognizance of all their words and
actions, and hourly reminded them of that jealous and stern authority,
so vigilant to discover and so severe to punish the slightest deviations
from obedience.

As they had framed the action _de pecuniis repetundis_ against the
avarice and rapacity of the provincial governors, they made at length a
law[23] which, one may say, was against their virtues. For they
prohibited them from receiving addresses of thanks on their
administration, or any other public mark of acknowledgment, lest they
should come to think that their merit or demerit consisted in the good
or ill opinion of the people over whom they ruled. They dreaded either a
relaxation of government, or a dangerous influence in the legate, from
the exertion of an humanity too popular.

These are some of the civil and political methods by which the Romans
held their dominion over conquered nations; but even in peace they kept
up a great military establishment. They looked upon the interior country
to be sufficiently secured by the colonies; their forces were the