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An Historical View of the English Government
An Historical View of the English Government Author:John Millar Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HISTORICAL VIEW ENGLISH GOVERNMENT. BOOK I. OF THE ENGLISH GOVERNMENT, PROM THE SETTLEMENT OP THE SAXONS IN BRITAIN TO THE REIGN OP WILLIAM THE CONQUERO... more »R. CHAPTER I. Preliminary Account of the State of Britain under the Dominion of the Romans. THE downfal of the Roman State, and the formation of those kingdoms which were built upon the ruins of it, may be regarded as one of the greatest revolutions in the history of mankind. A vast unwieldy empire, which had for ages languished under a gloomy despotism, was then broken into a number of independent states, animated with all thevigour, but subjected to all the violence and disorder, natural to a rising and unsettled constitution. The arts and literature which had grown up in the ancient world were, in a great measure, overthrown; and a new system of political institutions, together with a total change of manners, customs, and ways of thinking, spread itself over the greatest part of Europe. The plan of government, which the Romans adopted throughout the greatest part of their dominions, was uniform and simple. After that people had enlarged their city, as far as was convenient, by incorporating some of the neighbouring tribes, and had joined to it the possession of a considerable adjacent territory, they divided their future acquisitions into distinct provinces; in each of which they placed a governor, invested with almost unlimited authority. It cannot escape observation, that the Roman patriotism, even in the boasted times of the commonwealth, was far from being directed by a liberal spirit: it proceeded from narrow and partial considerations; and the same people who discovered so much fortitude and zeal in establishing and maintaining the freedom of their capital, made no scruple in subjecting the rest of ...« less