rights as such.  As the native people came in from the surrounding districts to reside in it, they also, it appears, somewhat easily acquired similar privileges.  Here the Roman law existed in its entirety.  A colony was almost exactly a little Rome in respect of its system of officers and its legal procedure.  Sometimes a town which had not originally been so founded might be made a “colony” by receiving a draft of Romans, and sometimes it was made such in sheer compliment.  In the Eastern half of the empire such settlements were comparatively rare; they were but dots upon the map, as at Corinth, Philippi, Antioch in Pisidia, or Caesarea.  In the West they were much more numerous.  The south of France contained many; a number also existed in southern Spain.  So many indeed were planted in these parts that they became, as has been already remarked, completely romanized.  Farther north Cologne still perpetuates its Roman name of Colonia.  Nevertheless in the West the bulk of the land of the provinces is far from being taken up, in the year 64, by colonies.

Apart from the lands thus appropriated, what happens to the rest of the conquered territory which is theoretically Roman property?  Generally it is handed back to its original inhabitants, on condition that they pay rent for it, whether in money or in kind, or partly in each.  Egypt pays in kind when it sends to Rome the corn in the great merchantmen; Africa pays in kind when it does the same; the Frisians of Holland pay in kind when they supply a certain quantity of hides.  Before the days of the Emperor Augustus there had existed for the empire in general the abominable system of tithes, which were farmed by companies.  But after him, and at our date, for the most part the payment is by a fixed sum of money, which has been calculated upon the basis of those tithes.  In the imperial Record Office there is a register of the area of land in a given province, and an assessment of its producing value.  The amount of the land-tax to be paid into the Roman treasury is therefore fixed.  Those who read in the New Testament that Augustus Caesar sent forth an order that “all the world—­that is, the Roman world—­should be taxed” need find no difficulty in understanding what it means.  “Taxed” is Old English for assessed, as when we speak of “taxing a bill of costs.”  The Greek word means simply that a register should be made.  The order of Augustus was that a census should be taken throughout the provinces; that a return should be made of population, property, trades, and all that a reasonable government requires to know; and that payments should be determined thereby.  All the world had been “taxed” in the modern sense long before Augustus, and it has been taxed, unfortunately without much promise of respite, ever since.