The veteran soldiers were always thought entitled to a settlement in the country which had been subdued by their valor.  The whole legion, with the tribunes, the centurions, and all the subordinate officers, were seated on an allotted portion of the conquered lands, which were distributed among them according to their rank.  These colonies were disposed throughout the conquered country, so as to sustain each other, to surround the possessions that were left to the conquered, to mix with the municipia or free towns, and to overawe the allies.  Rome extended herself by her colonies into every part of her empire, and was everywhere present.  I speak here only of the military colonies, because no other, I imagine, were ever settled in Britain.

There were few countries of any considerable extent in which all these different modes of government and different shades and gradations of servitude did not exist together.  There were allies, municipia, provinces, and colonies in this island, as elsewhere; and those dissimilar parts, far from being discordant, united to make a firm and compact body, the motion of any member of which could only serve to confirm and establish the whole; and when time was given to this structure to coalesce 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.