The policy pursued in Britain, though very different, was equally heartless and equally fatal.  There were rulers who endeavored to act justly, but such cases were rare.  One of the leaders of the North Britons said, “The Romans give the lying name of Empire to robbery and slaughter; they make a desert and call it peace.”

31.  The Mass of the Native Population Slaves; Roman Villas.

It is true that the chief cities of Britain were exempt from oppression.  They elected their own magistrates and made their own laws.  But they enjoyed this liberty because their inhabitants were either Roman soldiers or their allies, or Romanized Britons.

Outside these cities the great mass of the native Britons were bound to the soil and could not leave it, while a large proportion were absolute slaves.  Their work was in the brickyards, the quarries, the mines, or in the fields or forests.

The Roman masters of these people lived in stately villas adorned with pavements of different-colored marbles and beautifully painted walls.  These country houses, often as large as palaces, were warmed in winter, like our modern dwellings, with currents of heated air.  In summer they opened on terraces ornamented with vases and statuary, and on spacious gardens of fruits and flowers.[1] On the other hand, the laborers on these great estates lived in wretched cabins plastered with mud and thatched with straw.

[1] More than a hundred of these villas or country houses, chiefly in the south and southwest of England, have been exhumed.  Some of them cover several acres.

32.  Roman Taxation and Cruelty.

But if the condition of the British servile classes was hard, many who were free were but little better off, for nearly all that they could earn was swallowed up in taxes.  The standing army of Britain, which the people of the country had to support, rarely numbered less than forty thousand.  Great numbers of Britons were forced into the ranks, but most of them appear to have been sent away to serve abroad.  Their life was one of perpetual exile.  In order to meet the civil and military expenses entailed upon him, every farmer had to pay a third of all that his farm could produce, in taxes.  Furthermore, he had to pay duty on every article that he sold, last of all, he was obliged to pay a duty or poll tax on his own head.

On the Continent there was a saying that it was better for a property owner to fall into the hands of savages than into those of the Roman assessors.  When they went round, they counted not only every ox and sheep, but every plant, and registered them as well as the owners.  “One heard nothing,” says a writer of that time, speaking of the days when revenue was collected, “but the sound of flogging and all kinds of torture.  The son was compelled to inform against the father, men were forced to give evidence against themselves, and were assessed according to the confession they made to escape torment."[1]