of the province. His freedmen and slaves had no hand in state affairs; military posts were not given on recommendations or petitions; with him excellence was the title to trust. He knew everything that went on, without always acting on his knowledge (omnia scire, non omnia exsequi). Venial offences were forgiven, serious ones severely punished. He was generally content with repentance, and did not always insist on a penalty. Instead of condemning offenders, he preferred to place in offices and administrative posts men who would not offend." Mutatis mutandis, the picture might be that of an Indian civilian or a good school prefect.

Besides, the Roman's work in the world is our own. Like the woman in Kipling's story, the Englishman prefers men 'who do things'; now the Romans were always doing things,' and these deeds interest us. What achievements they are and how well worth study for any politician or elector of a great empire! Take, for instance, the problem Rome had to face in the years that followed 60 B.C. I will put it into modern language. Imagine Great Britain without our elected House of Commons, and

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governed by its landed aristocracy; the democracy is represented by nine officials, who can veto proposals but bring none forward; the big mercantile, capitalist class is unrepresented and highly dissatisfied; hence riots and continual political intrigue. Meanwhile Britain has got by conquest a world-wide empire. She governs its various parts by generals taken from the aristocracy. There is no effective means of controlling these governors during their time of office; they have armies which they have enlisted themselves; the taxes and supplies of their provinces are in their entire control, and they have further large powers of requisitioning; they have no colleagues in their office, and no permanent officials to control them, and each governor chooses his own staff ; they may have had no previous experience of government, and they have probably never seen their province before. Yet the whole management of it is in their hands, and in the absence of steam or telegraph the government at home can do very little to touch them. They cannot be prosecuted till their time of office has expired, and then they will be tried by their peers. So some of them, being conscientious men, govern well; others plunder their subjects; and one or two with wider

aims acquire armies with a view to becoming masters of Britain. At the moment there are three of these; they are rivals, but for the present they have patched up their difference in a meeting at Harrogate, and agreed to a division of power and a certain allotment of the provinces. The government which hates them, but has no army on which to rely, has been forced to consent; and so, in an unstable equilibrium, the world waits uneasily for the clash which is to come.

No parallels are exact; but this not unfairly represents the state of the Roman empire in 56 B.C., when Pompey, Caesar and Crassus parted at the Baths of Lucca. A generation later Augustus had founded a government under which the world was for a space to enjoy prosperity and peace. The problem had been solved, the provinces had a stable, uniform, just and efficient administration, the central government had recovered control.

There we have a typical instance of what makes Rome so well worth our study. Her history is a succession of colossal political problems—problems of administration at home and abroad, of finance, of army organisation, of militarism and capitalism, of rural exodus and land settlement, of municipal life and colonisation, of increasing luxury and

sterile marriages, problems, above all, of imperial government, of frontiers, of vassal kingdoms, of an adequate civil service, of the unification of empire, of roads and postal systems, of imposing and collecting taxes. On most of these subjects

there is no light from Greek history, for the Greek state was a city, and the Greek ȧpxý a toy empire -very different from our world-wide states. We must go to Rome for our lessons. To govern peoples who differ in race, language, temper and civilisation; to raise and distribute armies for their defence or subjection; to meet expenses civil and military; to allow generals and governors sufficient independence without losing control at the centre; to know and supply the needs of provinces two thousand miles from the seat of government, and that without the assistance of telegraph or railway, with horses and sailing ships as the swiftest means of transport; in a word, to organise and administer the Roman empire, is a work as fascinating to study as it was difficult to achieve. And then, the fall of this power-its administrative, military, financial collapse. History has no other instance to shew of the destruction of a highly civilised and highly organised empire, for those who watch her skies for signs of the times.

Latin then stands in our education partly on linguistic grounds, partly on the heroic characters in its history, on the interest of its political and imperial problems, and on the capacities of its people for government; and it is doubly recommended because its genius is complementary to that of Greece. Of the two limbs of the classical education it can be easiest replaced, if we are willing to sacrifice the advantages just mentioned, and with them a full knowledge of the nation that, more than any other, has determined the political thought and institutions of Europe.