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]
[1] Lactantius, cited in Elton's "Origins of English History,"
p. 334. It should be noted, however, that Professor C. Oman in his
"England before the Norman Conquest," pp. 175-176, takes a moer
favorable view of the condition of Britain under the Romans than that
which most authorities maintain.
So great was the misery of the land that sometimes parents destroyed
their children, rather than let them grow up to a life of suffering.
This vast system of organized oppression, like all tyranny, "was not
so much an institution as a destitution," undermining and
impoverishing the country. It lasted until time brought its revenge,
and Rome, which had crushed so many nations of barbarians, was in her
turn threatened with a like fate, by bands of northern barbarians
stronger than herself.