ADMINISTRATION AND TAXATION OF THE EMPIRE

We are now brought to the consideration of the methods by which this
huge empire was organised and governed.

And first let us observe that the Romans--strict disciplinarians and
great lawyers as they were--never sought to impose upon the subject
provinces any uniformity. They never sought, any more than Great
Britain has sought, to erect one code of law, one form of
administration, one standard of rights, one rate of taxation, one
religion, and to make it equally applicable to Spain and Britain,
Greece and Africa, Gaul and Asia Minor. There were, of course, common
to all the empire certain rules essential to civilisation, certain
natural laws and laws of all nations. Murder, violence, robbery,
deliberate sacrilege, and so forth were punishable everywhere, though
not necessarily by the same authority nor in the same manner.
Necessarily it was held everywhere that contracts must be fulfilled
and debts paid. Beyond the fact that Rome demanded peace and order and
the essentials of civilised life, and provided machinery to secure
those ends, she troubled little about differences of local procedure
and varieties of local law, so long as the Roman rule was duly
recognised and the Roman taxes duly paid. As with Great Britain, her
care was for results, not for machinery, or, as the great Roman
historian puts it, she "valued the reality of the empire, not the
show."

Outside Italy there spread the provinces. These had been conquered or
peacefully annexed at various times. A number of small states had come