interests of Britain not in themselves but only as subordinate to the
empire, which any sort of distinctive national organization would have
threatened. This distinguishes Roman rule in Britain from British rule
in India; and if the army in Britain gradually grew more British, it
was due to the weakness and not to the policy of the imperial
government. There was no attempt to form a British constitution, or
weld British tribes into a nation; for Rome brought to birth no
daughter states, lest she should dismember her all-embracing unity. So
the nascent nations warred within and rent her; and when, enfeebled and
distracted by the struggle, she relaxed her hold on Britain, she left
it more cultivated, perhaps, but more enervated and hardly stronger or
more united than before.

Hardier peoples were already hovering over the prey. The Romans had
themselves established a "count of the Saxon shore" to defend the
eastern coasts of Britain against the pirates of the German Ocean; and
it was not long after its revolt from Rome in 410, that the Angles and
Saxons and Jutes discovered a chance to meddle in Britain, torn as it
was by domestic anarchy, and threatened with inroads by the Picts and
Scots in the north. Neither this temptation nor the alleged invitation
from the British chief Vortigern to come over and help, supplied the
original impulse which drove the Angles and Saxons across the sea.
Whatever its origin--whether pressure from other tribes behind,
internal dissensions, or the economic necessities of a population
growing too fast for the produce of primitive farming--the restlessness
was general; but while the Goths and the Franks poured south over the
Roman frontiers on land, the Angles and Saxons obeyed a prophetic call
to the sea and the setting sun.

This migration by sea is a strange phenomenon. That nations should