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 chap xxxviii] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 139 confined to the peculiar districts where the victorious people had been planted by their own choice or by the policy of their leader. In these districts, each Barbarian was connected by the ties of hospitality with some Roman provincial. To this unwelcome guest, the proprietor was compelled to abandon two-thirds of his patrimony ; but the German, a shepherd and a hunter, might sometimes content himself with a spacious range of wood and pasture, and resign the smallest, though most valuable, portion to the toil of the industrious husbandman. 92 The silence of ancient and authentic testimony has encouraged an opinion that the rapine of the Franks was not moderated, or disguised, by the forms of a legal division ; that they dispersed themselves over the provinces of Gaul, without order or control ; and that each victorious robber, according to his wants, his avarice, and his strength, measured, with his sword, the extent of his new inheritance. At a distance from their sovereign, the Barbarians might indeed be tempted to exercise such arbitrary depredation ; but the firm and artful policy of Clovis must curb a licentious spirit, which would aggravate the misery of the vanquished, whilst it corrupted the union and discipline of the conquerors. The memorable vase of Soissons is a monument, and a pledge, of the regular distribution of the Gallic spoils. It was the duty, and the interest, of Clovis to provide rewards for a successful army, and settlements for a numerous people ; without inflicting any wanton or superfluous injuries on the 92 The obscure hints of a division of lands occasionally scattered in the laws of the Burgundians (tit. liv. No. 1, 2, in torn. iv. p. 271, 272) and Visigoths (1. x. tit. i. No. 8, 9, 16, in torn. iv. p. 428, 429, 430) are skilfully explained by the president Montesquieu (Esprit des Loix, 1. xxx. c. 7, 8, 9). I shall only add that, among the Goths, the division seems to have been ascertained by the judgment of the neighbourhood ; that the Barbarians frequently usurped the remaining third ; and that the Romans might recover their right unless they were barred by a prescription of fifty years. [The division of lands was in the first instance settled by the contract between the Imperial government and the barbarians, who were settled as fcederati on Roman soil (both the Burgundians and the Visigoths established their kingdoms in Gaul on these terms). The principle followed was the same as that which had been in force among the Romans for many centuries in quartering soldiers in the provinces. Each proprietor had to support soldiers in proportion to the value of his property. A yearly quota of the produce of the estate was assigned to the soldiers, and the most usual quota was one-third. This system was applied in the case of barbarian troops settled on the frontier territories. It was a natural extension of this system, to assign a quota not only of the produce but of the land itself, when peoples or portions of peoples were established on provincial soils. Hospitalitas had expressed the relation of the proprietor to the soldier whom he reluctantly supported ; and this explains its use in regard to the relation between the provincial and the barbarian to whom he had parted with a portion of his land.]