Page:Royalnavyhistory01clow.djvu/39

 the Roman dominion is known. But after the departure of Gallio, about 430, the unfortunate Britons, who had been emasculated by luxury, and whose dependent position had gradually taught them to look to the Roman power and not to help themselves, even for so necessary a business as the police of their own coasts, suddenly found themselves thrown upon their own very inadequate resources. It looks as if the Romans can have left scarcely a ship behind them; probably they did not leave an officer.

The Scots and Picts immediately became very troublesome. The Romans, almost to the last, had wielded sea power enough to oblige these freebooters to exercise great circumspection in all their operations. A Roman fleet was always at sea, ready to act upon the flanks of the pirates, and to sever their communications with their northern fastnesses. Landings could not, in consequence, be attempted without the gravest risk. But the Roman fleet being withdrawn, and there being no British fleet to take its place, all risk disappeared.

Whether the ancient Britons were ever much inclined to military pursuits may be doubted. Certain it is that the long period of more or less intimate association with the Roman empire in its decadent days did not leave them much more military than it had found them. The degree of relative security afforded by the Roman occupation encouraged them to turn their attention to agriculture and commerce, rather than to arms. Those of them who were from time to time obliged to serve under the Roman eagles must have returned, with relief, if they returned at all, to peaceful pursuits. And the increasing softness of Roman manners corrupted and demoralised them, as it demoralised the Romans themselves. The Roman influence conferred some arts and evanescent culture upon a small proportion of the people, but it did not train the Britons in habits of independence and self-reliance, nor did it leave great scope for patriotism.

Much of the detailed history of the period lies in impenetrable obscurity. Very little can be collected concerning the social life of the people. But there can be no question that at the time of the first advent of the Saxons the Britons were a feeble and even contemptible folk, disunited to a greater degree than has ever been common, save among barbarous tribes of the lowest type, and scarcely deserving a better fate than awaited them. Their thin sluggish blood sadly needed the iron that was eventually infused