private civil rights, sometimes complete, including the right of voting in the assembly and the right of being chosen to a public office. Before the dictatorship of Julius Caesar practically all Italians, except the people of Cisalpine Gaul, which remained a province till B. C. 43, had been admitted to civic rights. Citizenship, complete or partial (i. e. including or not including public rights) had also begun to be conferred on a certain number of cities or individuals outside Italy. Tarsus in Cilicia, of which St. Paul was a native, enjoyed it, so he was born a Roman citizen. This process of enlarging citizenship went on with accelerated speed, in and after the days of the Flavian Emperors. Under Hadrian, the whole of Spain seems to have enjoyed civic rights. Long before this date the ancient right of voting in the Roman popular Assembly had become useless, but the other advantages attached to the status of citizen were worth having, for they secured valuable immunities. Finally, early in the third century A. D., every Roman subject was by imperial edict made a citizen for all purposes whatsoever. Universal eligibility to office had, as we have seen, gone ahead of this extension, for all offices lay in the gift of the Emperor or his ministers; and when it was desired to appoint any one who might not be a full citizen, citizenship was conferred along with the office. Thus Rome at last extended to all her subjects the rights that had originally been confined to her own small and exclusive community.

In England the principle that all private civil rights belong to every subject alike was very soon established, and may be said to have never been doubted since the final extinction of serfdom in the beginning of the seven

teenth century. Public civil rights, however, did not necessarily go with private. Everybody, it is true, was (subject to certain religious restrictions now almost entirely repealed) eligible to any office to which he might be appointed by the Crown, and was also (subject to certain property qualifications which lasted till our own time) capable of being chosen to fill any elective post or function, such as that of member of the House of Commons. But the right of voting did not necessarily go along with other rights, whether public or private, and it is only within the last forty years that it has been extended by a series of statutes to the bulk of the adult male population. Now when Englishmen began to settle abroad, they carried with them all their private rights as citizens, and also their eligibility to office; but their other public rights, i. e. those of voting, they could not carry, because these were attached to local areas in England. When territories outside. England were conquered, their free inhabitants, in becoming subjects of the Crown, became therewith entitled to all such rights of British subjects as were not connected with residence in Britain: that is to say, they had all the private civil rights of Englishmen, and also complete eligibility to public office (unless of course some special disqualification was imposed). The rights of an English settler in Massachusetts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were those of an Englishman, except that he could not vote at an English parliamentary election because he was not resident in any English constituency; and the same rule became applicable to a French Canadian after the cession of Canada to the British Crown.

So when India was conquered, the same principles were again applied. Every free Indian subject of the Crown soon became entitled to the private civil rights of an Englishman, except so far as his own personal law, Hindu or Musulman or Parsi or Jain, might modify those rights; and if there was any such modification, that was recognized for his benefit rather than to his prejudice. Thus the process which the Romans took centuries to complete was effected almost at once in India by the application of long established doctrines of English law. Accordingly we have in India the singular result that although there are in that country no free institutions (other than those municipal ones previously referred to) nor any representative government, every Indian subject is eligible to any office in the gift of the Crown anywhere, and to any post or function to which any body of electors may select him. He may be chosen by a British constituency a member of the British House of Commons, or by a Canadian constituency a member of the House of Commons of Canada. Two natives of India (both Parsis) have already been chosen, both by London constituencies, to sit in the British House. So a native Hindu or Musulman might be appointed by the Crown to be Lord Chief Justice of England or Governor-General of Canada or Australia. He might be created a peer. He might become Prime Minister. And as far as legal eligibility goes, he might be named Governor-General of India, though as a matter of practice, no Indian has ever been placed in any high Indian office. Neither birth, nor colour, nor religion constitutes any legal disqualification. This was expressly declared as regards India by the India Act of 1833, and

has been more than once formally declared since, but it did not require any statute to establish what flowed from the principles of our law. And it need hardly be added that the same principles apply to the Chinese subjects of the Crown in Hong Kong or Singapore and to the negro subjects of the Crown in Jamaica or Zululand. In this respect at least England has worthily repeated the liberal policy of Rome. She has done it, however, not by way of special grants, but by the automatic and probably uncontemplated operation of the general principles of her law.

As I have referred to the influence of English constitutional ideas, it is worth noting that it is these ideas which have led the English of late years not only to create in India city municipalities, things entirely foreign to the native Indian mind, but also to provide by statute (in 1892) for the admission of a certain number of nominated non-official members to the legislative councils of the Governors in Bengal, Bombay, Madras, the NorthWest Provinces and Oudh, and the Punjab. These members are nominated, not elected, because it has been found difficult to devise a satisfactory scheme of election. But the provision made for the presence of native nonofficials testifies to the wish of the English Government to secure not only a certain amount of outside opinion, but also a certain number of native councillors through whom native sentiment may be represented, and may obtain its due influence on the conduct of affairs.

The extension of the civil rights of Englishmen to the subjects of the Crown in India would have been anything but a boon had it meant the suppression and

extinction of native law and custom. This of course it has not meant. Neither had the extension of Roman conquest such an effect in the Roman Empire; and even the grant of citizenship to all subjects did not quite efface local law and usage. As the position and influence of English law in India, viewed in comparison with the relation of the older Roman law to the Roman provinces, is the subject of another of these Essays, I will here pass over the legal side of the matter, and speak only of the parallel to be noted between the political action of the conquering nations in both cases.

Both have shown a prudent wish to avoid disturbing, any further than the fixed principles of their policy made needful, the usages and beliefs of their subjects. The Romans took over the social and political system which they found in each of the very dissimilar regions they conquered, placed their own officials above it, modified it so far as they found expedient for purposes of revenue and civil administration generally, but otherwise let it stand as they found it and left the people alone. In course of time the law and administration of the conquerors, and the intellectual influences which literature called into play, did bring about a considerable measure of assimilation between Romans and provincials, especially in the life and ideas of the upper classes. But this was the result of natural causes. The Romans did not consciously and deliberately work for uniformity. Especially in the sphere of religion they abstained from all interference. They had indeed no temptation to interfere either with religious belief or with religious practice, for their own system was not a universal but a strictly national religion, and the educated classes had begun to sit rather loose to that religion before the