conquests beyond the Italian peninsula consisted in the extension of Roman power over subjects who could not become citizens. The privileges of free membership in the commonwealth might possibly be imparted to all Italians; but they could not be received, still less exercised, by the heterogeneous mass of populations who successively yielded to the Roman arms. If the practical difficulties of communication imposed by distance and by language could have been overcome, more insuperable obstacles would have remained. Deeply ingrained differences of civilisation, utterly alien modes of thought, would have made it impossible for the foreign races to coalesce into a free civic body with the members of the Italian commonwealth; and, had it been otherwise, their adoption into that body would have been barred by the scorn with which the meanest of the victorious people regarded the noblest of the vanquished. So much must be fully conceded to those who maintain that the military monarchy was a necessity. The basis on which the government of the Republic rested could not have been widened in such a manner as to bring within the circle of its liberties all those around whom it had drawn the girdle of its dominion. Henceforth the self-governing Republic had also to govern dependents. The conditions for a successful performance of this latter task were mainly two—first, a thoroughly efficient military administration; secondly, a supply of provincial governors with adequate political training, and under adequate control. The
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