now separated from the Himibor by the 

 counties of Durham and York, we can roadily 

 understand the gradiuil but inevitable process by 

 whicli the Britons, wlio once held CaUis and 

 Boulogne and a broad stretch of territory on the 

 Continental side, us well as Dover, Folkestone, 

 and the south-east of Britain generally, were in 

 course of time thrust over West into the positions 

 they now occupy. But the very fact that the Welsh 

 and Cornishnien are in truth the actual living 

 representatives of the ancient Britons is sufficient 

 in itself to warn us that the men of Kent and 

 their kindi-ed tribes, whom Caesar found on tho 

 soil of Britain, were not themselves Britons or 

 Bi'itish, but "an intrusive people" which had dis- 

 possessed tho real Brituns of a huge slice of their 

 fonuer teiTitory. The Belgic merchant in simple 

 fact w;is the dominant factor in the civilization of 

 Britain in Caesar's day. The nation of " shop- 

 keepers," which the fii'st Napoleon shi-ank from 

 invading, was ali-eady a trading nation on our 

 south-eastern seaboard two thousand years before. 

 It was the commerce rather than the soil of 

 Britain that the divine Julius was anxious to 

 annex to the Empire of Rome. To establish direct 

 commercial intercoxu'se between Britain and Kome 

 would be, he Iielieved, permanently and largely to 

 increase the revenues of the Republic. And, 

 wildly exaggerated as the commercial importance 

 of Britain may have been in his anticipation, his 

 over estimate was probably far more nearly 

 acciu'ate than the absurd under estimate of nearly 

 every modern Eiu-opean historian. One main 

 bi-anch of the commerce indeed is now pi-actically 

 obsolete. The imiversal reprobation, however, 

 with which the slave trade is justly regarded is, 

 it must be remembered, a compai-atively quite 

 modern sentiment — a sentiment foimded on justice 

 and humanity, but a sentiment which ought not 

 to blind us to the fact that the institution as it 

 existed in early Britain had more than one 

 redeeming feature. For who were the slaves that 

 were lx)ught and sold ? Many of them were 

 prisonei-s taken in war. The alteraative in this 

 case would lie between " slavery " and '* a violent 

 death in cold blood " at the hands of their 

 captors. On one single occasion, out of several, 

 when Cffsar sold all the survivors of a Belgic 

 tribe in Gaul after a battle, he records with tlie 

 just pride of a merciful man that the purch;isers 

 themselves I'eckoned the number of slaves they 

 bought at fifty-three thousand. Few men, it must 

 be admitted, have saved tlie lives of their fellow 

 creatures on so extensive a scale. Perhaps if he 

 had told lis how much he realized per head on the 

 avei*age, we might be better able to appi-aise his 

 clemency at its true value. After all it must be 

 remembered that hard and unhappy as the lot of 

 the slave may have been, it was still, as a rule, far 

 from intolerable. When we read that the sporting 

 instincts of the Belgic tribes were at times so 

 strong, thiit after gambling away all liis money, 

 cattle, goods, and clothes he would still stake his 

 own pei-sonal libei-ty on the hazard of one last 

 throw, it can hardly be that "slavery" can have 

 had the same terrors for the free-bom Englishman 

 of the period as the word convoys to liis modern 

 descendant. However this may be, a brisk trade 



in slaves was can-ied on between our island and 

 the continent before the days of Cassar. A more 

 honoxu-able, though possibly less profitable, traffic 

 was that in live stock of other kinds. The dogs of 

 Britain were celeln-ated throughout the ancient 

 world. They were of many breeds and were 

 largely exported, especially to Gaul, where we are 

 told they were commonly made use of in war. 

 This phrase seems to have been very generally 

 misixndei-stood. We are not called upon to believe 

 that our ancestoi-s " cried ha,voc and let loose the 

 dogs of war" in anylitei-al sense. The dog, there 

 can be little doubt, simply fulfilled the duties of 

 the modem baggage mule. Those old enough 

 to remember England before the days of Martin's 

 Act, or those familmr with the Belgium of to-day, 

 will have no difficulty in understanding how use- 

 ful big dogs would be in the transit of arms, 

 baggage, and provisions during a campaign. In 

 one respect they would lie superior to mules ; they 

 could not only diuw their loads without stamped- 

 ing, but when they were iinharnessed they could 

 mount guard in a manner likely to be effective 

 against the deprediitions of bare-legged stragglers. 

 Of homed cattle the islanders exported two breeds. 

 The living representatives of the former are still 

 to be seen in the majestic herds preserved at 

 Chillingham and one or two other parks, those of 

 the latter in the small Welsh breed known as the 

 Keltic shorthorn. Strabo, the geographer whose 

 list of British expoi-ts I am here following, includes 

 hides among them, but does not mention " dead 

 meat," though salt jimk, pork, and mutton, were 

 delicacies certainly not unknown in those days, 

 and were imquestionably consumed in large 

 quantities on both sides of the Channel. Sti-abo 

 also specially mentions com as one of the British 

 exports, and Pliny supplements the information 

 by telling us how well the farmei-s knew the best 

 manure for cereal crops. But this is far from 

 exhausting the British exports list. The age of 

 bronze had gradually merged into the age of iron 

 throughout the gi'eater part of the world before 

 the landing of Ceesar, and one source of iron was 

 the island of Britain. In the wild district near 

 Crowborough Beacon the remains of the old iron- 

 works still tell of the "Prehistoric Blacjc Coiuitry" 

 in the Wealds of Kent and Sussex, wnere the 

 industry seeuis to have floui-ished more or less 

 continuously imtil the early years of the preseut 

 century. In speaking of his naval victory over 

 the Veneti, Caesar incidentally notices that they 

 made use of iron chains, instead of hempen cables 

 for their vessels. As the carrying trade with 

 Britain was at that time a monopoly of the Veneti, 

 and they had no ironworks in their own country, 

 there can be little doubt that these cluiins were of 

 British manufactTu-e. Nor need we hesitate to 

 infer that the skill required to forge chain cables 

 for hxrge vessels, was fully competent to supply 

 the swords of war ; the ploughs of peace and the 

 thousand and one appliances of iron, the presence 

 of which distinguishes the age of iron from the age 

 of bronze. That tin was one of the many metals 

 exported from Britain in Ccesar's day, and long 

 l>efore, is well known from the accoiuit of the 

 Bi-itish tin trade given by "Diodorus Siculus." 

 This trade, indeed, was of immemorial antiquity. 



