As a basis for the internal organisation of Britain, the cantonal constitution existing there at the time of the conquest offered itself, which differed, as we have already remarked, from that of the Celts of the continent essentially only in the fact that the several tribes of the island, apparently all of them, were under princes (iv. 233) {iv. 222.}. But this organisation seems not to have been retained, and the canton (_civitas_) to have become in Britain as in Spain a geographical conception; at least we can hardly otherwise explain the facts that the Britannic tribes, taken in the strict sense, disappear as soon as they fall under Roman rule, and of the individual cantons after their subjugation there is virtually no mention at all. Probably the several principalities, as they were subdued and annexed, were broken up into smaller communities; this was facilitated by the fact that there did not exist on the island, as there did on the continent, a cantonal constitution organised without a monarchic head. With this is doubtless connected the circumstance that, while the Gallic cantons possessed a common capital and in it a political and religious collective representation, nothing similar is stated as to Britain. The province was not without a _concilium_ and a common _cultus_ of the emperor; but, if the altar of Claudius in Camalodunum[115] had been even approximately what that of Augustus was in Lugudunum, something would doubtless have been heard of it. The free and great political remodelling, which was given to the Gallic country by Caesar and confirmed by his son, no longer fits into the framework of the later imperial policy. We have already mentioned the founding, nearly contemporary with the invasion of Britain, of the colony Camalodunum (p. 176), as it has also been already noticed that the Italian urban constitution was early introduced into a series of British townships. Herein, too, Britain was treated more after the model of Spain than after that of the Celtic continent. [Sidenote: Prosperity.] The internal condition of Britain must, in spite of the general faults of the imperial government, have been, at least in comparison with other regions, not unfavourable. If the people in the north knew only hunting and pasturing, and the inhabitants there as well as those adjoining them were always ready for feud and rapine, the south developed itself in an undisturbed state of peace, especially by means of agriculture, and along with it by cattle-rearing and the working of mines, to a moderate prosperity. The Gallic orators of Diocletian's time praise the wealth of the fertile island, and often enough the Rhine-legions received their corn from Britain. [Sidenote: Roads.]