Transit duties. the Mediterranean, were chiefly conveyed by either of these inland routes, or across country by the few highways or beaten tracks then in use.[1] In the centre of this inland conveyance, at the junction of the Rhône with the Saône (Arar), and within an easy distance of the other navigable rivers flowing in the opposite direction, stood the great inland emporium of Lyons (Lugdunum), a city then of much commercial importance and second only to Narbo. This inland navigation, while of material advantage to the inhabitants of the districts traversed, was, even before the Roman conquest, a source of considerable emolument to the proprietors of the lands adjacent to the rivers, as they were thus able to levy a toll or transit duty on the boats passing through their territories. These duties, we may presume from Strabo, were transferred to the Roman coffers soon after Gaul became a Roman province, as he distinctly asserts that (in his day at least) the duties on the imports and exports of Britain constituted the only species of revenue derived from Gaul by the Romans.[2] It is, moreover, not likely that the government of Rome would permit its subjects to levy dues for their own individual benefit.
Articles of commerce, "The commercial and friendly intercourse," remarks Macpherson in his Annals of Commerce,[3] "between the Britons and Gauls, which had subsisted before the invasion of Julius Cæsar, still continued, and was probably increased in consequence of the greater assortment of goods now in the hands of the Romanized Gallic merchants." Tin, which was still
