PROVINCE is a territory, section or dis trict of a nation or government. Among the Romans a province was a district of conquered country, governed by a proconsul or proprztor. The first Roman province was Sicily, 241 B.C. From the time of Augustus they were divided into the senatorial provinces and the imperial provinces. The latter comprised those which were most exposed to hostile inroads, and the administration of which was left entirely to the emperor under the pretense of sparing the Sen ate and people the trouble of managing them, but in reality to keep the army in his own hands. Under the empire the provinces were much better governed than they had been under the republic. One reason of this was that the emperors were more disposed to pay regard to the complaints of the provinces than the re publican courts had been, for the latter were largely composed of men who had themselves profited, or who hoped to profit, by the same kind of maladministration with which the gov ernors were charged, and were, therefore, al ways willing if possible to connive at such offenses. In addition to this the provincial gov ernors under the empire received fixed salaries, which lessened the temptation to resort to il legal exactions to indemnify themselves for the expenses that they necessarily incurred in soliciting the office that was an indispensable condition of their governorship.
In modern times the term has been applied to colonies or to dependent countries at a dis tance, or to the different divisions of a king dom itself. The name has sometimes been re tained by independent states. Thus, the re public of Holland, after it had thrown off the Spanish yoke, was called the United Provinces; and the Argentine Republic used to be called the United Provinces of La Plata. In the canon law the term is applied to the jurisdic tion of an archbishop. In the Roman Catholic Church it is also given to the territorial divi sions of an ecclesiastical order such as the Franciscans, as well as to those of the Propa ganda. For exhaustive accounts of the Roman provinces and their administration consult Arnold, W. T., Provincial Administra (1879); Mommsen, Provinces under the Empire' (1884), and Taylor, T. M., and Political History of Rome' (1899).