An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations Part 8

But the Romans did not only get gold and wealth by their con-

{33} Considering circ.u.mstances, it is wonderful that the Carthaginians made so excellent a stand against the Romans: for a long time they were victorious; they fought excellently, even at the battle of Zama. The Romans could not say so much for themselves, when afterwards they were attacked by the barbarians.

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quests; they became corrupted by adopting the manners of the inhabitants of countries that had long been drowned in every voluptuous pleasure. Then it was that they ceased to trust so much to their bravery for their conquests; they began to employ politics and intrigue to divide their enemies. With the poorer states, they found gold a very useful weapon, and, with the richer, they employed weapons of iron.

The terror of the Roman name, the actual force that they could exert against a powerful enemy, and the facility with which a weak one could be silenced, till a proper opportunity arrived for his destruction, were all calculated, and force and fraud were both called into action.

Whatever truth or honour the Romans had amongst themselves, they at least had none towards other nations. They, in the most wanton manner, interfered in every quarrel between strangers; and, whenever it suited their conveniency to make war, they begun without almost being at the pains to search for a pretext. They set themselves up above all opinion, while, at the same time, they required all nations to submit to theirs.

In a city where all great offices were elective, the evil effects of the introduction of riches were soon displayed. The first great changes were, that the people became corrupted, dependent, and degraded; fortunes became unequally divided; the provinces groaned under the heavy contributions of generals and proconsuls; and, at last, the country splitting into factions, the government was overturned.

The splendour of Rome augmented, as a fiery meteor s.h.i.+nes most bright before it falls; but the means by which it obtained the ascendency over other nations had long been at an end.

The same laws that had been found excellent, when the state was small and poor, did not answer now that it had become great and splendid. The freedom of the city, and the t.i.tle and privileges of a Roman citizen had been very widely extended; they were therefore become an illusion, and a very dangerous one for the public weal; they served as a foundation for cabal and intrigue of every description.

Towards the latter days, after all those internal causes of decline, which are common to other nations had rendered Rome feeble, several [end of page #34] external ones began to act.

The provinces became exhausted, and those who ruled them gradually retained more and more of the money. {34} Thus, while the oppression of the provinces was augmenting, the resources of the state were daily on the decline.

The first effect of conquests had been to free the people at home from taxes; and when, in a state of poverty and simplicity, the effect was advantageous and tended to preserve that spirit by which the Roman empire aggrandized itself. After wealth flowed in from the destruction of Carthage, donations and shews were in use. The Roman populace, idle and degraded, clamoured for corn and public games. It is almost as difficult to conceive the degree to which the character of the people was degraded, as it is to give credit to the wealth and luxury of the great, in the latter days of the empire.

Agriculture was neglected; and the masters of the world, who had obtained every thing for which they contended, while they preserved their purity of manners, now became unable either to govern others, to protect themselves, or even to provide food. Sicily and Africa supplied the Roman people with bread, long before the empire had become feeble, and even at the very time when it is reckoned to have been in its greatest splendour in the Augustan age. {35} The cause of its decline was fixed beyond the power of human nature to counteract: it began by unnerving the human character, and therefore its progress was accelerated and became irresistible.

Of all the nations, into which luxury is introduced, none feels its effects

{34} The detached facts related of the wealth of the governors of provinces, compared with the poverty of the state, are, if not incredible, at least, difficult to conceive. They are, however, too well attested to admit of a doubt, though the details are not sufficiently circ.u.mstantial to enable us to know exactly how they happened.

{35} In the time of Augustus, the people depended on the supplies from Sicily and Egypt, in so complete a manner, that, if those failed, there was no remedy; and, at one time, when there was only a sufficient quant.i.ty of grain for twenty-four hours, that emperor was determined to have put an end to his existence: but the supply arrived in time. Such is the terrible situation into which a people is thrown, when agriculture and industry are abandoned, and when the population becomes too great for the production of the country!! This, however, was a very recent change. Till some time after the conquest of Egypt, Greece, and Sicily, it could not have happened.

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so severely as one where it comes by conquest. A people of conquerors, who are wealthy, must, at all events, be under military authority, and that is never a desirable circ.u.mstance; depending also on revenues which come without the aid of industry, they must become doubly degraded.

With such a people, it would be fair to compare the Carthaginians before their fall; for, to say nothing more than that the principle of traffic and commerce is founded on morality and virtue, in comparison to that trade of pillage which robbed and ruined all nations; the physical situation of the Carthaginians was preferable to that of the Romans in the days of their decline. This is evident, from the n.o.ble struggle that the former made, and the contemptible manner in which the mistress of the world terminated her career.

Montesquieu bewails the fate of a monarch, who is oppressed by a party that prevails after his fall. His enemies are his historians; and this reflection is employed in mitigation of the crimes imputed to Tarquin; but, surely, if true, on that occasion, it is no less so with respect to Carthage. All the historians that give us the character of the two nations were Romans and of the victorious party; yet most of them are more equitable than the historians of modern times, for they had not seen their own country in its last state of degradation and misery. Those who now make the comparison have proper materials; and it is the business of the writers of history to free it from the errors into which cotemporary =sic= authors fall, whether from prejudice, or from want of knowing those events which happened after their days.

In the case of the Roman historians, the error arose from a combination of three different causes. In the first place, they compared Rome in its healthy days and its vigour, to Carthage in its decline.-- They were, next to that, led into an error, by not knowing that all countries that have been long rich are liable to the same evils as Carthage. And, last of all, they wrote with a spirit of party, and a prediliction =sic= in favour of Rome. These three causes are certain; and, perhaps, there was another. It is possible they did not dare to speak the truth, if they did know it.

It is true, that the human mind is not proof against the effect pro-[end of page #36] duced by what is splendid and brilliant; and that success in all cases diminishes, and, in some, does away the reproach naturally attached to criminality. It is also to be admitted, that in the Roman character there was a degree of courage and magnanimity that commands admiration, though the end to which it was applied was in itself detestable. Even in individual life (moral principle apart) there is something that diminishes the horror attendant on injustice and rapacity, when accompanied with courage and prodigality.

It is no less true, that the manners of commercial men, though their views are legitimate and their means fair, are prejudicial to them in the opinion of others. Individuals, gaining money by commerce, may sometimes have the splendour and magnanimity of princes; but nations that depend only on commerce for wealth never can. No nation, while it continues great or wealthy, can rid itself of the characteristic manners that attend the way in which it obtains its wealth and greatness. Merchants owe their wealth to a strict adherence to their interest, and they cannot help shewing it.

The cruelties of the Spaniards have not excited the detestation they deserved, because they were accompanied with courage, and crowned with success; and that nation found means, in the midst of the most horrible of human crimes, to preserve an appearance of greatness and dignity of character. But the Dutch, who have gained wealth, like the Carthaginians, and though they were conquerors, never quitted the character of merchants, and they never possessed dignity of character, though they triumphed by virtue, perseverance, and bravery, over that very Spain which did preserve her dignity.

It is much more difficult to reconcile the character of trading nations with the qualities that are improperly called great, than that of any other. A commercial nation naturally will be just; it may be generous; but it never can become extravagant and wasteful; neither can it be inc.u.mbered with the lazy and the idle; for the moment that either of these takes place, commerce flies to another habitation. {36}

{36} It follows, from this, that a commercial people never become so degraded as those who obtain wealth by other means; but, then, it also follows, that they exist a much shorter time after they become so, and that wealth and power leave them much more speedily.

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The purpose of this inquiry being, to examine the effects of wealth, and its operation in the decline of nations; it appears to be of considerable importance to remove the error, in which historians and other writers have so long persevered, relative to the two greatest republics of antiquity; particularly as their example applies the most readily, and is the most frequently applied to two rival nations of modern times; although the parallel is extremely imperfect in almost every particular, and in some directly inadmissible. {37}

It cannot but be attended with some advantage to set this matter right.

It may, perhaps, tend in some degree to prevent the French from attempting to imitate the Romans, when we shew them that a state, whether a whole people, or a single city, exempted from taxes, and living by the tribute of other countries, must, at all events, be dependent on its armies. In short, military government and tributary revenue are inseparable. We see how closely they were connected in ancient Rome. It is fit that its imitators should know at what rate they pay (and in what coin) for those exemptions from taxes, occasioned by the burthens imposed upon other nations.

In general we find, that all nations are inclined to push to the extreme those means by which they have attained wealth or power; and it will also be found that their ruin is thereby brought on with greater rapidity.

{37} The reader must see the allusion is to England and France; but, in point of time, their situation is absolutely different. France is farther advanced in luxury than England. Rome was far behind Carthage.

The Romans exceeded their rivals in perseverance; in following up their plans, and in attention to their liberty. The contrary is the case with France and England.

The French, indeed, resemble the Romans in restlessness and ambition; but not in their mode of exerting the former, or of gratifying the latter: the resemblance, therefore, is a very faint one, even where it does hold at all. The English, in whatever they may resemble the Carthaginians, such as they have been represented, neither do it in their want of faith and honour, nor in their progress towards decline.

The different wars with Rome, in which Carthage came off a loser and became tributary, though only for a limited time, were not the only causes of its decline. The trade of Alexandria, which was better situated for commerce, had diminished the resources of Carthage; so that it was, in every sense of the word, a falling nation. It will be seen, in the subsequent part of this inquiry, how, from the different modes of making war and also the different effects of wealth in the present times, the comparison is still less founded.

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Had the Romans stopped the career of conquest at an earlier period, they probably would not have so soon sunk into a state of corruption.

It is very probable, that if Caesar had never attempted the useless conquest of Britain, he never would have succeeded in conquering the liberties of his own country. The reputation of having conquered an island, and the pa.s.sage of the British Channel, made way for the pa.s.sage of the Rubicon, and the battle of Pharsalia.

Conquerors must be paid as well as common soldiers: and though every man may have his price, and money and dignities may be a sufficient reward for the most part, there are some who despise any reward under that of royal power.--Caesar was one of those men; and both ancient and modern history shew, that though, perhaps, in his abilities, he has had no equal, there have been others who have rated theirs at as high a price.

The Romans at last became sensible, when too late, that they had pushed the spirit of conquest too far; and, as they had something great in all they did, they had the magnanimity to retract their error.

The greatest extent of the Roman empire being from the north of England to the Gulf of Persia, they consequently abandoned Britain, and those conquests in Asia, which were the most difficult to keep.

The river Euphrates became the boundary, the Emperor Adrian having, in a voluntary manner, given up all the country to the north of that river, situated on its left bank.

The decline of the empire might have been as regular as the rise of the republic, had it not been for the different characters of the emperors; some of whom did honour to human nature, from their possessing almost every virtue, while others were such monsters, that their crimes excite the highest degree of horror and indignation, and are almost beyond credibility.

It is but justice to the Romans to observe, that though they robbed and conquered, yet their policy was to instruct, improve, and civilize those whom they had robbed and conquered, wherever they stood in want of it. They aimed, in every case, at making the most of the circ.u.mstances in which they were placed, and they very truly conceived, that it was more profitable and advantageous, to rule over a civilized than a rude people. [end of page #39]

After the great influx of wealth had corrupted Rome, its public expenses increased at an enormous rate, till at last that portion of the tribute exacted from the provinces, which it pleased the armies and the generals to remit to Rome, became unequal to the expenditure.

Taxation of every kind then became necessary, in Italy itself, and the evils that attend the multiplication of imposts were greatly augmented by the ignorant manner in which they were laid on, by men who understood little but military affairs, added to the severe manner in which were they =sic= levied by a rude, imperious, and debauched soldiery.

The characters of soldier and citizen, which had been so long united, ceased to have any connection. Soon after this, the corruption of manners became general; and, at last, the Romans unable to find soldiers amongst themselves, were obliged to retain barbarians to fight in their defence, {38} and to bribe the Persians, and other nations, to leave them in a state of tranquility.

No nation that ever yet submitted to pay tribute, has long preserved its independence. The Romans knew this well; and if any one, having had recourse to that expedient, has escaped ruin, it has been from some other circ.u.mstance than its own exertion; or it has sometimes been the effort of despair when pushed to extremity.

Though, in many respects, Montesquieu's opinion of the affairs of Rome is by no means to be taken, yet his short account of the whole is unexceptionally just.