First and Last Part 14

The decline of a State differs also according to whether it be a great State or a small one, for in the first indifference, in the latter faction, are a peril, and in the first ignorance, in the latter private spite.

Then again, the decline of a State will differ according to whether its strength is rooted originally in commerce, in arms, or in production; and if in production, then whether in the production of the artisan or in that of the peasant. If arms be the basis of the State, then that the army should become professional and apart is a symptom of decline and a cause of it; if commerce, the subst.i.tution of hazards and imaginaries for the transport of real goods and the search after real demand; if production, the discontent or apathy of the producer; as with peasants an ill system in the taxation of the land or in the things necessary for its tillage, such as a misgovernment of its irrigation in a dry country; the permission of private exactions and tolls in a fertile one; the toleration of thieves and forestallers, and so forth. Artisans, upon the other hand, may well flourish, though the State be corrupt in such matters, but they must be secured in a high wage and be given a vast liberty of protest, for if they sink to be slaves in fact, they will from the nature of their toil grow both weak and foolish. Yet is not the State endangered by the artisan's throwing off a refuse of ill-paid and starving men who are either too many for the work or unskilful at it?

Such an excretion would poison a peasantry, remaining in their body as it were, but artisans are purged thereby. This refuse it is for the State to decide upon. It may in an artisan State be used for soldiery (since such States commonly maintain but small armies and are commonly indifferent to military glory), or it may be set to useful labour, or again, destroyed; but this last use is repugnant to humanity, and so in the long run hurtful to the State.

In the decline of a State, of whatever nature that State be, two vices will immediately appear and grow: these are Avarice and Fear; and men will more readily accept the imputation of Avarice than of Fear, for Avarice is the less despicable of the two--yet in fact Fear will be by far the strongest pa.s.sion of the time.

Avarice will show itself not indeed in a mere greed of gain (for this is common to all societies whether flouris.h.i.+ng or failing), but rather in a sort of taking for granted and permeation of the mere love of money, so that history will be explained by it, wars judged by their booty or begun in order to enrich a few, love between men and women wholly subordinated to it, especially among the rich: wealth made a test for responsibility and great salaries invented and paid to those who serve the State. This vice will also be apparent in the easy acquaintance of all who are possessed of wealth and their segregation from the less fortunate, for avarice cleaves society flatways, keeping the sc.u.m of it quite clear of the middle, the middle of it quite clear of the dregs, and so forth. It is a further mark of avarice in its last stages that the rich are surrounded with lies in which they themselves believe.

Thus, in the last phase, there are no parasites but only friends, no gifts but only loans, which are more esteemed favours than gifts once were. No one vicious but only tedious, and no one a poltroon but only slack.

Of Fear in the decline of a State it may be said that it is so much the master pa.s.sion of such decline as to eat up all others. Coming by travel from a healthy State to one diseased, Fear is the first point you take.

Men dare not print or say what they feel of the judges, the public governors, the action of the police, the controllers of fortunes and of news. This Fear will have about it something comic, providing infinite joy to the foreigner, and modifying with laughter the lament of the patriot. A miserable hack that never had a will of his own, but ran to do what he was told for twenty years at the bidding of his masters, being raised to the Bench will be praised for an impartial virtue more than human. A drunken fellow, the son of a drunkard, having stolen control over some half-dozen sheets, must be named under the breath or not at all. A powerful minister may be accused with st.u.r.dy courage of something which he did not do and no one would mind his doing, but under the influence of Fear, to tell the least little truth about him will put a whole a.s.sembly into a sort of blankness.

This vice has for its most laughable effect the raising of a whole host of phantoms, and when a State is so far gone that civic Fear is quite normal to the citizens, then you will find them blenching with terror at a piece of print, a whispered accusation. Bankruptcy, though they be possessed of nothing, and even the ill-will of women. Moneylenders under this influence have the greatest power, next after them, blackmailers of all kinds, and next after these eccentrics who may blurt or break out.

Those who have least power in the decline of a State, are priests, soldiers, the mothers of many children, the lovers of one woman, and saints.

On Past Greatness

There lies in the North-East of France, close against the Belgian frontier and within cannon shot of the famous battlefield of Malplaquet, a little town called Bavai--I have written of it elsewhere.

Coming into this little town you seem to be entering no more than a decent, unimportant market borough, a larger village meant for country folk, perhaps without a history and certainly without fame.

As you come to look about you one thing after another enlivens your curiosity and suggests something at once enormous and remote in the destinies of the place.

In the first place, seven great roads go out like the seven rays of a star, plumb straight, darting along the line, across the vast, bare fields of Flanders, past and along the many isolated woods of the provinces, and making to great capitals far off--to Cologne, to Paris, to Treves, and to the ports of the sea.

These roads are deserted in great part. Some of them are metalled in certain sections, and again in other sections are no more than lanes, and again no more than footpaths, as you proceed along their miles of way; but their exact design awfully impresses the mind. You know, as you follow such strict alignment, that you are fulfilling the majestic purpose of Imperial Rome. It was the Romans that made these things.

Then, intrigued and excited by such remains of greatness, you read what you can of the place.... And you find nothing but a dust of legend. You find a story that once here a king, filled with ambition and wors.h.i.+pping strange G.o.ds, thrust out these great roads to the ends of the earth; desired his capital to be a hub and navel for the world. He put them under the protection of the seven planets and of the deities of those stars. Three he paved with black marble and four with white marble, and where they met upon the market place he put up a golden terminal. There the legend ends.

It is only legend--a true product of the Dark Ages, when all that Rome had done rose like a huge dream in the mind of Europe and took on gorgeous and fantastic colouring. You learn (for the rest) very little--that ornaments and money have been found dating from two thousand years, that once great walls surrounded the place. It must have had n.o.ble buildings and solemn courts. In strict history all you will discover is that it was the capital of that tribe, the Nervii, against whom Caesar fought, and whose territory was early conquered for the Empire. You will find nothing more. There is no living tradition, there is no voice; the little town is dumb.

The place is a figure, and a striking one, of greatness long dead, and a man visiting its small domestic interests to-day, and noting its comfort, its humility, and its sleep, is reminded of many things attaching to human fame. It would seem as though the ambitions of men, and that exalted appet.i.te for glory which has produced the chief things of this world, suffer the effect of time somewhat as the body of an animal slain will suffer that.

One part of the organism and then another decays and mixes back with nature. The effect of will has vanished. The thing is a prey to all that environment which, once alive, it combated, conquered, and transformed to its own use. One portion after another is lost, until at last only the most resisting stands--the skeleton and hard framework, the least expressive, the least personal part of the whole. This also decays and perishes. Then there remains no more but a score of hardened fragments that linger in their place, and what has pa.s.sed away is fortunate if even the slightest or most fantastic legend of itself survives.

The great dead are first forgotten in their physical habit; we lose the nature of their voices, we forget their sympathies and their affections.

Bit by bit all that they intended to be eternal slips back into the common thing around. A blurred image, growing fainter and fainter, lingers. At last the person vanishes, and in its place some public raising material things--a monument, a tomb, an ornament, or weapon of enduring metal--is all that remains.

If it were possible for the spring of appet.i.te and quest to be dried up in man, such a spectacle would dry up that spring.

It is not possible, for it is providentially in the nature of man to cherish these illusions of an immortal memory and of a life bestowed upon the shade or the mere name of his living greatness. Those various forms of fame which are young men's goals, and to which the eager creative power of early manhood so properly directs itself, seem each in turn or each for its varying temperament to promise the desired reward; and one imagines that his love, another that his discoveries, another that his victories in the field or his conspicuous acts of courage will remain permanently with his fellows long after he has left their feast.

As though to give some substance to the flattering cheat, there is one kind of fame which men have been permitted to attain, and which does give them a sort of fixed tenure--if not for ever, yet for generations upon generations--in the human city. This sort of fame is the fame of the great poets. There is nothing more enduring. It has for some who were most blessed outlasted, you may say, all material things which they handled or they knew--all fabrics, all instruments, all habitations. It is comparable in its endurance to the years, and a man reads the "Song of Roland" and can still look on that same unchanged Cleft of Roncesvalles, or a man reads the Iliad and can look to-day westward from the sh.o.r.es to Tenedos. But wait a moment. Are they indeed blessed in this, the great poets? Ronsard debated it. He decided that they were, and put into the mouth of the muses the great lines:----

Mais un tel accident n'arrive point a l'ame, Qui sans matiere vist immortelle la haut.

Vela saigement dit, Ceux dont la fantaisie Sera religieuse et devote envers Dieu Tousjours acheveront quelque grand poesie, Et dessus leur renom la Parque n'aura lieu.

But the matter is still undecided.

Mr. The Duke: The Man of Malplaquet

On the field of Malplaquet, that battlefield, I met a man.

He was pointed out to me as a man who drove travellers to Bavai. His name was Mr. The Duke, and he was very poor.

If he comes across these lines (which is exceedingly unlikely) I offer him my apologies. Anyhow, I can write about him freely, for he is not rich, and, what is more, the laws of his country permit the telling of the truth about our fellow-men, even when they are rich.

Mr. The Duke was of some years, and his colour was that of cedar wood. I met him in his farmyard, and I said to him:

"Is it you, sir, that drive travellers to Bavai?"

"No," said he.

Accustomed by many years of travel to this type of response, I continued:

"How much do you charge?"

"Two francs fifty," said he.

"I will give you three francs," I said, and when I had said this he shook his head and replied:

"You fall at an evil moment; I was about to milk the cows." Having said this he went to harness the horse.

When the horse was harnessed to his little cart (it was an extremely small horse, full of little bones and white in colour, with one eye stronger than the other) he gave it to his little daughter to hold, and himself sat down to table, proposing a meal.

"It is but humble fare," he said, "for we are poor."

This sounded familiar to me; I had both read and heard it before. The meal was of bread and b.u.t.ter, pasty and beer, for Malplaquet is a country of beer and not of wine.

As he sat at table the old man pointed out to me that contraband across the Belgian frontier, which is close by, was no longer profitable.

"The Fraud," he said, "is no longer a living for anyone."

Upon that frontier contraband is called "The Fraud"; it holds an honourable place as a career.

"The Fraud," he continued, "has gone long ago; it has burst. It is no longer to be pursued. There is not even any duty upon apples.... But there is a duty upon pears. Had I a son I would not put him into The Fraud.... Sometimes there is just a chance here and there.... One can pick up an occasion. But take it all in all (and here he wagged his head solemnly) there is nothing in it any more."