1867 - Thomson, J. T. Rambles with a Philosopher - CHAPTER XXXIII.

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CHAPTER XXXIII.

"NOW, Squire, I must put you on your mettle," said our companion, "as there is nothing that man fears so much as man. --Then to commence this great theme at the beginning in its simplest form, (for I always like to approach a difficult subject by the plainest route, and after all the principle is the same in small things as great): supposing you, for instance, (not that it is likely), had a wife and family, all duly housed and cared for--with estate, cattle, horses, and sheep; and admitting that within the bounds of your estate and family circle your word were law, what government would you call that?"

"I would call it an autocracy," said the Squire: "to myself a very agreeable government, and quite suited to my disposition."

"Then, again," said our companion, "supposing that

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your wife had as much to say in matters as yourself, what government would you call that?"

"Call it?" said the Squire, "were it possible--why a joint reign, not consistent with the dignity of manhood."

"Again, supposing," continued our companion, "you had children and grandchildren to any extent, and allowing that you held all power and property, what would you call that?"

"I would call it a despotism," said the Squire, "which I fear would not be lasting."

"Then, supposing it did not last," continued our companion, "and your children divided property and power with you, what would that be?"

"What would it be?" cogitated the Squire; "why a limited monarchy."

"And," continued our companion, "supposing the heads of families put you on the shelf and governed for themselves, what would that be?"

"An oligarchy," said the Squire.

"Again," persevered our companion, "let the children usurp the power and put in governors of their own choice; what would that be?"

"A democracy," said the Squire.

"Then, will you admit that what applies to a family, or tribe, will apply also to a nation?" "Admitted," said the Squire.

"Now," said our companion, "what holds a single family as well as a nation together, but property or interest? Then would you, oh Squire, agree, to the principle of the holders of no property having as much to say in the management of the general estate as the proprietors themselves?"

"Certainly not," said the Squire.

"Hence," said our companion, "that bone of contention

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in politics, viz., the property qualification. A nation consists of so many intelligences, and, naturally, the intelligences having no property (had they the power) would enact such laws as would transfer the property of their neighbours to themselves. In politics there is no honesty. Rapid change of substance from one class to its opposite is the tendency of democracy, and the tendency of its opposite-- autocracy --is for conservation of interests, in other words retardation of change. But in living things, change is not to be avoided. There are, therefore, two influences in all states--a destroying and a conserving; and the functions, I may say the destiny, of neither are to be ignored, for opposition is the soul of life: it creates the circulation between extremes, and in doing so it tempers and curbs both, so as to render neither entirely possible. A pure autocracy is as Utopian a scheme of government as an unadulterated democracy. To proceed," said our companion, "as it is with an individual so it is with the nation. Man in his youth and poverty is generally a democrat, in his old age and opulence an aristocrat. The world teams with such examples. A nation in its early struggles also tends to democracy, in its mature stages of accumulated interests to autocracy, and both have features peculiar to themselves. A democracy looks not to the past but to the future. It sets up one puppet of its choice only to amuse itself by pulling him down again. None of its servants remain till the grey hairs of their heads show, for democracy ignores the claims of its votaries. It has no affection for the learned or the gentle; for the rough sinews and arms of the many-headed hydra have no perceptions in that direction. An autocracy lives in the past and glories in tradition. Its future is overcast and uncertain. Its lines of princes are recorded on the pillar of state for generations. It is most careful of the fortunes of its

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servants, and its nobles cherish learning, arts and science, that these graces may adorn the capital. Both systems of government live their time and die out, and the opposite sections of a nation love the one and hate the other--for such is the law of nature--that existence should be held in the balance between opposites. Happy is the nation that can perpetuate its existence with unbiased consideration to either section.

"Now, taking a more expansive view of the subject and casting our eyes over the world, we will soon discover that there are great laws that govern the conduct of man towards man. We will see how much the division of the world into zones affects mundane policy. The world, by being divided into zones of heat and zones of cold, modifies the human populations into circles of apathy--circles of energy. A zone of permanent maximum heat surrounds the world under and near the equator--the doldrums of sailors. This zone passes over central Africa, the region of the Amazon, Sumatra, and Borneo. Here the populations throughout are listless, sparse, and in continual decay: mere bands of wild tribes roam about the primeval forests, gaining a meagre subsistence from the natural products. Were it not that exotic populations flow in upon these regions, humanity would die out; for the climate has no change--and rest is death. As we leave this deadly zone north and south, so do we find the energy and fecundity of the human species increase. To the south--Java, Bali, Madagascar, Mozambique, Angola, Brazil, and Peru; to the north--Hindostan, Burmah, Siam, Cochin China, Arabia, Ethiopia, and Mexico. In these countries the energies of the numerous populations are maintained by the law of reaction--the existence of alternate hot and cold seasons. Then, as we proceed farther from the equator, we reach the temperate zones, where the main energies of humanity are

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engendered. The alternation of summer and winter invigorates the man: the hungry winter compels forethought and labour during summer. The physical powers are thus developed equally with the mental. In these zones are the cradles of the conquerors of the earth. Between the two opposites--viz., the torrid and temperate zones--the circulation of humanity is incited, for were there not these opposites, neither would there be interchange. All strength resides in the temperate zones--all weakness in the tropics; and each imparts its properties to the other when they meet. Slavery is indigenous to the tropics--freedom to the temperate zones. Polygamy also is the institution of the former--monogamy of the latter. By these diversities the opposite principles engender change from one to the other. The tropics are the seat of the black man--the temperate zone the seat of the white; and the red man sits between. The black man sells his offspring for slaves and concubines; and the white man deteriorates by the contact. These polarities of humanity are as powerful in attraction and repulsion as the poles of a galvanic battery, and the current circulates and interchanges.

"Now let me give a glance at the changes in nations which these opposite circumstances of humanity have brought about, as disclosed by history. The ethnologist may dive into prehistoric ages and trace the rise and progress of the ancient Aryans, the impress of whose blood and language has such wide expansion. He may trace the boundaries of their conquests over the steppes of European and Asian Scythia, through the passes of the Emodi Montes by the Erythraeum Mare and the deserts of Lybia. He may then trace their colonies growing into nations; one descending on Palimbothra and Taprobane--others on the valleys of the Euphrates and the Nilus; again, on Hellas, Macedonia, and Italia. History

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will now lend a helping hand to trace the influence and boundaries of Babylonia, the extension of its victories and colonies reaching from the Internum Mare to the Indus; the influence and boundaries of AEgyptus, from Saba in Meroe to Colchis on the Phasis. The science of her navigators, under Neco the king, enabled them to round the continent of Africa by departing by the Arabicus Sinus and returning by the Fretum Herculis. Now, again, the Medes and Persians will appear on the scene, descending from the cold, bracing mountains, to the warm, enervating plains; creating new empires on the ashes of the old. Again, the various provinces and islands of Graecia will be seen, while rising in wealth and knowledge, to be planting colonies from Callatis on the Pontus Euxinus to Neapolis on the Tyrrhenum Mare--opposed by the strong-hearted but ignorant, barbarians in vain; for ignorance is weakness-- knowledge is power. It would be useless to attempt to trace all the mutations of races, for volumes would be filled in describing alone the conquests of Macedonia and Rome, and the opposite--their downfall. Nor need I more than mention the descent of the Mongolians on the fertile plains of Manji, and the northern extraction of the ancient Mexicans of the New World. Suffice it to say that humanity is impelled as the currents of the ocean: necessity urges it against its will to frozen regions, there to be chastened and invigorated; and when chastened and invigorated, inclination impels it to the warm zones, where it is weakened and degenerated. Humanity moves on the surface, as the trade-wind; and it has paroxysms of warfare, as the cyclone. The stronger nations flow over the weaker, and the weaker bend to the yoke or die out. One nation may supplant another in its own latitude, but no nation can be propagated or maintained out of its zone, whether by conquest or set-

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tlement. The galleys of the Romans may have reached even to Dandeguda, on the Sinus Gangeticus, but to fall back or die out. This, too, with medieval Venice and Genoa, which spread their commerce far and wide, but to fall back and die out. So with Portugal and Spain; and modern England, Holland, and France essay to settle their sons in tropical Africa, Polynesia, and Asia--but to lead to the same result. They may be powerful for a time, but they war against nature if they expect no change--no check to their arms. True, the law of contraries impels the intrusion; yet the same law will react against it--for to live is to change. A nation stronger than another must overflow the weaker, and thus spread beyond its boundaries and disperse; but dispersion is weakness--compactness is strength.

"Conventions or nations that progress east or west may permanently plant themselves, as the Angles, the Huns and the Alans. Those that progress southward towards the equator, as the Vandals on Carthage, die out. These latter had but a century's existence--such is the fate of meridional conquests. They can be held but for a time, for have we not the examples of the Median, Persian, Macedonian and Roman conquests in Africa and Asia, and where are they now? A nation, to have stability, must keep to its zone, for the step beyond is perilous. Is France strengthened by the holding of Algeria? Russia by the Caucasus and Georgia? Turkey, by Irak Arabi? China, by Yunnan and Quangsee? Britain, by Hindostan? the New Englanders, by Louisiana? Brazil, by the Amazons? Not so; are the principles of the great rule, for the vital property flowing out of a nation is the ebbing out of that which upholds it, and it gains nothing but decadence in return."

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"Then, may I ask, where will we find the strong nations of the earth--the future conquerors of the world?"

"It is in those nations that have not yet spread beyond their zones--Germany and Canada are the future seats of the world's great empires. You may smile, oh Squire. It is indeed foolish to pry into futurity."

"Now I come to the next subject, the foundation of all nations--viz,, man and woman. We will find that what actuates and impels the miniature commonwealth, governs also the great nation."

"Well," said the Squire, with a yawn, "I will try and hear that out, as it sounds more ridiculous than your last lucubration."

"Then," said our companion, not at all disconcerted, "the miniature commonwealth, made up of a man and a woman, is held together by the same principles as a nation of many men and many women, just as molecular attraction holds the little needle to its form with the same force as it holds together the huge anchor. Nature always works on principle, and when principle is neglected or forgotten, so does nature re-act against the blunder. The household, as we have suggested before, may be a democracy or an autocracy, or it may be a mixture, just as a collection of householders or a nation; but it will be found that the first system can only be indulged in in early stages, the second in the latter."

"I would like you to illustrate this amusing doctrine," said the Squire.

"Have patience, then," said our companion. "Government is but an exposition of the sentiments of the people, after all. The cost of government is as necessary an evil as a lawyer's bill, and the people work out their own destiny in spite of it. I take democracy to be the hobby-horse of

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an infant nation: the children mount on it, and dismount-- pull each other down, and leg each other up--till they tire and pull it to pieces; and, so long as there is amusement, the young couple also hold fast to the hobby-horse--their quarrels and petulences may be many, but young love binds; the novelty of the situation balances the disagreeableness of any rough jolting. So it is with a young nation: the sturdy youth have a boundless field in the virgin wilderness--their material interests are so absorbing as to draw their attention from the play at kings by their would-be leaders. The setting up and the pulling down of authority may go on without danger to a rising and prosperous commonwealth. Reipublicae formam, laudare facilius quam evanire, et si evenit haud diuturna esse potest. But nature loves change, and change is life. Accumulated wealth is stored in the meantime, and opposite interests arise--the interests of those who have and those who have not. To overturn is to destroy the fabric. Now must come the age of mutual concession--mutual forbearance-- between one set of intelligences and their opposite. Democracy must yield, and as times and centuries wear on so does she yield the more. Age comes to the parent as well as to the nation; and experience, which is knowledge, asserts its power to conserve the estate. The older a nation is, the more civilised; so are its parts more built up-- more artificially maintained; and society ranks on opposite sides, that in the circulation from rich to poor all may live. The greater store of goods--the greater credit; so also the greater development of current labor, or poverty, and, with these circumstances, also, the higher intelligence and learning in the upper classes--the more abasement and ignorance in the lower. Now comes the period of decadence in a nation, as old age is attained in a parent--

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now the necessity that an all-powerful autocrat should reign--now that the parent, to preserve the substance of his family, should have the chief authority; for in this period the voices of the many that have not are raised for revolution--the voices of the few that have, for conservation. It is now, only, that the strong power of a single will, directing an armed force, is able to stay the conflict for a time--the time may be for years or for centuries. This is the mission of the autocrat, and it is appropriate to the condition of the people. His government may be benign, just, generous, excellent, and all but Divine: he may support his country from crumbling to pieces for ages, where the democrat could not uphold it for a day. Yet, his reign is the prelude to decay. Families have their paroxysms of grief and joy; so do nations have their foreign and intestine wars. The principles of nations are the same in small things as well as in great. The observant study those signs.

"Now, I come to the internal economy of a nation. As the states of having, and not having, are developed, so is circulation between opposites excited, trade and interchange promoted; and the democrat will be found to belong to those who have nothing; the aristocrat to those who have something--the one for pulling down, the other for conserving. The safety of the State lies in the maintenance of the equilibrium of these two opposite forces. Mutual concessions, ever varying with circumstances, can only attain to this. Non-concession must end in physical revolution-- that is, in civil war. Democracy, to have permanence, must have educated masses, continuous immigration of an inferior people, or slavery within its borders. It levels and humbles the learned, mistrusts the hero, hates the successful, and dismisses its faithful servants. Commune vitium in

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magnis liberisque civitatibus ut invidia comes gloria sit. Autocracy does the opposite. Its masses are necessarily ignorant, it sends out emigrants, and it requires not slavery in its borders; it honors the learned, trusts the hero, loves the successful, and cherishes its service-worn supporters. Hence, democracy is natural to young nations--autocracy to old. Democratic Athens ostracised its eminent generals and statesmen; autocratic Rome lavished her wealth on the same; republican America dismissed the heroes of her independence into penury; autocratic France lavished honors, pensions, and estates on her successful generals and diplomatists. Opposite principles of action permeate the vitals of each system. The ultra-democrat, as selfish as a pig, is, notwithstanding this, content to gorge from a wooden trough. The ulta-aristocract, selfish as the lap-dog, fastidiously picks the choice pieces out of a porcelain plate. The strength of an autocracy consists in the high training of the privileged few; of a democracy, in the mediocre attainments of the unprivileged many. Autocracy is the higher development, because it moves by reason; democracy the lower, because it moves by instinct only. Each, however, is appropriate to its time, and neither can be universal in this world. Cities, again, cling to democracy--first, because in a confined space there is opportunity for the masses to combine; second, they live by quick circulation of products; third, their skill in turning over is their profit. The country, on the contrary, leans to autocracy, for the masses are separate and apart, which prevents combination. The livelihood of the masses also depends on the favor of the aristocratic landowners.

"Thus, opposite interests, in spite of the measures of the statesman, grow up in all nations, and the artificial fortifying up of the one, to the disparagement of the other,

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destroys national growth--that slow and healthful change which is essential to the welfare of a people. A people that has the safety-valve of mutual concession will work out its own destiny without horrid intestine troubles. Families will rise into importance by degrees, and fall by degrees, as the ocean tides, and no one know their altered destiny. There are many gradations between democracy and autocracy, the most eminently notable of which is to be seen in our own dear native land. It is truly a government founded on the Divine principles of equity--between opposites-- and mutual concessions, ever varying to the times. And, when we scan the position of other nations, we will find that Great Britain's is a peculiar one, and none have worked out their destiny as she has. To the blood and the wisdom of our forefathers we owe much; but these are, also, seconded by her insular position, and in it the security against the invasion of armed Europe. Thus, with a beneficent and settled process of constitutional government, our country has been found to foster trades and manufactures, creating circulation between city and country, and between ourselves and foreign nations. In more modern times, the capacity of her colonial system, for favoring the emigration of the surplus population, is not the least cause of her glorious renown. A rapid glance at the world will show, also, that democracies are at present the fashion of the new world-- autocracies of the old. But the former are only possible in temperate climates--and, if established, soon sink in the torrid zone. The cause of this is, that the energetic and educated masses alone can compass a status; the enervated and the ignorant cannot effect this. Russia, China, Hindostan, Persia, Egypt, and Turkey are under autocracies, oligarchies, or absolute rule. Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Great Britain, North America, and Switzerland

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graduate from these to the opposite, which is found in the last."

"Then," said the Squire, "may I ask which system you approve of?"

"This," answered our companion; "of each in its place when appropriate to the conditions of the populations and the age of the nation. I would consider a pure democracy in Egypt, for instance, as a great phenomenon not at all desirable. The genius of the people being against such a form of government."

"But what would you have in New Zealand?" again asked the Squire.

"Were my lot cast here," answered our companion, "I would accept what is inevitable in a new country--a democracy, tempered, I would hope, by the good sense of the nation from whence you have sprung, and I would have confidence in my fellow-settlers that the hurtful extreme would be avoided. May I suggest, at the same time, that your climate being similar to that of the home country, in it is a guarantee that equity and mutual concession between opposite interests, as they grow up, will be the order of the day. Then a Prince might soon come to rule over you."

The Squire sighed.

"Yes, Squire," continued our companion, "nature hates extremes, and a pure democracy is as rare in this world as a pure autocracy; both have their opponents within a state, which prevents completeness. Thus in the ancient democracies of Greece and Rome, a large mass of the people were slaves, and yet the cities of Greece are held up as exquisite patterns to us moderns. What better is the great existing example so much flaunted in our faces, viz., the United States of America? Autocracies have also equal opposition to completeness in the necessity of rulers having

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counselors drawn from the most influential of the citizens. In fact, a great democrat is a paradox. A democrat is, in principle, a mere cipher; to be great, he must be bolstered up to the odious position of an autocrat, and nothing does he love so much as this--the object of his hatred and the object of his desire at the same time. On the contrary, a real autocrat must be great, for he is nothing else than he pretends to be."

"Bravo," exclaimed the Squire, "it is refreshing to hear such sentiments enunciated so far from happy old England. Her aristocracy, autocrats each one, are the envy of the world; her traditions, who can rival? her prestige, who can compare?"

"Yet," said our companion, "a truce to your exultations. Each system has its disadvantages. The very prestige of the aristocracy creates a more active envy in the democracy --a lever to overturn. The philosopher weighs all sides and represses his feelings, but I need not ask you to do that. In casting your eyes over the countries of this world, you will find this rule to exist: viz., when education is general, the form of government is modelled on democracy --when the contrary; on autocracy, or modifications of the same. China, the most generally-educated nation probably in the world, is the most democratic, though the apathy of the masses, borne down by their enervating climate, prevents the political activity of the European, so they content themselves that their magistrates and governors rise to power by education alone, under a system of competitive examination. Central Africa and South America sink into the abyss of total ignorance, hence the populations there are ruled, by despotism.

"So thus there are two great contrary divisions of the population of this world, viz., the educated and the igno-

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rant---the qualities of one of which attract the other. The weakness of one is a powerful incentive of attack from the other; and the attacker, in his conquests, only imbibes that weakness--the cause of his success. Thus the Macedonians degenerated on the plains of Babylonia, as the British at this present day do on the plains of Hindostan; the New-Englanders on the plains of the Mississippi; the Portuguese in the valley of the Amazon; the Spanish in Mexico; the French in Algeria; and the Dutch in Java. The power thus gathered in the middle latitudes is dissipated in the tropics. The power of education is paralyzed by the weakening influences of climate. The natural energy is absorbed by contact with the enervating influences of an opposite zone. 'Tis thus the nations of the world exist in constant change--contraries tending to contraries; and the circulation, by the aid of steam, is now more rapid and excited than it ever has been in the world's history. The future comes faster.

"Then turn we to civilized society. Here also inequality of rank is inevitable. The two opposite divisions commenced from the earliest ages. Most commentators are reduced to the opinion that Nimrod obtained his notoriety or fame as a slave-hunter, and as such was mighty before the Lord. The system of inequality was perpetuated by Abraham, and was prevalent in his time through Chaldea, Egypt, and Arabia. It lived through the time of Homer and the heroic era of Greece. It was an institution in ancient Rome, and the democracy of Rome climaxed in its atrocious cruelty to the bondsman; and it is said that in this age of civil liberty and philanthropy, modern America is not a whit behind her Old World model. With the Augustan age--a period of autocracy--the slave found amelioration of condition and more generous treatment

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In Britain, even to the ninth century, white men were bought, sold, and worked as slaves; they were treated in no other manner than as goods and chattels: nay, orders of slaves were retained in this our beloved country up to the fifteenth century, and exceptionally, also, in mines, up to the eighteenth century. Yet in some counties of England the bondager perpetuates the memory of what was --in name if not in actual condition. Christianity and Mahommedanism, while manumitting the neophyte, indulged in the profits of the slave-trade amongst the pagans. Ancient Sparta, distinguished for patriotism and dauntless courage, which qualities uphold a nation; notorious also for overbearing pride, dishonour, and narrow-minded exclusiveness, the qualities that destroy a nation--was at the same time ultra-democratic, the levelling uniformity of whose system of training youth discouraged great or original genius in arts, literature, or philosophy. Her only boast was a few military leaders, such as Leonidas, Pausanias, &c. Her sovereign power resided in an assembly of the people, held periodically outside of their city--in which every Spartan, without respect to birth or wealth, had an equal voice. After all, the Spartans were but a band of foreigners living on and amidst a hostile race: and here we draw this conclusion, that so pure a democracy as this was, could only be perpetuated by the opposite condition within their domain, viz., slavery, and a humiliated and conquered people. Nature's law was here vindicated in requiring that the equality and privileges of a class should be counterbalanced by the disabilities and burdens of another class. Nature's law is inexorable: the pride of the one class was at the cost of the humiliation of the other; ease and luxury of the one class were gained by the labour, pains, and stripes of the other. Like the modern New-Englander, the citizens,

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while rapturously proclaiming that all men were equal in one breath, belied their vociferations in the next by whipping their slaves. Man, thus to exist, is to be a mixture of contraries: the law of nature is not to be gainsaid.

"Again, the extremes of democracy and autocracy have their caprices, littlenesses, inconsistencies, and unamiable qualities. Thus, with the former, while proclaiming freedom sacred to all, the very commencement of their citizens' career is under compulsory education, generally made up of a mixture of inferior grammar and doubtful principles. Then we have the stomachs of the citizens undergoing the compulsory cold-water cure, as a panacea of all evils: this crops out under the Maine Liquor Law. Next, we have compulsory church-going, under the laws of the democratic Puritans, who would not go to church in their own country, and, having established another elsewhere, not very consistently ducked people that would not attend theirs. Again, in the ultra-democratic religious system of Scotland (a reaction, by-the-bye, against ultra-autocratic Popery) we find that the liberty of conscience for which they fought and shed their blood graduated into a curious and interesting institution of stringent coercion on weak flesh and sin. This rigorous method of moral police climaxed in the setting up of the famous cutty stool, whereon the victims of Venus were exhibited in their most sacred places to an indignant and shocked immaculate virtue. The minds of the tender innocent, it might be, were thus seared by familiarity." "Perhaps not," said the Squire.

"Then, as to the extremes of autocracy," continued our companion, "we have equally interesting developments in an opposite direction--such as in the sumptuary laws-- laws for kneeling and prostration before magnates, and

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such atoms of fellow-men--the disallowance of umbrellas to some--shoes, and yellow over-coats, to others: these to be enforced at the risk of the pillory and thumb-screws. Invisu nunquam imperia retinentur diu. Such are the opposite whims of opposite extremes in the political system which compel the thoughtful to pray for the golden medium--that mysterious fulcrum that balances striving nature.

"A nation, oh Squire, a political convention, or a system of government--call it what you will--having a beginning, also has its end; and, what are the signs of the end? Ah, let us see what mighty Rome teaches. It was four centuries after the Augustan era--the culminating point of her history, the time of her greatest extension, influence, and power--that, as Gibbon relates, the estates of the Roman senators, which so far exceeded the proportions of modern wealth, were not confined to the limits of Italy. Their possessions extended far beyond the Ionian and AEgean seas, to the most distant provinces. The city of Nicropolis, which Augustus had founded as an eternal monument of the Actian victory, was the property of the devout Paula, and it is observed by Seneca that the rivers which had divided hostile nations now flowed through the lands of private citizens. In Rome there were many side-boards in the time of Pliny which contained more solid silver than had been transported by Scipio from vanquished Carthage. But the nation's splendour was degraded and sullied by the conduct of some nobles who, unmindful of their own dignity and that of their country, assumed unbounded license of vice and folly. The frequent and familiar companions of the great men were those parasites who practised the most useful of all arts--the art of flattery--who eagerly applauded each word and every action of their

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immortal patron, gazed with rapture at his marble columns and variegated pavements, and strenuously praised the pomp and elegance which he was taught to consider as part of his personal merit. But the plebeians of Rome, who disdained such sedentary and servile arts, had been oppressed from the earliest times by the weight of debt and usury, and the husbandman, during the term of his military service, was forced to abandon the cultivation of his farm. The lands of Italy, which had originally been divided amongst the families of the free and indigent proprietors, were insensibly purchased or usurped by the avarice of the nobles, and in the age which preceded the fall of the republic it was computed that only 2000 citizens were possessed of independent substance. But when the prodigal commons had imprudently alienated not only the use but the inheritance of power, they sunk under the reign of the Caesars into a vile and wretched populace, which must in a few generations have been totally extinguished had it not been continually recruited by the manumission of slaves and the influx of strangers. As early as the time of Hadrian, it was the just complaint of ingenuous natives that the capital had attracted the vices of the universe and the manners of most opposite nations; the intemperance of the Gauls, the craving of the Greeks, the obstinacy of the Egyptians, and the effeminate prostitution of the Syrians. These, under the proud and false denomination of Romans, presumed to despise humanity that lived beyond the precincts of the Eternal City.

"For the convenience of lazy plebeians, the monthly distribution of corn was converted into a daily allowance of bread; great ovens were maintained at public expense; at an appointed hour each citizen was furnished with a ticket as a gift or at a very low price. During five months of

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the year an allowance of bacon was doled out to the poor citizens. At the same time stupenduous aqueducts had been constructed to every part of the city. The baths of Caracalla were open at stated hours, where were 1600 seats of marble, and more than 3000 were reckoned in the baths of Diocletian. From these stately palaces issued swarms of ragged plebeians, without shoes and without mantles, who loitered away whole days in the streets or in the Forum. The most lively and splendid amusements of this idle multitude depended on frequent exhibitions of public games and spectacles, where the human gladiator was immolated to the bloody cravings of a degenerate people. The vast and magnificent theatres were, at the same time, filled with 3000 female dancers. Here we cry, with Juvenal, Nunc patimur longae pacis mala; soevior armis luxuria incubuit, victumque ulciscitur orbem.

"A nation, in principle, is the same as any other existence--a man, or a vegetable, or a fish, I care not what. It is planted, grows, ripens, and throws out seeds, into other parts--these are its colonies. It shapes its government or policy as the ash tree to the prevailing wind. When it culminates in bright beauty and splendour, then does the heart begin to decay, and the glorious fabric is now in the infancy of decline. In coming centuries, the heart is rotten, and the hard gnarled bark only remains to support the tottering trunk. The branches spreading to all lands, fall off one after the other, and the roots no longer gather sap or sustenance. At this epoch there is little sympathy or connection between opposites; for when the heart of a people is vacant--the rich too great and the poor too humble--the minds of the wealthy polluted with ease, the minds of the poor polluted with penury--there is no circulation in the body politic--no kindness and good offices

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between opposites, so as to hold them together to support the national erection. The tension of the bonds between opposites is so strained by the distance that they break, and the old fabric topples down. In such a state, the tree to be cut down is a mercy; a nation in such a state, to be conquered is relief, that new saplings may spring forth and replenish the earth with their healthy stems--that a new people may arise and pursue again another destiny. Change is life.

"A nation, like any other thing, oh Squire, is born, grows and dies, and the consistency of its parts are as essential to the strength of its whole as in any other existence. It is as essential to the vitality of a nation that the poor and the rich, the ignorant and the educated should join in the close bonds of common sympathy and fellowship, as for a single family. With caste prejudices and supercilious pride, comes the breaking of the bonds of society, so when outer pressure comes there is no force to sustain the contact, and the whole pile built up in ages past, falls with a crash. Nor is it good for society that great industries should be in the hands of the few, for when the pulsation of the mighty piston stops, so do the multitudes of poor humanity perish. Hence, national preservation can only be perpetuated by mutual concessions of interest between the two opposites of society--the one giving in to the times, the other giving way to the times. Nature works by this law, and unhappy are the people that cannot work out their destiny to this consummation."