6.
Far otherwise is the history of those states, in which the intellect, not prescription, is recognized as the ultimate authority, and where the course of time is necessarily accompanied by a corresponding course of change. Such polities are ever in progress; at first from worse to better, and then from better to worse. In all human things there is a maximum of advance, and that maximum is not an established state of things, but a point in a career. The cultivation of reason and the spread of knowledge for a time develop and at length dissipate the elements of political greatness; acting first as the invaluable ally of public spirit, and then as its insidious enemy. Barbarian minds remain in the circle of ideas which sufficed their forefathers; the opinions, principles, and habits which they inherited, they transmit. They have the prestige of antiquity and the strength of conservatism; but where thought is encouraged, too many will think, and will think too much. The sentiment of sacredness in institutions fades away, and the measure of truth or expediency is the private judgment of the individual. An endless variety of opinion is the certain though slow result; no overpowering majority of judgments is found to decide what is good and what is bad; political measures become acts of compromise; and at length the common bond of unity in the state consists in nothing really common, but simply in the unanimous wish of each member of it to secure his own interests. Thus the veterans of Sylla, comfortably settled in their farms, refused to rally round Pompey in his war with Cæsar.[75] Thus the municipal cities in the provinces refused to unite together in a later age for the defence of the Empire, then evidently on the way to dissolution.[76] Selfishness takes the place of loyalty, patriotism, and faith; parties grow and strengthen themselves; classes and ranks withdraw from each other more and more; the national energy becomes but a self-consuming fever, and but enables the constituent parts to be their own mutual destruction; and at length such union as is necessary for political life is found to be impossible. Meanwhile corruption of morals, which is common to all prosperous countries, completes the internal ruin, and, whether an external enemy appears or not, the nation can hardly be considered any more a state. It is but like some old arch, which, when its supports are crumbled away, stands by the force of cohesion, no one knows how. It dies a natural death, even though some Alaric or Genseric happens to be at hand to take possession of the corpse. And centuries before the end comes, patriots may see it coming, though they cannot tell its hour; and that hour creates surprise, not because it at length is come, but because it has been so long delayed.
I have been referring to the decline, as I before spoke of the progress, of the Romans: the career of that people through twelve centuries is a drama of sustained interest and equable and majestic evolution; it has given scope for the most ingenious researches into its internal history. There one age is the parent of another; the elements and principles of its political system are brought out into a variety of powers with mutual relations; external events act and react with domestic affairs; manners and views change; excess of prosperity becomes the omen of misfortune to come; till in the words of the poet, "Suis et ipsa Roma viribus ruit." For how many philosophical histories has Greece afforded opportunity! while the constitutional history of England, as far as it has hitherto gone, is a recognized subject-matter of scientific and professional teaching. The case is the same with the history of the medieval Italian cities, of the medieval Church, and of the Saracenic empire. As regards the last of these instances, I am not alluding merely to the civil contentions and wars which took place in it, for such may equally happen to a barbarian state. Cupidity and ambition are inherent in the nature of man; the Gauls and British, the tribes of Scythia, the Seljukian Turks, consisted each of a number of mutually hostile communities or kingdoms. What is relevant to my purpose in the history of the Saracens is, that their quarrels often had an intellectual basis, and arose out of their religion. The white, the green, and the black factions, who severally reigned at Cordova, Cairo, and Bagdad, excommunicated each other, and claimed severally to be the successors of Mahomet. Then came the fanatical innovation of the Carmathians, who pretended to a divine mission to complete the religion of Mahomet, as Mahomet had completed Christianity.[77] They relaxed the duties of ablution, fasting, and pilgrimage; admitted the use of wine, and protested against the worldly pomp of the Caliphs. They spread their tents along the coast of the Persian Gulf, and in no long time were able to bring an army of 100,000 men into the field. Ultimately they took up their residence on the borders of Assyria, Syria, and Egypt. As time went on, and the power of the Caliphs was still further reduced, religious contention broke out in Bagdad itself, between the rigid and the lax parties, and the followers of the Abbassides and of Ali.
If we consult ancient history, the case is the same; the Jews, a people of progress, were ruined, as appears on the face of Scripture, by internal causes; they split into sects, Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, Essenes, as soon as the Divine Hand retired from the direct government of their polity; and they were fighting together in Jerusalem when the Romans were beleaguering its walls. Nay, even the disunion, which was a special and divine punishment for their sins, was fulfilled according to this natural law which I am illustrating; it was the splendid reign of Solomon, the era of literature, commerce, opulence, and general prosperity, which was the antecedent of fatal revolutions. If we turn to civilized nations of an even earlier date, the case is the same; we are accustomed indeed to associate Chinese and Egyptians with ideas of perpetual untroubled stability; but a philosophical historian, whom I shall presently cite, speaks far otherwise of those times when the intellect was prominently active. China was for many centuries the seat of a number of petty principalities, which were limited, not despotic; about 200 years before our era it became one absolute monarchy. Till then idolatry was unknown, and the doctrines of Confucius were in honour: the first Emperor ordered a general burning of books, burning at the same time between 400 and 500 of the followers of Confucius, and persecuting the men of letters. A rationalist philosophy succeeded, and this again gave way to the introduction of the religion of Buddha or Fo, just about the time of our Lord's Crucifixion. At later periods, in the fifth and in the thirteenth centuries, the country was divided into two distinct kingdoms, north and south; and such was its state when Marco Polo visited it. It has been several times conquered by the Tartars, and it is a remarkable proof of its civilization, that it has ever obliged them to adopt its manners, laws, and even language. China, then, has a distinct and peculiar internal history, and has paid to the full the penalty which, in the course of centuries, goes along with the blessings of civilization. "The whole history of China, from beginning to end," says Frederic Schlegel, "displays one continued series of seditions, usurpations, anarchy, changes of dynasty, and other violent revolutions and catastrophes."[78]
The history of Egypt tells the same tale; "Civil discord," he says, "existed there under various forms. The country itself was often divided into several kingdoms; and, even when united, we observe a great conflict of interests between the agricultural province of Upper Egypt, and the commercial and manufacturing province of the Lower: as, indeed, a similar clashing of interests is often to be noticed in modern states. In the period immediately preceding the Persian conquest, the caste of warriors, or the whole class of nobility, were decidedly opposed to the monarchs, because they imagined them to promote too much the power of the priesthood;"—in other words, their national downfall was not owing directly to an external cause, but to an internal collision of parties and interests;—"in the same way," continues the author I am quoting, "as the history of India presents a similar rivalry or political hostility between the Brahmins and the caste of the Cshatriyas. In the reign of Psammatichus, the disaffection of the native nobility obliged this prince to take Greek soldiers into his pay; and thus at length was the defence of Egypt entrusted to an army of foreign mercenaries." He adds, which is apposite to my purpose, for I suppose he is speaking of civilized nations, "In general, states and kingdoms, before they succumb to a foreign conqueror, are, if not outwardly and visibly, yet secretly and internally, undermined."
So much on the connexion between the civilization of a state and its overthrow from internal causes, or, what may be called, its succumbing to a natural death. I will only add, that I am but attempting to set down general rules, to which there may be exceptions, explicable or not. For instance, Venice is one of the most civilized states of the middle age; but, by a system of jealous and odious tyranny, it continued to maintain its ground without revolution, when revolutions were frequent in the other Italian cities; yet the very necessity of so severe a despotism shows us what would have happened there, if natural causes had been left to work unimpeded.