To us a capital is different from what it was to the Romans: we have a mass of organization and administration, which requires that it should be placed at the head in respect to the members. We expect to find all this in vigour under so rigorous a government as that of Rome. But Rome gave herself no such trouble; introduced neither principles, nor laws, nor language, nor costume. These spread, because not forced. The field of administration, down to her latter days, was kept sufficiently clear for each individual to embrace the whole: the subdivisions of modern statesmanship and government were unknown.[50]
Her judicatories were solely appellant: the people were everywhere free to follow their own customs, execute their own laws, select their own magistrates, impose their own taxes. In fact, the Romans were kings: they reigned, they did not administer; nor did they scatter their strength in exciting irritation on every point; but remained with a force collected to smite resistance whenever it appeared, and which they were careful never to provoke by systematic interference.
Ceuta might thus, cut off from traffic and population, be a good provincial capital for those masters in the art of governing men—that art which, like health in the body and judgment in the mind, depends not on science and labour, but abstinence and simplicity.
The idea of the Romans in garrison at Ceuta was incessantly returning on me, and prompting pictures of the consequences. The Romans to-day at Ceuta would be masters of Africa, from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, as rapidly as the Saracens were of Spain, after showing themselves at Gibraltar. When the French first attacked Algiers, the Moors, having heard that Europe was governed by justice (the justice that every one understands), were ready to invite them; but the French were soon found not to be Romans: they had not the bath, not the toga, not the salutation of the Roman or Eastern; they could in their persons command no respect. In ablutions, tone of voice, gesture, manner of eating, disregard of religious observances,[51] they could only excite the disgust of a Mussulman. Very subordinate matters are principles of administration, and forms of government, compared to the cleanliness of the bath, dignity of deportment, ceremony and etiquette. But to the elegance of costume the Roman did, however, add forms of administration equally adapted, as his warlike discipline and personal habits, to enable him to gain and secure ground as a conqueror,—he would have left the Moor or the Algerine to the jurisdiction of his own code—he would have left in their hands the administration of their own laws: he would have given to their senate the power of impeaching a Bugeaud or a Vallée before the Senate of Rome.
When the Romans possessed that country, it was four or five times as populous and not less warlike or stubborn in spirit. For four hundred years their dominion endured with almost unbroken tranquillity. During that period it was the granary of the world. It replenished, not exhausted, the Roman treasures—it supplied and did not drain her armies. During all that, time there was neither parliamentary law, nor Royal ordinances for its good government; there were no scientific commissions to inquire into its state; there were no quartos of statistical information published for the enlightenment of its rulers; there was no system of colonization, no project of enlightenment, Christianity, or civilization; there was no flamen of Chalons,[52] sacrificing to Mars and Bellona for successful raids and butcheries. Rome held Africa with two legions; France began[53] with a half more than that number; she has now ten times as many: it costs her as much in outlay as the Imperial expenses of the whole empire under Augustus; and notwithstanding all the unfortunate French can do, the people will not be civilized[54]—and run away.[55] In fourteen years a European government has reduced the population to one-half. With ten thousand men the Turks managed to hold Algiers, and to govern it in tranquillity. Instead of the public debt of a “civilized” government, they left behind a large treasure;[56] yet their troops would have raised the contempt of any European officer, and their government that of every European politician.
I have met some Frenchmen who believed that the French went to put down piracy: I know no Englishman who doubts it. England attacked Algiers with the view of putting an end to Christian slavery, and relieving the smaller powers from the disturbance of their Mediterranean trade, she having no quarrel of her own with that State. She succeeded,[57] retired—kept and claimed nothing.
The first quarrel between France and Algiers was about a debt to a Jew merchant of Algiers, which France refused to pay. This was an outstanding balance of eighteen millions of francs, on the accounts for the supply of France with grain for her necessities. By enormous bribing of the Chamber of Deputies, the money was repaid: it went into French pockets. In the list of recipients are names which may not astonish a future age, but which would astonish this.
The last quarrel was about the same Jew and the coral fisheries. The French consul having, according to instructions, made a quarrel,[58] and excited the anger of the Pacha, he flung towards him his fan. The consul was not touched. France got the pretext she wanted for not paying the money, and pillaged the treasury of Algiers of £5,000,000. England and Holland, who, at their own cost twenty years before, had put an end to roving and to Christian slavery, nevertheless believe that France went to Algiers to put down piracy and to spread civilization: an instance of the value of the press in enlightened times.
Rome conquered the warlike west, and the rich east, and possessed the countries she conquered. The great people, lying in the heart of Europe, possessed of unparalleled power, in as far as warlike means go, and unequalled unity, subjugates a little state of pirates—or at least so called pirates—without numbers, wealth, service, or literature, and immediately France is subjugated by Algiers. I have heard Hassam Pacha, the Ex-Dey of Algiers, say, “the barricades of July have avenged me.” Abd-el-kadir in like manner sees himself avenged by the barricades of February. Each African treachery is followed by a Parisian revolution. Had it been Rome, Abd-el-kadir might have become pro-consul, or like Severus,[59] emperor: pro-consul or emperor, he could have become Roman. But it is a modern government: it is France which conquers Algiers; then the Frenchman becomes an Algerine, and order has to be restored in a constitutional state, by Algerine practices.
France, in putting down the Algiers of Africa, was preparing herself to become the Algiers of Europe.