The Romans were gradually trained up, from the very infancy of their republick, in long and obstinate wars with their Italian neighbours, who were masters of the same arms and disciplines, and were no way their inferiors in bravery. Nor did they perfect themselves in the art of war, until they learned it by bloody experience from Pyrrhus, the most consummate captain of that age. The Carthaginians were only exercised in war with the wild undisciplined Africans, or the irregular Spaniards, nor were they able with their numerous fleets and prodigious armies to complete the reduction of that part of Sicily, which was inhabited by Grecian colonies, who retained their native arms and discipline. Hence arose the great superiority of the Romans, both in soldiers and commanders. Though the Barcan family produced some great officers, who at least equalled the ablest generals Rome could ever boast of.
It is evident from the course of this inquiry, that the ruin of the Roman republick arose wholly from internal causes. The ruin of Carthage was owing remotely to internal, but immediately to external. The Plebeian faction reduced Rome to the verge of ruin at the battle of Cannæ, and a complication of factions completed the subversion of that republick under the two triumvirates. The envy and jealousy of the Hannonian faction deprived Carthage of all the fruits of Hannibal’s amazing victories and progress, and paved the way for the utter excision of their very name and nation by the Roman arms. Such are the direful effects of faction, when suffered to run its natural lengths without control, in the most flourishing and best constituted government!...
CHAPTER VIII.
OF REVOLUTIONS IN MIXED GOVERNMENTS.
Polybius remarks,[360] that the best form of government is that which is composed of a due admixture of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. He affirms that his assertion may not only be proved from reason, but from the evidence of fact, and cites the Spartan constitution in proof, which was modelled upon that very plan by Lycurgus. He adds too, that to perpetuate the duration of his government,[361] he united the peculiar excellencies of all the best governments in one form, that neither of the three parts, by swelling beyond its just bounds, might ever be able to deviate into its original inborn defects: but that whilst each power was mutually drawn back by the opposite attraction of the other two, neither power might ever preponderate, but the balance of government continue suspended in its true æquipoise.
From the observance of this nice adjustment of the balance of government, he foretells the duration or fall of all mixed governments in general. He adds, that as all government arises originally from the people; so all mutations in government proceed primarily from the people also. For when once a state has struggled through many and great difficulties, and emerged at last to freedom and wealth, men begin to sink gradually into luxury, and to grow more dissolute in their morals. The seeds of ambition will spring up, and prompt them to be more fond of contending for superiority in the magistracy, and carrying their point, in whatever they had set their hearts upon, than is consistent with the welfare of the community: when once these evils are got to a head in a country so circumstanced, the change must necessarily be for the worse; because the principle of such change will rise from the gratification, or disappointment of the ambition of the chief citizens, with respect to honours and preferments; and from that insolence and luxury arising from wealth, by which the morals of the private people will be totally corrupted. Thus the change in government will be primarily effected by the people. For when the people are galled by the rapine and oppression of those in power, arising from a principle of avarice; and corrupted, and elated with an undue opinion of their own weight, by the flatteries of the disappointed, which proceed from a principle of ambition, they raise those furious commotions in the state, which unhinge all government. These commotions first reduce it to a state of anarchy, which at last terminates in absolute monarchy and tyranny.
I have here given the sentiments of Polybius (and almost in his own words) from that excellent dissertation on government, preserved to us in the sixth book of his history, which I would recommend to the perusal of my countrymen. He there traces government up to its first origin. He explains the principles, by which different governments arose to the summit of their power and grandeur, and proves, that they sunk to ruin by a more or less rapid progress, in proportion as they receded more or less from the first principles on which they were originally founded. He survived the ruin of all the Grecian republicks, as well as Carthage, and lived (as he more than once tells us) to see the Romans masters of the known world. Blest with parts and learning superior to most men of his time, joined to the most solid judgment, and the experience of eighty-two years; no man better understood the intrinsick nature of government in general. No man could with more certainty foretel the various mutations, which so frequently happen in different forms of government, which must be ever in a fluctuating state, from the complicated variety of the human passions. Nor can any man give us better hints, than he has done, for guarding against the effects of those dangerous passions, and preserving the constitution of a free people in its full force and vigour. Of all the legislators (which he knew of) he prefers Lycurgus, whom he looks upon rather as divinely inspired, than as a mere man. He esteems the plan of government, which he established at Sparta, the most perfect, and proposes it as a general model worthy the imitation of every other community; and he remarks, that the Spartans, by adhering to that plan, preserved their liberty longer than any other nation of the known world.
I cannot help observing upon this occasion, that our own constitution as settled at the revolution, so nearly coincides with Lycurgus’s general plan of government (as laid down by Polybius) where the monarchy was for life, and hereditary, that it seems, at first sight, to have been formed by that very model. For our plan of government intended to fix and preserve so just a proportion of the monarchick, aristocratick, and democratick powers, by their representatives, king, lords, and commons; that any two of those powers might be able jointly to give a check to the other, but not to destroy it, as the destruction of any one power must necessarily induce a different form of government. This is the true basis of the British constitution, the duration of which must absolutely depend upon the just equilibrium preserved between these three powers. This consequently is the unerring test, by which every unbiassed and attentive considerer may judge, whether we are in an improving state, or whether, and by what degrees, we are verging towards ruin. But as I aim at reformation not satire; as I mean no invidious reflections, but only to give my sentiments with that honest freedom, to which every Briton is entitled by birthright, I shall just state from Polybius, the means by which all mixed governments have originally deviated from those first principles, which were the basis of their rise and grandeur: how by this deviation they tended towards their decline, and that those means acquiring additional force from that very decline, necessarily produced those evils, which accelerated the destruction of every free people. As the remarks of this most judicious historian, are founded upon long experience, drawn from undeniable facts, to many of which he himself was eyewitness,[362] they will not only carry greater weight, but will enable us to form a right judgment of our own situation, as it is at present circumstanced.