American Political Ideas Viewed from the Standpoint of Universal History

by John Fiske

In the ancient city, on the other hand, the extreme compactness of the political structure made representation unnecessary and prevented it from being thought of in circumstances where it might have proved of immense value. In an aristocratic Greek city, like Sparta, all the members of the ruling class met together and voted in the assembly; in a democratic city, like Athens, all the free citizens met and voted; in each case the assembly was primary and not representative. The only exception, in all Greek antiquity, is one which emphatically proves the rule. The Amphiktyonic Council, an institution of prehistoric origin, concerned mainly with religious affairs pertaining to the worship of the Delphic Apollo, furnished a precedent for a representative, and indeed for a federal, assembly. Delegates from various Greek tribes and cities attended it. The fact that with such a suggestive precedent before their eyes the Greeks never once hit upon the device of representation, even in their attempts at framing federal unions, shows how thoroughly their whole political training had operated to exclude such a conception from their minds.

The second great consequence of the Graeco-Roman city-system was linked in many ways with this absence of the representative principle. In Greece the formation of political aggregates higher and more extensive than the city was, until a late date, rendered impossible. The good and bad sides of this peculiar phase of civilization have been often enough commented on by historians. On the one hand the democratic assembly of such an imperial city as Athens furnished a school of political training superior to anything else that the world has ever seen. It was something like what the New England town-meeting would be if it were continually required to adjust complicated questions of international polity, if it were carried on in the very centre or point of confluence of all contemporary streams of culture, and if it were in the habit every few days of listening to statesmen and orators like Hamilton or Webster, jurists like Marshall, generals like Sherman, poets like Lowell, historians like Parkman. Nothing in all history has approached the high-wrought intensity and brilliancy of the political life of Athens.

On the other hand, the smallness of the independent city, as a political aggregate, made it of little or no use in diminishing the liability to perpetual warfare which is the curse of all primitive communities. In a group of independent cities, such as made up the Hellenic world, the tendency to warfare is almost as strong, and the occasions for warfare are almost as frequent, as in a congeries of mutually hostile tribes of barbarians. There is something almost lurid in the sharpness of contrast with which the wonderful height of humanity attained by Hellas is set off against the fierce barbarism which characterized the relations of its cities to one another. It may be laid down as a general rule that in an early state of society, where the political aggregations are small, warfare is universal and cruel. From the intensity of the jealousies and rivalries between adjacent self-governing groups of men, nothing short of chronic warfare can result, until some principle of union is evolved by which disputes can be settled in accordance with general principles admitted by all. Among peoples that have never risen above the tribal stage of aggregation, such as the American Indians, war is the normal condition of things, and there is nothing fit to be called peace,--there are only truces of brief and uncertain duration. Were it not for this there would be somewhat less to be said in favour of great states and kingdoms. As modern life grows more and more complicated and interdependent, the Great State subserves innumerable useful purposes; but in the history of civilization its first service, both in order of time and in order of importance, consists in the diminution of the quantity of warfare and in the narrowing of its sphere. For within the territorial limits of any great and permanent state, the tendency is for warfare to become the exception and peace the rule. In this direction the political careers of the Greek cities assisted the progress of civilization but little.

Under the conditions of Graeco-Roman civic life there were but two practicable methods of forming a great state and diminishing the quantity of warfare. The one method was conquest with incorporation, the other method was federation. Either one city might conquer all the others and endow their citizens with its own franchise, or all the cities might give up part of their sovereignty to a federal body which should have power to keep the peace, and should represent the civilized world of the time in its relations with outlying barbaric peoples. Of these two methods, obviously the latter is much the more effective, but it presupposes for its successful adoption a higher general state of civilization than the former. Neither method was adopted by the Greeks in their day of greatness. The Spartan method of extending its power was conquest without incorporation: when Sparta conquered another Greek city, she sent a harmost to govern it like a tyrant; in other words she virtually enslaved the subject city. The efforts of Athens tended more in the direction of a peaceful federalism. In the great Delian confederacy which developed into the maritime empire of Athens, the Ægean cities were treated as allies rather than subjects. As regards their local affairs they were in no way interfered with, and could they have been represented in some kind of a federal council at Athens, the course of Grecian history might have been wonderfully altered. As it was, they were all deprived of one essential element of sovereignty,--the power of controlling their own military forces. Some of them, as Chios and Mitylene, furnished troops at the demand of Athens; others maintained no troops, but paid a fixed tribute to Athens in return for her protection. In either case they felt shorn of part of their dignity, though otherwise they had nothing to complain of; and during the Peloponnesian war Athens had to reckon with their tendency to revolt as well as with her Dorian enemies. Such a confederation was naturally doomed to speedy overthrow.

In the century following the death of Alexander, in the closing age of Hellenic independence, the federal idea appears in a much more advanced stage of elaboration, though in a part of Greece which had been held of little account in the great days of Athens and Sparta. Between the Achaian federation, framed in 274 B.C., and the United States of America, there are some interesting points of resemblance which have been elaborately discussed by Mr. Freeman, in his "History of Federal Government." About the same time the Aetolian League came into prominence in the north. Both these leagues were instances of true federal government, and were not mere confederations; that is, the central government acted directly upon all the citizens and not merely upon the local governments. Each of these leagues had for its chief executive officer a General elected for one year, with powers similar to those of an American President. In each the supreme assembly was a primary assembly at which every citizen from every city of the league had a right to be present, to speak, and to vote; but as a natural consequence these assemblies shrank into comparatively aristocratic bodies. In Ætolia, which was a group of mountain cantons similar to Switzerland, the federal union was more complete than in Achaia, which was a group of cities. In Achaia cases occurred in which a single city was allowed to deal separately with foreign powers. Here, as in earlier Greek history, the instinct of autonomy was too powerful to admit of complete federation. Yet the career of the Achaian League was not an inglorious one. For nearly a century and a half it gave the Peloponnesos a larger measure of orderly government than the country had ever known before, without infringing upon local liberties. It defied successfully the threats and assaults of Macedonia, and yielded at last only to the all-conquering might of Rome.

Thus in so far as Greece contributed anything towards the formation of great and pacific political aggregates, she did it through attempts at federation. But in so low a state of political development as that which prevailed throughout the Mediterranean world in pre-Christian times, the more barbarous method of conquest with incorporation was more likely to be successful on a great scale. This was well illustrated in the history of Rome,--a civic community of the same generic type with Sparta and Athens, but presenting specific differences of the highest importance. The beginnings of Rome, unfortunately, are prehistoric. I have often thought that if some beneficent fairy could grant us the power of somewhere raising the veil of oblivion which enshrouds the earliest ages of Aryan dominion in Europe, there is no place from which the historian should be more glad to see it lifted than from Rome in the centuries which saw the formation of the city, and which preceded the expulsion of the kings. Even the legends, which were uncritically accepted from the days of Livy to those of our grandfathers, are provokingly silent upon the very points as to which we would fain get at least a hint. This much is plain, however, that in the embryonic stage of the Roman commonwealth some obscure processes of fusion or commingling went on. The tribal population of Rome was more heterogeneous than that of the great cities of Greece, and its earliest municipal religion seems to have been an assemblage of various tribal religions that had points of contact with other tribal religions throughout large portions of the Græco-Italic world. As M. de Coulanges observes,^[13] Rome was almost the only city of antiquity which was not kept apart from other cities by its religion. There was hardly a people in Greece or Italy which it was restrained from admitting to participation in its municipal rites.

However this may have been, it is certain that Rome early succeeded in freeing itself from that insuperable prejudice which elsewhere prevented the ancient city from admitting aliens to a share in its franchise. And in this victory over primeval political ideas lay the whole secret of Rome's mighty career. The victory was not indeed completed until after the terrible Social War of B.C. 90, but it was begun at least four centuries earlier with the admission of the plebeians. At the consummation of the conquest of Italy in B.C. 270 Roman burghership already extended, in varying degrees of completeness, through the greater part of Etruria and Campania, from the coast to the mountains; while all the rest of Italy was admitted to privileges for which ancient history had elsewhere furnished no precedent. Hence the invasion of Hannibal half a century later, even with its stupendous victories of Thrasymene and Cannae, effected nothing toward detaching the Italian subjects from their allegiance to Rome; and herein we have a most instructive contrast to the conduct of the communities subject to Athens at several critical moments of the Peloponnesian War. With this consolidation of Italy, thus triumphantly demonstrated, the whole problem of the conquering career of Rome was solved. All that came afterwards was simply a corollary from this. The concentration of all the fighting power of the peninsula into the hands of the ruling city formed a stronger political aggregate than anything the world had as yet seen. It was not only proof against the efforts of the greatest military genius of antiquity, but whenever it was brought into conflict with the looser organizations of Greece, Africa, and Asia, or with the semi-barbarous tribes of Spain and Gaul, the result of the struggle was virtually predetermined. The universal dominion of Rome was inevitable, so soon as the political union of Italy had been accomplished. Among the Romans themselves there were those who thoroughly understood this point, as we may see from the interesting speech of the emperor Claudius in favour of admitting Gauls to the senate.

The benefits conferred upon the world by the, universal dominion of Rome were of quite inestimable value. First of these benefits, and (as it were) the material basis of the others, was the prolonged peace that was enforced throughout large portions of the world where chronic warfare had hitherto prevailed. The pax romana has perhaps been sometimes depicted in exaggerated colours; but as compared with all that had preceded, and with all that followed, down to the beginning of the nineteenth century, it deserved the encomiums it has received. The second benefit was the mingling and mutual destruction of the primitive tribal and municipal religions, thus clearing the way for Christianity,--a step which, regarded from a purely political point of view, was of immense importance for the further consolidation of society in Europe. The third benefit was the development of the Roman law into a great body of legal precepts and principles leavened throughout with ethical principles of universal applicability, and the gradual substitution of this Roman law for the innumerable local usages of ancient communities. Thus arose the idea of a common Christendom, of a brotherhood of peoples associated both by common beliefs regarding the unseen world and by common principles of action in the daily affairs of life. The common ethical and traditional basis thus established for the future development of the great nationalities of Europe is the most fundamental characteristic distinguishing modern from ancient history.

While, however, it secured these benefits for mankind for all time to come, the Roman political system in itself was one which could not possibly endure. That extension of the franchise which made Rome's conquests possible, was, after all, the extension of a franchise which could only be practically enjoyed within the walls of the imperial city itself. From first to last the device of representation was never thought of, and from first to last the Roman comitia remained a primary assembly. The result was that, as the burgherhood enlarged, the assembly became a huge mob as little fitted for the transaction of public business as a town-meeting of all the inhabitants of New York would be. The functions which in Athens were performed by the assembly were accordingly in Rome performed largely by the aristocratic senate; and for the conflicts consequently arising between the senatorial and the popular parties it was difficult to find any adequate constitutional check. Outside of Italy, moreover, in the absence of a representative system, the Roman government was a despotism which, whether more or less oppressive, could in the nature of things be nothing else than a despotism. But nothing is more dangerous for a free people than the attempt to govern a dependent people despotically. The bad government kills out the good government as surely as slave-labour destroys free-labour, or as a debased currency drives out a sound currency. The existence of proconsuls in the provinces, with great armies at their beck and call, brought about such results as might have been predicted, as soon as the growing anarchy at home furnished a valid excuse for armed interference. In the case of the Roman world, however, the result is not to be deplored, for it simply substituted a government that was practicable under the circumstances for one that had become demonstrably impracticable.

As regards the provinces the change from senatorial to imperial government at Rome was a great gain, inasmuch as it substituted an orderly and responsible administration for irregular and irresponsible extortion. For a long time, too, it was no part of the imperial policy to interfere with local customs and privileges. But, in the absence of a representative system, the centralizing tendency inseparable from the position of such a government proved to be irresistible. And the strength of this centralizing tendency was further enhanced by the military character of the government which was necessitated by perpetual frontier warfare against the barbarians. As year after year went by, the provincial towns and cities were governed less and less by their local magistrates, more and more by prefects responsible to the emperor only. There were other co-operating causes, economical and social, for the decline of the empire; but this change alone, which was consummated by the time of Diocletian, was quite enough to burn out the candle of Roman strength at both ends. With the decrease in the power of the local governments came an increase in the burdens of taxation and conscription that were laid upon them.^[14] And as "the dislocation of commerce and industry caused by the barbarian inroads, and the increasing demands of the central administration for the payment of its countless officials and the maintenance of its troops, all went together," the load at last became greater "than human nature could endure." By the time of the great invasions of the fifth century, local political life had gone far towards extinction throughout Roman Europe, and the tribal organization of the Teutons prevailed in the struggle simply because it had come to be politically stronger than any organization that was left to oppose it.