The same process is going on in the East, though it has not advanced so far, having begun there several centuries later, and the Graeco-Roman constitution was far feebler there than in the West at the epoch of the conquest. The Germanic tribes that conquered the West had long had close relations with the empire, had served as its allies, and even in its armies, and were partially Romanized. Most of their chiefs had received a Roman culture; and their early conversion to the Christian faith facilitated the revival and permanence of the old Roman constitution. In the East it was different. The conquerors had no touch of Roman civilization, and, followers of the Prophet, they were animated with an intense hatred, which, after the conquest, was changed into a superb contempt, of Christians and Romans. They had their civil constitution in the Koran; and the Koran, in its principles, doctrines, and spirit, is exclusive and profoundly intolerant. The Graeco-Roman constitution was always much weaker in the East, and had far greater obstacles to overcome there than in the West; yet it has survived the shock of the conquest. Throughout the limits of the ancient Empire of the East, the barbaric constitution has received and is daily receiving rude blows, and, but as reenforced by barbarians lying outside of the boundaries of that empire, would be no longer able to sustain itself. The Greek or Christian populations of the empire are no longer in danger of being exterminated or absorbed by the Mohammedan state or population. They are the only living and progressive people of the Ottoman Empire, and their complete success in absorbing or expelling the Turk is only a question of time. They will, in all present probability, reestablish a Christian and Roman East in much less time from the fall of Constantinople in 1453, than it took the West from the fall of Rome in 476 to put an end to the feudal or barbaric constitution founded by its Germanic invaders.
Indeed, the Roman constitution, laws, and civilization not only gain the mastery in the nations seated within the limits of the old Roman Empire, but extend their power through out the whole civilized world. The Graeco-Roman civilization is, in fact, the only civilization now recognized, and nations are accounted civilized only in proportion as they are Romanized and Christianized. The Roman law, as found in the Institutes, Pandects, and Novellae of Justinian, or the Corpus Legis Civilis, is the basis of the law and jurisprudence of all Christendom. The Graeco-Roman civilization, called not improperly Christian civilization, is the only progressive civilization. The old feudal system remains in England little more than an empty name. The king is only the first magistrate of the kingdom, and the House of Lords is only an hereditary senate. Austria is hard at work in the Roman direction, and finds her chief obstacle to success in Hungary, with the Magyars whose feudalism retains almost the full vigor of the Middle Ages. Russia is moving in the same direction; and Prussia and the smaller Germanic states obey the same impulse. Indeed, Rome has survived the conquest—has conquered her conquerors, and now invades every region from which they came. The Roman Empire may be said to be acknowledged and obeyed in lands lying far beyond the farthest limits reached by the Roman eagles, and to be more truly the mistress of the world than under Augustus, Trajan, or the Antonines. Nothing can stand before the Christian and Romanized nations, and all pagandom and Mohammedom combined are too weak to resist their onward march.
All modern European revolutions result only in reviving the Roman Empire, whatever the motives, interests, passions, or theories that initiate them. The French Revolution of the last century and that of the present prove it. France, let people say what they will, stands at the head of the European civilized world, and displays en grand all its good and all its bad tendencies. When she moves, Europe moves; when she has a vertigo, all European nations are dizzy; when she recovers her health, her equilibrium, and good sense, others become sedate, steady, and reasonable. She is the head, nay, rather, the heart of Christendom—the head is at Rome—through which circulates the pure and impure blood of the nations. It is in vain Great Britain, Germany, or Russia disputes with her the hegemony of European civilization. They are forced to yield to her at last, to be content to revolve around her as the centre of the political system that masters them. The reason is, France is more completely and sincerely Roman than any other nation. The revolutions that have shaken the world have resulted in eliminating the barbaric elements she had retained, and clearing away all obstacles to the complete triumph of Imperial Rome. Napoleon III. is for France what Augustus was for Rome. The revolutions in Spain and Italy have only swept away the relics of the barbaric constitution, and aided the revival of Roman imperialism. In no country do the revolutionists succeed in establishing their own theories; Caesar remains master of the field. Even in the United States, a revolution undertaken in favor of the barbaric system has resulted in the destruction of what remained of that system—in sweeping away the last relics of disintegrating feudalism, and in the complete establishment of the Graeco-Roman system, with important improvements, in the New World.
The Roman system is republican, in the broad sense of the term, because under it power is never an estate, never the private for the public good. As it existed under the Caesars, and is revived in modern times, whether under the imperial or the democratic form, it, no doubt, tends to centralism, to the concentration of all the powers and forces of the state in one central government, from which all local authorities and institutions emanate. Wise men oppose it as affording no guaranties to individual liberty against the abuses of power. This it may not do, but the remedy is not in feudalism. The feudal lord holds his authority as an estate, and has over the people under him all the power of Caesar and all the rights of the proprietor. He, indeed, has a guaranty against his liege-lord, sometimes a more effective guaranty than his liege-lord has against him; but against his centralized power his vassals and serfs have only the guaranty that a slave has against his owner.
Feudalism is alike hostile to the freedom of public authority and of the people. It is essentially a disintegrating element in the nation. It breaks the unity and individuality of the state, embarrasses the sovereign, and guards against the abuse of public authority by overpowering and suppressing it. Every feudal lord is a more thorough despot in his own domain than Caesar ever was or could be in the empire; and the monarch, even if strong enough, is yet not competent to intervene between him and his people, any more than the General government in the United States was to intervene between the negro slave and his master. The great vassals of the crown singly, or, if not singly, in combination—and they could always combine in the interest of their order—were too strong for the king, or to be brought under any public authority, and could issue from their fortified castles and rob and plunder to their hearts' content, with none to call them to an account. Under the most thoroughly centralized government there is far more liberty for the people, and a far greater security for person and property, except in the case of the feudal nobles themselves, than was even dreamed of while the feudal regime was in full vigor. Nobles were themselves free, it is conceded, but not the people. The king was too weak, too restricted in his action by the feudal constitution to reach them, and the higher clergy were ex officio sovereigns, princes, barons, or feudal lords, and were led by their private interests to act with the feudal nobility, save when that nobility threatened the temporalities of the church. The only reliance, under God, left in feudal times to the poor people was in the lower ranks of the clergy, especially of the regular clergy. All the great German emperors in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, who saw the evils of feudalism, and attempted to break it up and revive imperial Rome, became involved in quarrels with the chiefs of the religious society, and failed, because the interest of the Popes, as feudal sovereigns and Italian princes, and the interests of the dignified clergy, were for the time bound up with the feudal society, though their Roman culture and civilization made them at heart hostile to it. The student of history, however strong his filial affection towards the visible head of the church, cannot help admiring the grandeur of the political views of Frederic the Second, the greatest and last of the Hohenstaufen, or refrain from dropping a tear over his sad failure. He had great faults as a man, but he had rare genius as a statesman; and it is some consolation to know that he died a Christian death, in charity with all men, after having received the last sacraments of his religion.
The Popes, under the circumstances, were no doubt justified in the policy they pursued, for the Swabian emperors failed to respect the acknowledged rights of the church, and to remember their own incompetency in spirituals; but evidently their political views and aims were liberal, far-reaching, and worthy of admiration. Their success, if it could have been effected without lesion to the church, would have set Europe forward some two or three hundred years, and probably saved it from the schisms of the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. But it is easy to be wise after the event. The fact is, that during the period when feudalism was in full vigor, the king was merely a shadow; the people found their only consolation in religion, and their chief protectors in the monks, who mingled with them, saw their sufferings, and sympathized with them, consoled them, carried their cause to the castle before the feudal lord and lady, and did, thank God, do something to keep alive religious sentiments and convictions in the bosom of the feudal society itself. Whatever opinions may be formed of the monastic orders in relation to the present, this much is certain, that they were the chief civilizers of Europe, and the chief agents in delivering European society from feudal barbarism.
The aristocracy have been claimed as the natural allies of the throne, but history proves them to be its natural enemies, whenever it cannot be used in their service, and kings do not consent to be their ministers and to do their bidding. A political aristocracy has at heart only the interests of its order, and pursues no line of policy but the extension or preservation of its privileges. Having little to gain and much to lose, it opposes every political change that would either strengthen the crown or elevate the people. The nobility in the French Revolution were the first to desert both the king and the kingdom, and kings have always found their readiest and firmest allies in the people. The people in Europe have no such bitter feelings towards royalty as they have towards the feudal nobility—for kings have never so grievously oppressed them. In Rome the patrician order opposed alike the emperor and the people, except when they, as chivalric nobles sometimes will do, turned courtiers or demagogues. They were the people of Rome and the provinces that sustained the emperors, and they were the emperors who sustained the people, and gave to the provincials the privileges of Roman citizens.
Guaranties against excessive centralism are certainly needed, but the statesman will not seek them in the feudal organization of society—in a political aristocracy, whether founded on birth or private wealth, nor in a privileged class of any sort. Better trust Caesar than Brutus, or even Cato. Nor will he seek them in the antagonism of interests intended to neutralize or balance each other, as in the English constitution. This was the great error of Mr. Calhoun. No man saw more clearly than Mr. Calhoun the utter worthlessness of simple paper constitutions, on which Mr. Jefferson placed such implicit reliance, or that the real constitution is in the state itself, in the manner in which the people themselves are organized; but his reliance was in constituting, as powers in the state, the several popular interests that exist, and pitting them against each other—the famous system of checks and balances of English states men. He was led to this, because he distrusted power, and was more intention guarding against its abuses than on providing for its free, vigorous, and healthy action, going on the principle that "that is the best government which governs least." But, if the opposing interests could be made to balance one another perfectly, the result would be an equilibrium, in which power would be brought to a stand-still; and if not, the stronger would succeed and swallow up all the rest. The theory of checks and balances is admirable if the object be to trammel power, and to have as little power in the government as possible; but it is a theory which is born from passions engendered by the struggle against despotism or arbitrary power, not from a calm and philosophical appreciation of government itself. The English have not succeeded in establishing their theory, for, after all, their constitution does not work so well as they pretend. The landed interest controls at one time, and the mercantile and manufacturing interest at another. They do not perfectly balance one another, and it is not difficult to see that the mercantile and manufacturing interest, combined with the moneyed interest, is henceforth to predominate. The aim of the real statesman is to organize all the interests and forces of the state dialectically, so that they shall unite to add to its strength, and work together harmoniously for the common good.