An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations Part 28

{145} Not only when the French revolution began, but a hundred times afterwards, did the party triumph that appeared the strongest, merely because it appeared so. All those who stand neutral at first, take a side the moment they have fixed their opinion as to the strength of the contending parties, and this decision is always in favour of the party they think the strongest.

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be expected to have time nor inclination to study the public welfare, and, even if they had, they would want the means.

Government can never be better employed than in counteracting this tendency to decay. It has the means, and is but performing its duty in doing so. The previous step to all this, however, is a knowledge of what is to be done, a full sense of the necessity of doing it, and a disposition to submit to the regimen necessary.

For this purpose, both the government and the people must give up something. The people must allow government to interfere in the education of children, and, in that, give up a little of their liberty; {146} and those who govern must attend to many things which are generally neglected. To do the routine business of the day is the occupation of most of the governments of Europe, whether in war or at peace; they therefore habitually become agents of necessity, and what can be procrastinated is never done; that is to say, what is good is very seldom done, and what is necessary to prevent immediate evil, is always the chief, and sometimes the only, occupation.

There are some men in the world who prosper merely because they look beforehand, and conduct their affairs. There are others who, with equal industry, and much more trouble and care, are always a little behind, and allow their affairs to conduct them; such men never succeed, and, if they can keep off the extreme of misfortune, it is all that is to be expected.

Most governments, in wealthy nations, are like those latter species of individuals,--they do not conduct their affairs, but are conducted by them, and think they succeed, when the necessary business of the day is done. This listlessness must be done away, and, though the

{146} From the impossibility of a nation, once immersed in sloth and luxury, returning to the tone and energy of a new people, we may judge of the impossibility of a nation going on progressively towards wealth, not suffering from the manner of educating children. The leading distinction between a rising and a fallen people is the disposition to industry and exertion, in the one, and to sloth and negligence, in the other. It is while a nation is increasing in wealth that this alteration gradually takes place; and, as this is the main point on which all depends, the nation is safe when it is well attended to, even if other things are, in some degree, neglected.

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governments of countries that are wealthy have no occasion, like Peter the Great, or the founders of new states, to create new inst.i.tutions, and eternally try to ameliorate, they ought to be very carefully and constantly employed in preventing those good things that they enjoy from escaping their grasp, so far as it depends upon interior arrangement. Exterior causes are not within their power to regulate, therefore they should be the more attentive to those that are; and, though exterior causes are out of their dominion, yet, sometimes, by wise interior regulations, the evil effects of exterior ones may be prevented. Nothing of all this can be done, however, until the government rises above the routine business of the day, and until all the necessary and pressing business is got over. The first thing, then, for a government is to extricate itself from the situation of one who struggles with necessity, after which, but not before, it may study what is beneficial, and of permanent utility.

So far it would appear all nations are situated alike, with regard to the general tendency to decay; {147} and so far all of them may be guided by general rules, but as to the particular manner of applying those rules, it must depend on the peculiar circ.u.mstances of the nation to which they are meant to be applied.

In general, revenue has become the great object with modern nations: and, as their rulers have not ventured to tax the necessaries of the people to any high degree, but have laid their vices, rather than their wants, under contribution, the revenue-system, (as it may be called,) tends to make a government encourage expensive vice, by which it profits, and check innocent enjoyment, by which it has nothing to gain. This is a terrible, but it is a very prevalent system; it is immoral, inhuman, and impolitic.

So far as this goes, a government, instead of checking, accelerates the decline of a people; but, as this is not a natural cause of decline, as it is not universal or necessary, it is to be considered with due

{147} The Chinese, and, in general, the nations of Asia have not been considered as included in this inquiry. The Chinese, in particular, are a people in a permanent situation: they do not increase in riches, and they seem to have no tendency to decline. Their laws and mode of education and living remain the same.

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regard to particular circ.u.mstances. In general, we may say, that, in place of inviting the lower cla.s.ses to pa.s.s their time in drinking, by the innumerable receptacles that there are for those who are addicted to that vice, every impediment should be put in the way. Drinking is a vice, the disposition to which grows with its gratification; most other avocations (for drinking in moderation is only such) have no tendency of the sort. Those enjoyments which have a tendency to degenerate into vice should be kept under some check; those which have no such tendency ought to be encouraged; for, where the main and general ma.s.s of the population of a country is corrupted, it is impossible to prevent its decline. If it remains uncorrupted, the matter is very easy, or, more properly, it may be said that prosperity is the natural consequence.

Manners will always be found of more consequence than laws, and they depend, in a great measure, on the wise regulations of government in every country.

Not only do most governments profit by laying the vices of the people under contribution; but, as revenue is, by a very false rule, taken as a criterion from which the prosperity of a nation may be estimated, the very evil that brings on decay serves to disguise its approach. A nation may be irretrievably undone, before it is perceived that it has any tendency to decline; it is, therefore, unwise for governments to wait till they see the effects of decay, and then to hope to counteract them; they must look before-hand, and prevent, otherwise all their exertions will prove ineffectual. [end of page #174]

CHAP. X.

_Of the external Causes of Decline.--the Envy and Enmity of other Nations.--their Efforts, both in Peace and War, to bring Wealthy Nations down to their level_.

The external causes of the decline of nations are much more simple in themselves than the internal ones, besides which, their action is more visible; the way of operation is such as to excite attention, and has made them thought more worthy of being recorded.

The origin of envy and enmity are the same. The possession of what is desirable, in a superior degree, is the cause of envy. That occasions injurious and unjust proceedings, and enmity is the consequence, though both originated in the same feeling at first, they a.s.sume distinct characteristics in the course of time.

The desire of possession, in order to enjoy, is the cause of enmity and envy; and all the crimes of nations, and of individuals, have the same common origin.

It follows, as a natural consequence, arising from this state of things, that those nations which enjoyed a superior degree of wealth, became the objects of the envy of others. If that wealth was accompanied by sufficient power for its protection, then the only way to endeavour to share it was by imitation; but if the wealth was found unprotected, then conquest or violence was always considered as the most ready way of obtaining possession.

The wandering Arabs, who are the only nations that profess robbery at the present day, (by land,) follow still the same maxim with regard to those whose wealth they mean to enjoy. If too powerful to be compelled by force to give up what they have got, they traffic and barter with the merchants of a caravan; but if they find themselves able to take, they never give themselves the trouble to adopt the legitimate but less expeditious method of plunder and robbery =sic=.

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As it has been found that wealth operates, by degrees, in destroying the bravery of a people, after a certain time, so it happens that, in the common course of things, a moment arrives when it is considered safe, by some one power or other, to attack the wealthy nation, and partake of its riches; thus it was that the cities of Tyre and of Babylon were attacked by Alexander; and thus it was that his successors, in their turn, were attacked and conquered by the Romans; and, again, the Romans themselves, by the barbarous nations of the north.

Besides those great revolutions, of which the consequences were permanent, there have been endless and innumerable struggles for the possession of wealth, amongst different nations; but the real and leading causes are so uniform, and so evident, that there is not a shadow of a doubt left on that subject.

Mr. Burke had good reason to say that the external causes were much easier traced, and more simple, than the internal ones; for, the Romans excepted, the instances of rich nations attacking and conquering poor ones are very rare indeed.

The Romans had erected their republic on a different plan from that of any other; they had neither arts, industry, nor territory of their own, and they conquered nations upon speculation, and for the sake of civilizing the people, and making them contribute revenue; how they were successful has been explained. But even the Romans would not have attacked poor nations, if they had been, at an earlier period, possessed of the means of attacking those that were wealthy.

Necessity obliged them to begin with Italy: their safety made them defend themselves against the Gauls, and, till they had a navy, it was impracticable to carry their conquests into Asia or Africa; but, after they had conquered Carthage, they lost very little time in attacking Egypt, and those countries occupied by the successors of Alexander.

The taking of Constantinople was the last decided victory of this sort, and in nothing but time and circ.u.mstance did it differ from the others; in all the great outlines it was exactly the same. [end of page #176]

The effeminacy and luxury of the rich, those interior causes, of which we have already spoken, always give facility to those efforts which envy and avarice excite.

The rivals.h.i.+p, in time of peace, is a contest confined to modern nations; or, at least, but little known to the ancients. Indeed, it is only amongst commercial nations that it can exist. There can be no compet.i.tion in agriculture; and, indeed, it is only in war, or in commerce, that nations can interfere with each other.

The Phoenicians were the only commercial people of antiquity.

Carthage was the colony, and received the Indian produce at second hand. It was in no way a rival.

When Solomon mounted on the throne of his father David, he applied himself to commerce; but the wisdom and power he possessed were such as bore down all opposition during his reign. Having married the daughter of the King of Egypt, who a.s.sisted him in several conquests, he founded the city of Palmyra, or Tadmore in the Wilderness, for the greater conveniency of the Eastern trade. The King of Tyre was his ally, but he was so, most probably, from necessity, for the alliance was very unnatural; and, soon after the death of Solomon, the Tyrians excited the King of Babylon to destroy Jerusalem: so, that if there had been, in ancient times, more people concerned in commerce, there is no doubt there would likewise have been more envy and rivality.

=sic=

The cities of Italy, the Dutch, the Flemish, the English, and the French, have been incessantly struggling to supplant each other in manufactures and commerce; and the war of custom-house duties and drawbacks has become very active and formidable.

This modern species of warfare is not only less b.l.o.o.d.y, but the object is more legitimate, and the consequences neither so sudden nor so fatal as open force; to which is to be added, that if a nation will but determine to be industrious, it never can be greatly injured. If it enjoyed any peculiarly great advantages, those may, indeed, be wrested from it, but that is only taking away what it has no right to possess, and what it may always do without. [end of page #177]

The intention of this inquiry is not to discover a method by which a nation may engross the trade that ought to belong to others, it is only to enable it, by industry and other means, to guard against the approaches of adversity, which tend to sink it far below its level, thereby making way for the elevation of some other nation, on the ruins of its greatness.

As, in the interior causes of decline, we have traced the most part to the manners and habits of the people, so, in the exterior causes, it will be found that much depends upon the conduct of the government. [end of page #178]

CHAP. XI.

_Why the Intercourse between Nations is ultimately in Favour of the poorer one, though not so at first_.