M. Guizot, in his elaborate work on the History of Civilization in France, has a few curious pages, on the causes of the decline of civil society in Roman Gaul, and its consequent weakness and ruin. He tells you how the Senators or Clarissimi did not constitute a true aristocracy, able to lead and protect the people, being at the mercy of the Emperor, and nominated and removed at his pleasure. How the Curiales, or wealthy middle class, who were bound by law to fulfil all the municipal offices, and were responsible for the collection of the revenue, found their responsibilities so great, that they by every trick in their power, avoided office. How, as M. Guizot well puts it, the central despotism of Rome stript the Curiales of all they earned, to pay its own functionaries and soldiers; and gave them the power of appointing magistrates, who were only after all the imperial agents of that despotism, for whose sake they robbed their fellow-citizens. How the plebs, comprising the small tradesmen and free artizans, were utterly unable to assert their own opinions or rights. How the slave population, though their condition was much improved, constituted a mere dead weight of helpless brutality.
And then he says, that the Roman Empire was dying. Very true: but often as he quotes Salvian, he omits always to tell us what Roman society was dying of. Salvian says, that it was dying of vice. Not of bad laws and class arrangements, but of bad men. M. Guizot belongs to a school which is apt to impute human happiness and prosperity too exclusively to the political constitution under which they may happen to live, irrespectively of the morality of the people themselves. From that, the constitutionalist school, there has been of late a strong reaction, the highest exponent, nay the very coryphæus of which is Mr. Carlyle. He undervalues, even despises, the influence of laws and constitutions: with him private virtue, from which springs public virtue, is the first and sole cause of national prosperity. My inaugural lecture has told you how deeply I sympathize with his viewtaking my stand, as Mr. Carlyle does, on the Hebrew prophets.
There is, nevertheless, a side of truth in the constitutionalist view, which Mr. Carlyle, I think, overlooks. A bad political constitution does produce poverty and weakness: but only in as far as it tends to produce moral evil; to make men bad. That it can help to do. It can put a premium on vice, on falsehood, on peculation, on laziness, on ignorance; and thus tempt the mass to moral degradation, from the premier to the slave. Russia has been, for two centuries now but too patent a proof of the truth of this assertion. But even in this case, the moral element is the most important, and just the one which is overlooked. To have good laws, M. Guizot is apt to forget, you must first have good men to make them; and second, you must have good men to carry them out, after they are made. Bad men can abuse the best of laws, the best of constitutions. Look at the working of our parliaments during the reigns of William III and Anne, and see how powerless good constitutions are, when the men who work them are false and venal. Look, on the other hand, at the Roman Empire from the time of Vespasian to that of the Antonines, and see how well even a bad constitution will succeed, when good men are working it.
Bad laws, I say, will work tolerably under good men, if fitted to the existing circumstances by men of the world, as all Roman laws were. If they had not been such, how was the Roman Empire, at least in its first years, a blessing to the safety, prosperity, and wealth of every country it enslaved? But when defective Roman laws began to be worked by bad men, and that for 200 years, then indeed came times of evil. Let us take, then, Salvians own account of the cause of Roman decay. He, an eye-witness, imputes it all to the morals of Roman citizens. They were, according to him, of the very worst. To the general dissoluteness he attributes, in plain words, the success of the Frank and Gothic invaders. And the facts which he gives, and which there is no reason to doubt, are quite enough to prove him in the right. Every great mans house, he says, was a sink of profligacy. The women slaves were at the mercy of their master; and the slaves copied his morals among themselves. It is an ugly picture: but common sense will tell us, if we but think a little, that such will, and must, be the case in slave-holding countries, wherever Christianity is not present in its purest and strongest form, to control the passions of arbitrary power.
But there was not merely profligacy among these Gauls. That alone would not have wrought their immediate ruin. Morals were bad enough in old Greece and Rome; as they were afterwards among the Turks: nevertheless as long as a race is strong; as long as there is prudence, energy, deep national feeling, outraged virtue does not avenge itself at once by general ruin. But it avenges itself at last, as Salvian shewsas all experience shews. As in individuals so in nations, unbridled indulgence of the passions must produce, and does produce, frivolity, effeminacy, slavery to the appetite of the moment, a brutalized and reckless temper, before which, prudence, energy, national feeling, any and every feeling which is not centered in self, perishes utterly. The old French noblesse gave a proof of this law, which will last as a warning beacon to the end of time. The Spanish population of America, I am told, gives now a fearful proof of this same terrible penalty. Has not Italy proved it likewise, for centuries past? It must be so, gentlemen. For national life is grounded on, is the development of, the life of the family. And where the root is corrupt, the tree must be corrupt likewise. It must be so. For Asmodeus does not walk alone. In his train follow impatience and disappointment, suspicion and jealousy, rage and cruelty, and all the passions which set mans hand against his fellow-man. It must be so. For profligacy is selfishness; and the family, and the society, the nation, exists only by casting away selfishness and by obeying law:not only the outward law, which says in the name of God, Thou shalt not, but the inward law, the Law of Christ, which says, Thou must; the law of self-sacrifice, which selfish lust tramples under foot, till there is no more cohesion left between man and man, no more trust, no more fellow-help, than between the stags who fight for the hinds; and God help the nation which has brought itself to that!
No wonder, therefore, if Salvians accounts of Gaulish profligacy be true, that Gaulish recklessness reached at last a pitch all but incredible. It is credible, however shocking, that as he says, he himself saw, both at Treves, and another great city (probably Cologne, Colonia Agrippina, or The Colony par excellence) while the destruction of the state was imminent, old men of rank, decrepit Christians, slaves to gluttony and lust, rabid with clamour, furious with bacchanalian orgies. It is credible, however shocking, that all through Gaul the captivity was foreseen, yet never dreaded. And so when the barbarians had encamped almost in sight, there was no terror among the people, no care of the cities. All was possest by carelessness and sloth, gluttony, drunkenness, sleep, according to that which the prophet saith: A sleep from the Lord had come over them. It is credible, however shocking, that though Treves was four times taken by the barbarians, it remained just as reckless as ever; and thatI quote Salvian stillwhen the population was half destroyed by fire and sword, the poor dying of famine, corpses of men and women lying about the streets breeding pestilence, while the dogs devoured them, the few nobles who were left comforted themselves by sending to the Emperor to beg for Circensian games.