I READ again the sentence just quoted, and the next one with it:—
If there be one lesson which history clearly teaches, it is this, that free nations can not govern subject provinces. If they are unable or unwilling to admit their dependencies to share their own constitution, the constitution itself will fall in pieces from mere incompetence for its duties.
That is the one lesson that history teaches. Free nations can not govern subject provinces, and themselves remain free. And wherever they are unable or unwilling to admit their dependencies to share their own constitution, the constitution itself will fall to pieces. Rome thought to preserve the constitution, by not extending it to the subject provinces. But in that very thing, Rome destroyed her constitution. The real damage done was not to the provinces, but to the home government that would not extend to her subject provinces the privileges which Rome had, which Rome enjoyed. Therefore this writer further says:—
For these reasons, the fall of the Roman Republic is exceptionally instructive to us. A constitutional government, the most enduring and the most powerful that ever existed, was put on its trial, and found wanting.
Again I read:—
With such vividness, with such transparent clearness, the age stands before us of Cato and Pompey, of Cicero and Julius Caesar: the more distinctly because it was an age in so many ways the counterpart of our own, the blossoming period of the old civilization, when the intellect was trained to the highest point which it could reach; and on the great subjects of human interest, on morals, and politics, on poetry and art, even on religion itself and the speculative problems of life, men thought as we think, doubted where we doubt, argued as we argue, aspired and struggled after the same objects.
It was an age of material progress and material civilization; an age of civil liberty and intellectual culture; an age of pamphlets and epigrams, of salons and of dinner parties, of senatorial majorities and electoral corruption. The highest offices of state were open in theory to the meanest citizen; they were confined, in fact, to those who had the longest purses, or the most ready use of the tongue on popular platforms. Distinctions of birth had been exchanged for distinctions of wealth. The struggles between plebeians for equality of privilege were over, and a new division had been formed between the party of property and a party who desired a change in the structure of society.
The rich were extravagant, for life had ceased to have the practical interest, except for its material pleasures; the occupation of the higher classes was to obtain money without labor, and to spend it in idle enjoyment. Patriotism survived on the lips, but patriotism meant the ascendancy of the party which would maintain the existing order of things, or would overthrow it for a more equal distribution of the good things which alone were valued. Religion, once the foundation of the laws and rule of personal conduct, had subsided into opinion. The educated, in their hearts, disbelieved it. Temples were still built with increasing splendor; the established forms were scrupulously observed. Public men spoke conventionally of Providence, that they might throw on their opponents the odium of impiety; but of genuine belief that life had any serious meaning, there was none remaining beyond the circle of the silent, patient, ignorant multitude. The whole spiritual atmosphere was saturated with cant,—cant moral, cant political, cant religious,—an affectation of high principle which had ceased to touch the conduct, and flowed on in an increasing volume of insincere and unreal speech.
Tendencies now in operation [twenty-one years ago, bear in mind] may a few generations hence land modern society in similar conclusions, unless other convictions revive meanwhile and get the mastery of them: of which possibility no more need be said than this, that unless there be such a revival in some shape or other, the forces, whatever they be, which control the forms in which human things adjust themselves, will make an end again, as they made an end before, of what are called free institutions. Popular forms of government are possible only when individual men can govern their own lives on moral principles, and when duty is of more importance than pleasure, and justice than material expediency.—“Cæsar: A Sketch,” by J. A. Froude, chap. 1.
Here is a history that was written a good deal more than twenty-three years ago, written by one of the first historians of the world, Professor Mommsen, of Germany. At the place where I shall read, he writes of Rome after the time at which the prophecy mentions Rome as entering upon the scene, “to establish the vision.” This tells of the time when the republic had made her conquests, and when, as the book from which I have already quoted says, wealth flowed into the city “in rolling streams of gold,” so that riches was untold, boundless—individual wealth as well as governmental wealth. This writer discusses “The Government and the Governed,” and he says that those who were in power in the state—
not only usurped in substance the government, but also remodeled the constitution according to their own views. It was part of their policy, with a view to keep up the importance of the public magistrates, to add to the number of these as little as possible, and to keep it far below what was required by the extension of territory and the increase of business.
That is to say, The state had expanded; but they did not allow the government to expand with it, and the governmental machinery broke down.
Yet these who set aside the constitution did not definitely alter the constitution.
They changed not the letter, but merely the practice, of the existing constitution.
The constitution stood as it had, in the letter; but it was applied in a different way.
The earlier state law of Rome knew nothing of tributary subjects. The conquered communities were either sold into slavery, or merged in the Roman commonwealth, or admitted to an alliance which secured to them at least communal independence and freedom from taxation. But the Carthaginian possessions in Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain, as well as the kingdom of Hiero, had paid tithe and tribute to their former masters: if Rome was desirous of retaining these possessions at all, it was in the judgment of the shortsighted, the most judicious, and undoubtedly the most convenient, course to manage the new territories entirely in accordance with the rules heretofore observed. Accordingly the Romans simply retained the Carthagino-Hispanic provincial constitution [did not extend the Roman constitution to those provinces, but continued the provincial laws, under a Roman governorship], and organized in accordance with it those provinces also, such as Hither Spain, which they wrested from the barbarians. It was the shirt of Nessus which they inherited from the enemy.
The expression “the shirt of Nessus” is a mythological reference. In the myth a shirt of Hercules was secretly tinged with the blood of the dying Nessus, which, when Hercules again put it on, caused his ruin. And the thought of the historian is that when Rome would not extend her constitution, the privileges of her own government, to her provinces; but held them as subjects ruled by foreign laws, and taxed them besides, in that she took upon herself what corresponds in the myth to “the shirt of Nessus.” And as, in the myth that shirt ruined the one who wore it, so this colonial system ruined Rome.
Beyond doubt at first the Roman government intended, in imposing taxes on their subjects, not strictly to enrich themselves, but only to cover the cost of administration and defense; but they deviated from this course, when they made Macedonia and Illyria tributary without undertaking the government or the guardianship of the frontier there. The fact, however, that they still maintained moderation in the imposition of burdens was of little consequence as compared with the conversion of their sovereignty into a profitable privilege at all; the FALL WAS THE SAME, whether a single apple was taken or the TREE WAS PLUNDERED.
The fall of what?—He is writing of the fall of the Roman Republic, the fall of the Roman state, not the fall of the provinces. “The fall” of the republic “was the same, whether a single apple was taken or the tree was plundered.” He says that the Roman Republic fell when it levied taxes upon subject provinces, even though the money was spent in and on the provinces themselves; and that the fall of the republic was the same, whether it levied a tax of a cent or of millions. What followed?
Punishment followed, in the steps of wrong. [I am not putting in anything. I am simply reading.] The new provincial system necessitated the appointment of governors, whose position was absolutely incompatible not only with the welfare of the provinces, but with the Roman constitution.
Then what?
As the Roman community in the provinces took the place of the former rulers of the land, so the governor appeared there in the position of a king.
What then?
But it was not practicable for any length of time to be at once REPUBLICAN AND KING.
That was written forty-five years ago, concerning Rome two thousand years ago. I leave it to you to decide whether it concerns only Rome. I will read those sentences again:—
The new provincial system necessitated the appointment of governors, whose position was absolutely incompatible not only with the welfare of the provinces, but with the Roman constitution. . . . As the Roman community in the provinces took the place of the former rulers of the land, so the governor appeared there in the position of a king. . . . But it was not practicable for any length of time to be at once republican and king. . . . Playing the part of governors demoralized the Roman ruling class with fearful rapidity. Haughtiness and arrogance toward the provincials were so natural in the circumstances as scarcely to form matter of reproach against the individual magistrate. But already it was a rare thing—and the rarer because the government adhered rigidly to the old principle of not paying public officials—that a governor returned with quite clean hands from his province; it was already remarked upon as something singular that Paullus, the conqueror of Pydna, did not take money.
What followed?—Haughtiness and arrogance were held by the governor toward these people who were counted “not capable of self-government.” These peoples had been formerly ruled by kings. The governor went there to govern them, and stood in the place of king, and governed them as king. And when he came back home to Italy, he carried home with him that same air and spirit of haughtiness and arrogance, and held toward the people of the home government the same attitude that he had held toward the people of the subject province. Those who had governed abroad as kings remained such in air and spirit when they came home. Thus the refusal to extend the constitution abroad ruined the government at home. That is wherein “punishment followed in the steps of wrong,” and wherein the “demoralization of the Roman ruling class” followed “with fearful rapidity.” I read right on:—
The governors ruled virtually as sovereign; and the most important of the institutions serving for the latter purpose, the census of the empire, was extended to Sicily alone, not to any of the provinces subsequently acquired. This emancipation of the supreme administrative officials from the central authority was more than hazardous. The Roman governor, placed at the head of the armies of the state, and in possession of considerable financial resources; subject to but a lax judicial control, and practically independent of the supreme administration; and impelled by a sort of necessity to separate the interests of himself and of the people whom he governed from those of the Roman community, and to treat them as conflicting, far more resembled a Persian satrap than one of the commissioners of the Roman senate at the time of the Samnite wars. The man, moreover, who had just conducted a legalized military tyranny abroad, could with difficulty find his way back to the common civic level, which distinguished between those who commanded and those who obeyed, but not between masters and slaves. Even the government felt that their two fundamental principles—equality within the aristocracy, and the subordination of the4power of the magistrates to the senatorial college—began in this instance to give way in their hands.
The aversion of the government to the acquisition of new provinces and to the whole provincial system; the institution of the provincial quaestorships, which were intended to take at least the financial power out of the hands of the governors; and the abolition of the arrangement—in itself so judicious—for lengthening the tenure of such offices, very clearly evince the anxiety felt by the more farseeing of the Roman statesmen as to the fruits of the seed thus sown. But diagnosis is not cure. The internal government of the nobility continued to follow the direction once given to it, and the decay of the administration and of the financial system—the precursor of future revolutions and usurpations—steadily pursued its course, if not unnoticed, yet unchecked.
They themselves recognized what was going on; but the tide was too strong: they could not stem it. They had taken the step, and they could not turn back. They believed that destiny was upon them; and so they went on, one step after another in that direction, until—you know—the world knows—the prophecy has recorded it—there came the greatest civil despotism, then the greatest despotism of any kind,—a religious despotism,—and then the greatest ruin that ever was wrought in governmental affairs, in this world—the ruin of the Roman Empire.
Now, I ask again, Why was so much said of Rome in the book of Daniel?—“To be a light in the time of the end;” for prophecy is as “a light that shineth in a dark place,” “whereunto ye do well that ye take heed.” If it had been written only for the time of Rome, and had applied only to that time, it would have been a light for the people then. But it was not written especially for that time: it was not sealed up until that time: it was sealed up to this time, “the time of the end.” Then, as certainly as prophecy is a light that shines in the darkness of this world, so certainly that prophecy concerning Rome, written so fully, and then closed up and sealed “to the time of the end,” is a light whereunto we, in this time, do well that we take heed. And upon what can it possibly be a light, except the things which in this time are like those of that time? That then was an essential element in the making of the beast; this now that is so like it is an essential element in the making of the image of the beast.
All this relates to the time in which we live, and to the place where we live. Darkness covers the earth, and gross darkness the people; but thank the Lord for the light of prophecy. Oh, let us study it as never before, and walk in the light of it, that we may be “children of light, and children of the day.”