An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations Part 5

_Of the General Causes that operate, both externally and internally, in bringing down Nations that have risen above their Level to that a.s.signed to them by their Extent, Fertility, and Population; and of the Manner in which Wealth destroyed Power in ancient Nations_.

Without considering the particular causes that have raised some nations greatly above others, there are some general causes of decline which operate in all cases; but even the general causes are not always similar, they vary their way of producing the effect, according to circ.u.mstances.

If a nation excels in arts and manufactures, others acquire a taste for what they make, and imitate them. If they excel in the art of war, they teach their enemies to fight as well as themselves. If their territories are large, the unprotected and far distant parts provoke attack and plunder. They become more difficult and expensive to govern. If they owe their superiority to climate and soil, they generally preserve it but a short time. Necessity acts so much more powerfully on those who do not enjoy the same advantages, that they soon come to an equality.-- In whatever the superiority exists, emulation and envy prompt to rivals.h.i.+p in peace, and to frequent trials of strength in war. The contempt and pride which accompany wealth and power, and the envy and jealousy they excite amongst other nations, are continual causes of change, and form the great basis of the revolutions amongst the human race.

The wants of men increase with their knowledge of what it is good to enjoy; and it is the desire to gratify those wants that increases necessity, and this necessity is the spur to action.

There are a few natural wants that require no knowledge in order to be felt; such as hunger and thirst, and the other appet.i.tes which men have in common with all animals, and which are linked, as it [end of page #14] were, to their existence. {16} But while nations satisfy themselves with supplying such wants, there is neither wealth nor power amongst them. Of consequence, it is not into the conduct of such that we are to inquire.

Excepting, however, those wants which are inseparable from our existence, all the others are, more or less, fict.i.tious, and increase with our knowledge and habits; it is, therefore, evident that the nation that is the highest above others feels the fewest wants; or, in other words, feels no wants. She knows nothing that she does not possess, and therefore may be said to want nothing; or which is the same thing, not knowing what she does want, she makes no effort to obtain it.

Thus necessity of rising higher, does not operate, on a nation that sees none higher than itself; at least, it does only operate in a very slender degree. {17} Whereas, in the nation that is behind hand with other nations around, every one is led by emulation and envy, and by a feeling of their own wants, to imitate and equal those that are farther advanced.

{16} A child cries for food without knowing what it is; and all the other natural appet.i.tes, though they may be increased by habit, by knowledge, and fancy, are independent of the mind in its first state.

{17} The necessity, no doubt, continues to preserve what they have; and, therefore, tends to keep them in a permanent state. Some individuals again, in less affluence than others, endeavour to equal them; by which means some progress is still making in the nation that possesses the greatest share of wealth and power; but it is only partial and feeble. Those who live in the nation that is the most advanced are contented and have all they wish; they possess every thing of which they know, they can have no particular desire for any thing they have not got, that will produce great energy and exertion. A man may wish for wings, or for perpetual youth; but, as he can scarcely expect to obtain either, he will make little exertion. With things really attainable, but not known, the case is less productive of energy still.

The people of Asia found silk a natural produce of their country; till the Europeans saw it, they never attempted to produce so rich a material; but no pains has since been spared to try to produce it, in almost every country, where there was the least chance of success. We imitated the silk mills of Italy, and the Italians (as well as many other nations) are now imitating our cotton mills. In the case of a nation that follows others, it always knows what it wants, and may judge whether it can obtain it; but the nation the most advanced, gropes in the dark.

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Thus it is, that necessity acts but in a very inferior degree on the nation that is the farthest advanced; while it operates in a very powerful way on those that are in arrear; and this single reason, without the intervention of wars or any sort of contest or robbery, would, in the process of time, bring nations to a sort of equality in wealth and refinement; that is, it would bring them all into possession of the means of gratifying their wants.

War, excited by the violent and vile pa.s.sions,--by the overbearing pride and insolence of one, and the envy and villainy of another, derange this natural and smooth operation, which, nevertheless, continues to act in silence at all times, and in every circ.u.mstance, and which, indeed, is in general the chief cause of those very disorders by which its operations are sometimes facilitated; sometimes apparently interrupted; sometimes, their effect for a moment reversed; but their action never, for one instant, totally suspended.

The desire of enjoyment makes all mankind act as if they were running a race. They always keep the goal in view, though they attempt to be the foremost to arrive at it by various means. But the greatest exertions are never made by those who have got the advance of their compet.i.tors. Amongst the wants of mankind, ease is one of very permanent operation; and whenever the necessity of supplying other wants ceases, the desire of supplying that, leads to a state of inaction and rest. {18} To seek ease, however, does not imply necessarily to seek total inaction or rest; a diminished exertion is comparative ease; and this is always observable in a state of prosperity, either of an individual or of a nation, after the prosperity has been long enough

{18} The truth of this may be disputed by those who look at mankind in an artificial state; because a variety of their actions seem without any particular motive. But not the smallest exertion is ever made without it. The man who walks out and takes exercise, wants health or amus.e.m.e.nt as much as the working man does bread. Even those who toil in the rounds of pleasure, are always in pursuit of something.

Their not finding the object is another part of the consideration; but they always have one in view. As to savages, and the poorer cla.s.ses of people, they shew their propensity by a more simple process; that is, merely by resting inactive, when they are not compelled to labour.

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enjoyed to create a certain degree of la.s.situde and indifference, which it does on every nation. {19}

Whatever may be the accidental circ.u.mstance which first raises one nation above others, or the train of advent.i.tious ones that increase for a while and continue that superiority, nothing can be more clear and certain, than, that they have a natural tendency to come back to a level, merely by the exertions of men in the direction of acquiring wealth by industry, and without any of those causes which arise out of war, or interrupting the career of each other.

When, from the conduct of one nation towards another, or from whatever other cause war, =sic= becomes the means by which the superiority of two nations is to be decided, there are many things in favour of the least wealthy nation.

It has less to protect and to lose, and more to attack and to gain; the task is much easier and more alluring. There is a sort of energy in attempting to obtain, that is not to be found in those who are only exerting themselves to keep, of which it is difficult to explain the cause, but of which the existence is very certain.

Where natural strength, and the struggle with want is great, as is the case with nations who have made but little progress in acquiring wealth, the contest with a people more enervated by ease, and less inured to toil is very unequal, and does more than compensate those artificial aids which are derived from the possession of property. {20} From this cause, the triumph of poorer over more wealthy nations has generally arisen, and, in most cases, has occasioned the contest to end in favour of the more hardy and poorer people.

Of the revolutions that took place in the ancient world; whether operated by degrees or by violence and suddenly, those may be ge-

{19} Doctor Garth, in his admirable poem of the Dispensary, says;--

"_Even health for want of change becomes disease_."

This is the case with nations sunk in prosperity.

{20} Why men should have been less tenacious to keep that which is fairly theirs, than rapaciously to obtain that which is not, is a strange thing; but nothing is more certain; and the effects of that propensity are very great, and its existence very general. In the ruin of nations, it is a most active and powerful cause.

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nerally traced as the causes. In those ancient nations any considerable degree of luxury and military success were incompatible with each other; but, in the present age, the case is greatly altered. Military discipline is not near so severe as formerly, and bodily strength has but little effect, while the engines of war can only be procured by those resources which wealth affords; by this means, the decline of nations is, at least, now become a less natural and slower progress than formerly; the operations of war have now a quite different tendency from what they formerly had, and this effect is produced by the introduction of cannon, and a different mode of attack and defence; to carry on which, a very considerable degree of wealth is necessary. {21}

In former times, the character and situation of the people, the object they had in view, their bravery and the skill of their leaders, did every thing; but now the skill of leaders and the command of money are the chief objects; for there is not sufficient difference between any two nations in Europe as to counterbalance those: and, indeed, (except so far as military skill is accidental,) it is to be found princ.i.p.ally in nations who have a sufficient degree of wealth to exercise it and call it into action.

We shall see that the first revolutions in the world were effected by the natural strength, energy, and bravery of poor nations triumphing over those that were less hardy, in consequence of the enjoyment of wealth, until the time of the Romans; who, like other nations, first triumphed by means of superior energy and bravery; and, afterwards by making war a trade, continued, by having regular standing armies, to conquer the nations who had only temporary levies, or militias, to fight in their defence.

The triumph of poor nations, over others in many respects their superiors, continued during the middle ages, but the wealth acquired by certain nations then was not wrested from them by war, but by an accidental and unforeseen change in the channel through which it

{21} An idea has gone abroad, since the successes of the French armies, that money is not necessary to war, even in the present times.

It will be shewn, in its proper place, that the French armies were maintained at very great expense, and that a poor country could not have done what France did.

flowed. At the same time that this change took place, without the intervention of force, the art of war changed in favour of wealthy nations, but the changes took place by slow degrees, and the power of nations now may almost be estimated by their disposable incomes.

This change, however, has by no means secured the prosperity of wealthy nations; it has only prevented poor ones, unable by means of fair compet.i.tion to do by conquest what they could not effect by perseverance in arts and industry; for, in other respects, though it makes the prosperity of a nation more dependant =sic= on wealth, and more independent of violence; it prevents any nation from preserving its political importance after it loses its riches. It does not by any means interrupt that progress by which poor nations gradually rise up and rival richer ones in arts. It has not done away the advantages that arise from superior industry and attention to business, or from the gradual introduction of knowledge amongst the more ignorant, thereby lessening their inferiority, and tending to bring nations to a level; on the contrary, by increasing the advantages, and securing the gradual triumphs gained by arts and industry, from the violence of war, it makes wealth a more desirable object, and the loss of it a greater misfortune. It tends to augment the natural propensity that there is in poor nations to equal richer ones {22}, although it, at the same time, augments the difficulty of accomplis.h.i.+ng their intentions.

The superior energy of poverty and necessity which leads men, under this pressure, to act incessantly in whatever way they have it in their power to act, and that seems likely to bring them on a level with those that are richer, is then the ground-work of the rise and fall of nations, as well as of individuals. This tendency is sometimes favoured by particular circ.u.mstances, and sometimes it is counteracted by them; but its operation is incessant, and it has never yet failed in producing its effect, for the triumph of poverty over wealth on the great scale as on the small, though very irregular in its pace, has continued without interruption from the earliest records to the present moment.

{22} The present inferiority of Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, and Portugal, compared with the rank they held in former times, is easily accounted for by looking at the scale of their revenues.

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CHAP. III.

_Of the Nations that rose to Wealth and Power previously to the Conquests in Asia and Africa, and the Causes which ruined them_.

Previous to the conquests made by Alexander the Great, the history of ancient nations is confused, incomplete, and inaccurate.

During the contests of his successors, the intricacy and confusion are still continued, but materials are more plentiful, more accurate, and more authentic.

During the first period, excepting what is contained in sacred history, a few detached facts, collected by writers long after, are our only guides in judging of the situation of ancient states, some of which consisted of great empires, and others of single cities possessed of a very small territory.

Add to this, that great and striking events occupied almost exclusively the attention of historians. The means by which those events were produced were considered as of lesser importance.