Brooks Adams

“ After an experience of nearly a century and a quarter we must admit, I think, that Hamilton was right. In the United States we have carried bills of right and constitutional limitations to an extreme, and yet, I suppose that few would care to maintain that, during the nineteenth century, life and property were safer in America, or crime better dealt with, than in England, France, or Germany. The contrary, indeed, I take to be the truth, and I think one chief cause of this imperfection in the administration of justice will be found to have been the operation of the written Constitution. ”

“ In 1688, when the momentum of England suddenly increased, the change was equivalent to the conquest of the island by a new race. Among the family of European nations, Great Britain rose as no people had risen since the Punic Wars. Almost instantly she entered on a career of conquest unparalleled in modern history. Of the hundred and twenty-five years between the Boyne and Waterloo, she passed some seventy in waging ferocious wars, from which she emerged victorious on land and sea, the mistress of a mighty empire, the owner of incalculable wealth, and the centre of the world's exchanges. ”

“ From the sixteenth century downward, the man of imagination, unable to please the economic taste, has starved.
This mercenary quality forms the gulf which has divided the art of the Middle Ages from that of modern times—a gulf which cannot be bridged, and which has broadened with the lapse of centuries, until at last the artist, like all else in society, has become the creature of a commercial market, even as the Greek was sold as a slave to the plutocrat of Rome. ”

“ For more than a century past, capital and credit have been absolute, or nearly so; accordingly it has not been the martial type which has enjoyed sovereignty, but the capitalistic. The warrior has been the capitalists' servant. But now, if it be true that money, in certain crucial directions, is losing its purchasing power, it is evident that capitalists must accept a position of equality before the law under the domination of a type of man who can enforce obedience; their own obedience, as well as the obedience of others. ”

“ This supremacy of the economic instinct transformed all the relations of life, the domestic as well as the military. The family ceased to be a unit, the members of which cohered from the necessity of self-defence, and became a business association. Marriage took the form of a contract, dissoluble at the will of either party, and, as it was somewhat costly, it grew rare. As with the drain of their bullion to the East, which crushed their farmers, the Romans were conscious, as Augustus said, that sterility must finally deliver their city into the hand of the barbarians. ”

“ A century later the armed pilgrimages to Palestine had accelerated the social movement, and consolidation again began. Generation by generation the rapidity of movement had increased, communication had been re-established between the East and West, the mariner’s compass and gunpowder had been introduced into Europe, the attack had mastered the defence, and as the forms of competition slowly changed, capital accumulated, until, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, wealth reached the point where it could lay the foundation of the paid police, the crowning triumph of the monied class. ”

“ In the eleventh century this language was no metaphor, for the Cluniac monk spoke as the mouthpiece of a god who was there actually among them, offering the cross he brought from the grave, and promising them triumphs: not the common triumphs which may be won by man's unaided strength, but the transcendent glory which belongs to beings of another world.
So the crusaders rode out to fight, the originals of the fairy knights, clad in impenetrable armour, mounted on miraculous horses, armed with resistless swords, and bearing charmed lives. ”

“ I must work, or fight, or starve according to another man’s convenience, caprice, or, in fine, according to his will. I could be no worse off under any despot. To such a system I will not submit. But I can at least fight. Put me on a competitive equality or I will blow your civilization to atoms. To such an argument there is no logical answer possible except the answer which all extreme socialists have always advanced. The fortunate man should be taxed for all he earns above the average wage, and the State should confiscate his accumulations at death. ”

“ In fine, money is the weapon of the capitalist as the sword was the weapon of the mediaeval soldier; only, as the capitalist is more highly specialized than the soldier ever was, he is more helpless when his single weapon fails him. From the days of William the Conqueror to our own, the great soldier has been, very commonly, a famous statesman also, but I do not now remember, in English or American history, a single capitalist who has earned eminence for comprehensive statesmanship. ”

“ In 1285, as the Latin kingdom in Syria was tottering towards its fall, Philip the Fair was crowned. Subtle, sceptical, treacherous, and cruel, few kings have left behind them a more sombre memory, yet he was the incarnation of the economic spirit in its conflict with the Church. Nine years later Benedetto Gaetani was elected pope: a man as completely the creation of the social revolution of the thirteenth century as Philip himself. Trained at Bologna and Paris, a jurist rather than a priest, his faith in dogma was so scanty that his belief in the immortality of the soul has been questioned. ”

“ The soldiers of all nations were strenuously for peace, the priests as strenuously for war. They felt confident of repeating the sack of Constantinople at Cairo, nor can there be a greater contrast than Martin spurning the wealth of Constantinople as dross, and Pelagius rejecting the Sepulchre that he might glut himself with Egyptian wealth.
But all history shows that the emotionalist cannot compete with the materialist upon his own ground. In the end, under free economic competition, he must be eliminated. Pelagius tarried idly in the jaws of death until the Nile rose and engulfed him. ”

“ After explaining that he had been chosen commander against his will, he exclaimed, "Who am I, that I should set camps in order, or should march before armed men? Or what is so remote from my profession, even had I the strength, and the knowledge were not lacking? . . . I beseech you, by that charity you especially owe me, that you do not abandon me to the wills of men." ”

“ In the eye of philosophy, perhaps the most alluring and yet illusive of all the phenomena presented by civilization is that which we have been considering. Why should a type of mind which has developed the highest prescience when advancing along the curve which has led it to ascendancy, be stricken with fatuity when the summit of the curve is passed, and when a miscalculation touching the velocity of the descent must be destruction? ”

“ The magistrate should be no respecter of persons. The vice of our system of judicial dispensation is that it discriminates among suitors in proportion to their power of resistance. This is so because, under adequate pressure, our courts yield along the path of least resistance. I should not suppose that any man could calmly turn over the pages of the recent volumes of the reports of the Supreme Court of the United States and not rise from the perusal convinced that the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, do not receive a common measure of justice before that judgment seat. ”

“ Yet awful as is this Massachusetts tragedy, it is but a little fragment of the sternest struggle of the modern world. The power of the priesthood lies in submission to a creed. In their onslaughts on rebellion they have exhausted human torments; nor, in their lust for earthly dominion, have they felt remorse, but rather joy, when slaying Christ’s enemies and their own. The horrors of the Inquisition, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, the atrocities of Laud, the abominations of the Scotch Kirk, the persecution of the Quakers, had one object,—the enslavement of the mind. ”

“ When force reached the stage where it expressed itself exclusively through money, the governing class ceased to be chosen because they were valiant or eloquent, artistic, learned, or devout, and were selected solely because they had the faculty of acquiring and keeping wealth. As long as the weak retained enough vitality to produce something which could be absorbed, this oligarchy was invincible; and for very many years after the native peasantry of Gaul and Italy had perished under the load, new blood injected from more tenacious races kept the dying civilization alive. ”

“ The Byzantine system was adopted. A double wall, the inner commanding the outer, with a moat between; and three enormous towers rising from the moat, formed the donjon. There were stone machicoulis and all the refinements of defence which appeared in France under Saint Louis and his son, and a study of this stupendous monument shows plainly whence Europeans drew their military instruction for a century to come.
The Krak was the outwork dominating the plain where the Christians never made their footing good, and stood at the apex of a triangle of fortresses as remarkable as itself. ”