Edward Wortley Montagu

“ If we reflect that human nature is at all times and in all places the same, it seems to the last degree astonishing, how Lycurgus could be able to introduce such a self-denying plan of discipline amongst a disorderly licentious people: a scheme, which not only levelled at once all distinction, as to property, between the richest and the poorest individual, but compelled the greatest persons in the state to submit to a regimen which allowed only the bare necessaries of life, excluding every thing which in the opinion of mankind seems essential to its comforts and enjoyments. ”

“ A strong proof of the fatal lengths a faction will run, which is composed of those profligate wretches whose sole aim is their own private emolument! Yet such a faction, in all free states, when once luxury and corruption are introduced, is generally the most numerous, and most prevalent. Athens, not long before, had been betrayed to the Spartans in the same manner, and on the same infamous terms by a detestable faction, composed of the most abandoned of her citizens, and groaned under the same species of tyranny until she was freed by the great Thrasybulus. ”

“ Could we raise the venerable philosopher from the grave to take a short survey of the present manners of our own countrymen, would he not find them an amazingly exact copy of those of the Athenians, in 106 the times immediately preceding their subjection to Macedon? Would he not see the same series of daily and nightly diversions, adapted to the taste of every class of people, from the publick breakfasting (that bane to the time and industry of the tradesman) up to our modern orgies, the midnight-revels of the masquerade? ”

“ Thus luxury necessarily produces corruption. For as wealth is essentially necessary to the support of luxury, wealth will be the universal object of desire in every state where luxury prevails: consequently all those who have dissipated their private fortunes in the purchase of pleasure, will be ever ready to enlist in the cause of faction for the wages of corruption. A taste for pleasure immoderately indulged, quickly strengthens into habit, eradicates every principle of honour and virtue, and gets possession of the whole man. ”

“ The people were so terrified with these bloody executions, that they acquiesced to whatever was proposed, and every man thought himself happy if no violence was offered him, even though he continued quiet and silent. They were deprived even of the power of bewailing the common calamity to each other, in order to concert measures for revenge: for the faction had artfully spread so strong and so universal a diffidence amongst the popular party, that no one durst venture to confide in his neighbour, but each man suspected every other as an accomplice of the crimes which were daily perpetrated. ”

“ By this method they animated the minds of their people with the love of glory, and inured their bodies to the fatigues of war by exercise and labour, whilst they acquired experience and courage by those frequent encounters. Thus, as Plutarch remarks, when these able generals, by never engaging rashly, but watching every favourable opportunity, had fleshed the Thebans, like young stag-hounds, upon their enemies, and rendered them staunch by tasting the sweets of victory, and bringing them off in safety, they made them fond of the sport, and eager after the most arduous enterprises. ”

“ I have endeavoured to show the principal causes of that degeneracy of manners, which reduced those once brave and free people into the most abject slavery. I have marked the alarming progress which the same evils have already made, and still continue to make amongst us, with that honest freedom which is the birthright of every Englishman. My sole aim is to excite those who have the welfare of their country at heart, to unite their endeavours in opposing the fatal tendency of those evils, whilst they are within the power of remedy. ”

“ Historians unanimously agree, that wealth with its attendants, luxury and corruption, gained admission at Sparta in the reign of the first Agis. Lysander, alike a hero and a politician; a man of the greatest abilities and the greatest dishonesty that Sparta ever produced; rapacious after money, which at the same time he despised, and a slave only to ambition, was the author of an innovation so fatal to the manners of his countrymen. ”

“ The equitable intent of our laws is plainly calculated, like those of Solon, to preserve the liberty and property of every individual in the community; and to restrain alike the richest or the poorest, the greatest or the meanest, from doing or suffering wrong from each other. This is the wise and salutary plan of power established at the revolution. Would we always adhere steadily to this plan, and preserve the just æquilibrium, as delivered down to us by our great ancestors, our constitution would remain firm and unshaken to the end of time. ”

“ He fell into the trap laid for him by the crafty Hannibal; was enveloped by the Carthaginians, and must inevitably have perished, with all the troops under his command, if Fabius had not flown to his assistance, repulsed the enemy, and rescued him from the most imminent danger of death or captivity. Though Fabius had been so ill used by his countrymen in general, and by his colleague Minucius in particular, yet he showed, by this generous action, a greatness of soul superior to private resentment, and every selfish passion, which he was always ready to sacrifice to the publick welfare. ”

“ The genius of liberty has hitherto rose superior in all those conflicts, and acquired strength from opposition. May it continue to prevail to the end of time! The United Provinces are a striking proof that the spirit of liberty, when animated and conducted by publick virtue, is invincible. Whilst under the dominion of the house of Austria, they were little better than a poor assemblage of fishing towns and villages. But the virtue of one great man not only enabled them to throw off that inhuman yoke, but to make a respectable figure amongst the first powers in Europe. ”

“ From this deplorable situation the wisdom and virtue of one great man raised his country to that height of power, which was the envy and the terror of her neighbours. A convincing proof how far the influence of one great and good man will operate towards reforming the most bold licentious people, when he has once thoroughly acquired their esteem and confidence! Upon this principle Lycurgus founded his plan of totally altering and new moulding the constitution of his country. ”

“ The people tasting the sweets of corruption, and enervated by the luxury of a city, which was one perpetual scene of festivals and diversions, grew averse to the toils and dangers of war, which now seemed an insupportable slavery, and beneath the dignity of free citizens. The defence of the state was committed to mercenary hirelings, who behaved so ill that their affairs were in the utmost disorder. Of all their leading men, Demosthenes and Phocion were alone proof against the gold of Macedon ”

“ To patronise and propagate their principles, was the best expedient which the narrow selfish policy of those ministers could suggest. For their greatest extent of genius never reached higher, than a fertility in temporary shifts and expedients, to stave off the evil day of national account, which they so much dreaded. They were sensible that the wealth and luxury, which are the general effects of an extensive trade in a state of profound peace, had already greatly hurt the morals of the people, and smoothed the way for their grand system of corruption. ”

“ Lycurgus found his country in the most terrible of all situations, a state of anarchy and confusion. The rich, insolent and oppressive; the poor groaning under a load of debt, mutinous from despair, and ready to cut the throats of their usurious oppressors. To remedy these evils, did this wise politician encourage navigation, strike out new branches of commerce, and make the most of those excellent harbours, and other natural advantages which the maritime situation of his country afforded? ”

“ And that those who are taught to dread infamy more than the greatest dangers, prove the most invincible, and the most formidable to an enemy. It instructs us too, that the most depressed, and most abject state may be extricated from the calamities of oppression, and raised to superior dignity and lustre by a very small number of virtuous patriots, whilst the spirit of liberty yet remains, and the people second the efforts of their leaders with unanimity and vigour. ”

“ A deputy from the Roman senate made a haughty monarch tremble at the head of a victorious army, compelled him to resign all his conquests, and return ingloriously home, by a single motion of his walking-stick.290
What an elevated idea must this give us of the Roman manners, whilst that haughty people retained their freedom! Nothing is more grand; nothing more striking. Shift but the scene, and view the manners of the Romans when enslaved. Nothing is so abjectly servile, nothing so despicable. We see the Roman senate deifying the worst of mankind ”

“ No man could with more certainty foretel the various mutations, which so frequently happen in different forms of government, which must be ever in a fluctuating state, from the complicated variety of the human passions. Nor can any man give us better hints, than he has done, for guarding against the effects of those dangerous passions, and preserving the constitution of a free people in its full force and vigour. Of all the legislators (which he knew of) he prefers Lycurgus, whom he looks upon rather as divinely inspired, than as a mere man. ”

“ But though loyalty and zeal for the glory of their prince seem to form the characteristick of the French nation, yet the late glorious stand against the arbitrary impositions of the crown, which will immortalize the parliament of Paris, proves that they submit to their chains with reluctance. Luxury is the real bane of publick virtue, and consequently of liberty, which gradually sinks in proportion as the manners of a people are softened and corrupted. ”

“ Religion, justice, modesty, decency, all regard for divine or human laws, were swept away at once by the irresistible torrent of corruption. The nobility strained the privileges annexed to their dignity,266 and the people their liberty, alike into the most unbounded licentiousness. Every one made the dictates of his own lawless will his only rule of action. Publick virtue, and the love of their country, which had raised the Romans to the empire of the universe, were extinct. Money,267 which alone could enable them to gratify their darling luxury, was substituted in their place. ”

“ Anxious after truth, and unsatisfied with so many bold assertions destitute of all proof but the writer’s word, which I daily met with, I determined coolly and impartially to examine the evidence arising from ancient history, which both sides so frequently appealed to: for bare speculative reasoning is no more conclusive in political inquiries than in physical. Facts and experience alone must decide: and political facts and experience must alone be learned from history. ”

“ As we are engaged in a war (which was until very lately unsuccessful) with an enemy, less powerful indeed, but equally rapacious as the Romans, and acting upon the same principles, we ought most carefully to beware of those false steps both in war and policy, which brought on the ruin of the Carthaginians. For should we be so unhappy as to be compelled to receive law from that haughty nation, we must expect to be reduced to the same wretched situation in which the Romans left Carthage at the conclusion of the second Punick war. ”

“ To protect his country from external invasions, he formed the whole body of the people, without distinction, into one well armed, well disciplined national militia, whose leading principle was the love of their country, and who esteemed death in its defence, the most exalted height of glory to which a Spartan was capable of attaining. ”

“ But of all the ancient republicks, Rome in the last period of her freedom was the scene where all the inordinate passions of mankind operated most powerfully and with the greatest latitude. There we see luxury, ambition, faction, pride, revenge, selfishness, a total disregard to the publick good, and an universal dissoluteness of manners, first make them ripe for, and then complete their destruction. ”

“ But what idea must he have of the higher class of our people, when he saw those who should be foremost in a time of distress and danger, to animate the drooping spirit of their countrymen by the lustre of their example, attentive only to the unmanning trills of an opera; a degree of effeminacy which would have disgraced even the women of Greece, in times of greatest degeneracy. ”

“ The generals who were elected fleeced the provinces to enable themselves to keep up their interest at home with the people, and connived at the rapines of their soldiers to secure their affections. Hence at Rome liberty degenerated into the most outrageous licentiousness, whilst the soldiers gradually wore off that parental love for their country, which was once the characteristick of the Romans, and attached themselves wholly to the fortunes of their generals. ”

“ But if the passions prevail, and ambition lurks beneath the mask of patriotism, the change will inevitably be for the worse. Because the restitution of the balance of government, which alone can authorize the exercise of the two joint powers against the third, will be only the pretext, whilst the whole weight and fury of the incensed people will be directed solely to the ends of ambition. Thus if the regal power should be enabled to take the lead by gaining over the whole weight of the people, the change will terminate in absolute monarchy ”

“ They began by training their countrymen to the use of arms as well as the shortness of the time would permit, and inspiring them with a hatred of servitude, and the generous resolution of dying in defence of the liberty and glory of their country. As they judged it imprudent to hazard a decisive battle against the best troops in the world, with their new raised militia, they harrassed the Spartans with daily skirmishes to instruct their men in military discipline, and the trade of war. ”