National decline

“ The web of beliefs, customs, laws, institutions, and habits of thought, which each community is constantly spinning, and which produces in the individual environed by it all the differences of national character, is never unraveled. That is to say, in the decline of civilization, communities do not go down by the same paths that they came up. For instance, the decline of civilization as manifested in government would not take us back from republicanism to constitutional monarchy, and thence to the feudal system; it would take us to imperatorship and anarchy. ”

“ Arrest and decline in civilization are to be recognised as among the more frequent and powerful operations of national life. That knowledge, arts, and institutions should decay in certain districts, that peoples once progressive should lag behind and be passed by advancing neighbours, that sometimes even societies of men should recede into rudeness and misery—all these are phenomena with which modern history is familiar. ”

“ In the case of education and manners, in the case of providing for children, individuals may do much, but government must not only give the means, but the impulse. In the case of the soil becoming insufficient for the inhabitants, and of taxes and national debt increasing, government may stop the progress; and in the cases of individual bodies trenching on the general weal, as well as in the tendency of inventions, capital, &c. to emigrate to other countries, the government may counteract, and, perhaps, totally prevent them all. ”

“ And the general law is shown by the fact that just as this tendency has asserted itself civilization has advanced, while just as it has been repressed or forced back civilization has been checked.
Where there is anything like an equal distribution of wealth the more democratic the government the better it will be; but where there is gross inequality in the distribution of wealth, the more democratic the government the worse it will be; for while rotten democracy may not in itself be worse than rotten autocracy, its effects upon national character will be worse. ”

“ The degradation of moral character; the loss of attention to the first principles to which a society owes its prosperity and safety, both of which accompany wealth, are most powerful agents in the decline of nations. ”

“ As this tendency is uniformly felt by a number of individuals over the whole of a country, when it advances in wealth, and over whole districts that are more advanced than the others, it must operate, in length of time, in producing the decline of a whole nation, as well as it does of a certain portion of its people at all times. ”

“ As I survey the growing and enormous moral evils which degrade society, here as everywhere, in spite of Bunker Hills and Plymouth Rocks, and all the windy declamations of politicians and philanthropists, and all the advance in useful mechanisms, I am sometimes tempted to propound inquiries which suggest the old, mournful story of the decline and ruin of States and Empires. I ask myself, Why should America be an exception to the uniform fate of nations, as history has demonstrated? ”

“ To assist nature, in every case where her operations are favourable to the enjoyment and happiness of men, and to counteract those that are unfavourable, is the business of individuals and of states. What the individual is unable to do, should be done by those to whom the care of public affairs is given; by those who act for the benefit of all, and in the name of all.
From the first approaches of a state to wealth and greatness, we find that there are a combination of causes that begin to operate in promoting its decline. ”

“ I know the Empire—its utter decadence, its self-seeking politicians and pleasure-loving mobs, corruption and intrigue everywhere you go, collapse of morals and duty-sense, decline of art into craft and science into stagnancy—you were a great race once, you humans, you were the first to aspire to the stars and we owe you something for that, I suppose. ”

“ But it is not merely a neglect of industry and the means of rising in society, or keeping one's place in it that is hurtful; the general way of thinking and acting becomes different, and, by degrees, the character of a nation is entirely altered. ”

“ And now, without men, without producing what is indispensable, all the countries have reached a state of decline where people are beginning to howl like wolves with cold, hunger, poverty, want and oppression. ”

“ The decline of nations, who become rich by means of industry, may be natural; but, the fall of a nation, owing its greatness to the subjugation of others, must be necessary. Human affairs are too complicated and varied to admit of perfect equality, and the relative situations of mankind are always changing; yet, in some instances, perhaps, changes might be obviated, or protracted, by timely preventives. ”

“ They became idle, luxurious and inert, lying like an incubus upon the country, deadening and crushing its civilisation and its spirit, hindering all growth, stopping all progress, just as incapable of calling out the resources of a people as of rooting out their national life. ”

“ Our manifest national policy has been foreshadowed by the conditions that have been created. Averse to wars of conquest, and free from disturbing visions of imperial power and grandeur, the nation has become great beyond the dreams of its founders. A new era is upon it—a condition and not a theory confronts it. Its traditions must be partially shattered and its policy revised and shaped with reference to the exigencies of the times. ”

“ If any number of persons engross the whole of the lands of a nation, then the labourers that live on those lands must be in a degraded situation; they then become less sound and less important members of the state than they would otherwise be. ”

“ The latter part of the same book will treat of the exterior causes of decline, arising from the envy of other nations; their advancement in the same arts to which the nations that are rich owe their wealth, or their excelling them in other arts, by which they can be rivalled, reduced, or subdued. ”

“ The leading distinction between a rising and a fallen people is the disposition to industry and exertion, in the one, and to sloth and negligence, in the other. It is while a nation is increasing in wealth that this alteration gradually takes place ”

“ The individuals of whom a nation is composed, we have seen, never can, by their efforts, prevent its decline, as their natural propensities tend to bring it on. It is to the rulers of nations we must look for the [end of page #287] prolongation of prosperity, which they cannot accomplish, unless they look before them, and, in place of seeking for remedies, seek for preventatives. ”

“ Such a retreat rounds out the later phases of a cycle of civilization--the phases of decline and final dissolution.
Civilizations perish in the first instance because of internal contradictions and conflicts, the struggle to grab, monopolize, and keep wealth, status, power.
They perish because of the division of the nucleus and its associates and dependencies between those who work for a living, those who have an unearned income and those parasites who scrounge for a living. They perish because of the hard class and caste lines that grow out of economic contradictions ”

“ Of all the spots on the face of the earth that have undergone revolution and ruin, they that are now the most completely sunk below their natural level, are those which were formerly the highest above it. ”

“ The question naturally arises, what is to be the effect of such accumulated wealth, such vast increase of population, such expanded domain, and such augmentation of national power? Plainly enough either one of two very opposite conditions may arise. It may either blast or bless, it may lift us to heaven or sink us to perdition.
If we shall become proud, selfish, imperious, oppressive, and rapacious; if we shall persist in trampling on the weak and exalting the strong, worshipping the rich and despising the poor, our doom as a nation is already foreshadowed. ”

“ What must, in the end, be the result of such a state of things, but internal anarchy, [671] foreign degradation, ultimate ruin? And is there no obligation upon those whose policy since 1846 has brought these calamities on the nation, to apply the national credit in the attempt at least to relieve them? Hear the just and eloquent observations of the Times on the subject:—
"There is a multitudinous population growing yearly more multitudinous, more exacting, more wretched. ”

“ Conclusion of exteror Causes.-- Are seldom of much Importance, unless favoured by interior ones.-- Rich Nations, with care, capable, in most Cases, of prolonging their Prosperity.-- Digression on the Importance of Public Revenue, illustrated by a statistical Chart.
THE exterior causes of the decline of any nation, that has risen above its level, though formidable, are nothing, in comparison to the interior causes, and are of no great effect without their co-operation. ”

“ I doubt whether the history of mankind is yet complete enough, if ever it can be so, to furnish grounds for a sure theory on the internal causes, which necessarily affect the fortune of a state. I am far from denying the operation of such causes, but they are infinitely uncertain, and much more obscure, and much more difficult to trace than the foreign causes that tend to depress, and, sometimes, overwhelm society. ”

“ The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.
Abroad, the balance of power is shifting. There are new and more terrible weapons – new and uncertain nations – new pressures of population and deprivation. ”

“ We are, however, not to forget that priority in point of time being one of the causes of a nation's rise, and being of a nature to be destroyed in the course of years, the superiority we enjoy may leave us, as it did other nations in former times. ”

“ The history of three thousand years, and of nations that have risen to wealth and power, in a great variety of situations, all terminating with a considerable degree of similarity, discovers the great outline of the causes that invigorate or degrade the human mind, and thereby raise or ruin states and empires. ”

“ Indeed, the extent to which the governing classes have interfered, and the mischiefs which that interference has produced, are so remarkable as to make thoughtful men wonder how civilization could advance in the face of such repeated obstacles. In some of the European countries the obstacles have, in fact, proved insuperable, and the national progress is thereby stopped. ”

“ The balance of power, however well attended to, could not prevent the decline of a nation from interior causes. It may prevent the operation of exterior causes from pushing a nation to the extreme of humiliation, by taking advantage of its internal situation. But the decline of almost every nation has commenced within its own bosom, and has been completed by causes acting from without. ”

“ In all the interior causes, for the decline of nations, which we are endeavouring to investigate, we shall find a change of manners, and ways of thinking, constantly producing some effect in the direction towards decline. ”

“ But while that country exhibits the most authentic proofs of the uniform course of nature, it affords also the most evident examples of the degradation of the human mind. It is there we find the cause of those ruins that astonish, and the desolation that afflicts. Had men continued their exertions, the labour of their hands would not have fallen to decay. ”

“ At any one time the current of national public opinion embodies a temporary accommodation among the different traditional ideas, interests, conditions, and institutions. This balance of varying and perhaps conflicting elements is constantly being destroyed by new conditions,—such, for instance, as the gradual increase before the Civil War of the North as compared to the South in wealth, population, and industrial efficiency. ”

“ Whatever may be the accidental circumstance which first raises one nation above others, or the train of adventitious 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. ”

“ That they are a part of the disorganized world, and have manifested the same unhappy dispositions as other portions. Reform has not altered their dispositions or circumstances. We see among them the same ambitious, grasping, reckless disposition manifested, and consequently the same wars, bloodshed, poverty, misery, and distress; and millions of human beings have been sacrificed to their pride, ambition, and avarice, and thirst for national fame and glory. ”

“ Besides those great revolutions, of which the consequences were permanent, there have been endless and innumerable struggles for the possession of wealth, amongst different nations; but the real and leading causes are so uniform, and so evident, that there is not a shadow of a doubt left on that subject. ”

“ When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. ”

“ But there is no possibility of keeping them long in so unnatural a situation, as that of a nation of wealthy and idle people, ruling over and keeping in subjection others who are more hardy, poorer, and more virtuous, than themselves. ”

“ A universal degradation, from whose blight even the most illustrious were not exempt, pervaded all classes,—a condition which had at last reached its climax after its gradual development through centuries, and was finally disclosed by that perversion of manners, morals, government, and laws which so significantly indicates the corruption and the decadence of nations. ”