Book: An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition

A >> Adam Ferguson, L.L.D. >> An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition




This last was the station, which, in the distinction betwixt freemen and
slaves, the citizens of every ancient republic strove to gain, and to
maintain for themselves. Women, or slaves, in the earliest ages, had been
set apart for the purposes of domestic care, or bodily labour; and in the
progress of lucrative arts, the latter were bred to mechanical professions,
and were even intrusted with merchandise for the benefit of their masters.
Freemen would be understood to have no object beside those of politics and
war. In this manner, the honours of one half of the species were sacrificed
to those of the other; as stones from the same quarry are buried in the
foundation, to sustain the blocks which happen to be hewn for the superior
parts of the pile. In the midst of our encomiums bestowed on the Greeks and
the Romans, we are, by this circumstance, made to remember, that no human
institution is perfect.

In many of the Grecian states, the benefits arising to the free from this
cruel distinction, were not conferred equally on all the citizens. Wealth
being unequally divided, the rich alone were exempted from labour; the poor
were reduced to work for their own subsistence: interest was a reigning
passion in both, and the possession of slaves, like that of any other
lucrative property, became an object of avarice, not an exemption from
sordid attentions. The entire effects of the institution were obtained, or
continued to be enjoyed for any considerable time, at Sparta alone. We feel
its injustice; we suffer for the helot, under the severities and unequal
treatment to which he was exposed: but when we think only of the superior
order of men in this state; when we attend to that elevation and
magnanimity of spirit, for which danger had no terror, interest no means to
corrupt; when we consider them as friends, or as citizens, we are apt to
forget, like themselves, that slaves have a title to be treated like men.

We look for elevation of sentiment, and liberality of mind, among those
orders of citizens, who, by their condition, and their fortunes, are
relieved from sordid cares and attentions. This was the description of a
free man at Sparta; and if the lot of a slave among the ancients was really
more wretched than that of the indigent labourer and the mechanic among the
moderns, it may be doubted whether the superior orders, who are in
possession of consideration and honours, do not proportionally fail in the
dignity which befits their condition. If the pretensions to equal justice
and freedom should terminate in rendering every class equally servile and
mercenary, we make a nation of helots, and have no free citizens.

In every commercial state, notwithstanding any pretension to equal rights,
the exaltation of a few must depress the many. In this arrangement, we
think that the extreme meanness of some classes must arise chiefly from the
defect of knowledge, and of liberal education; and we refer to such
classes, as to an image of what our species must have been in its rude and
uncultivated state. But we forget how many circumstances, especially in
populous cities, tend to corrupt the lowest orders of men. Ignorance is the
least of their failings. An admiration of wealth unpossessed, becoming a
principle of envy, or of servility; a habit of acting perpetually with a
view to profit, and under a sense of subjection; the crimes to which they
are allured, in order to feed their debauch, or to gratify their avarice,
are examples, not of ignorance, but of corruption and baseness. If the
savage has not received our instructions, he is likewise unacquainted with
our vices. He knows no superior, and cannot be servile; he knows no
distinctions of fortune, and cannot be envious; he acts from his talents in
the highest station which human society can offer, that of the counsellor,
and the soldier of his country. Toward forming his sentiments, he knows all
that the heart requires to be known; he can distinguish the friend whom he
loves, and the public interest which awakens his zeal.

The principal objections, to democratical or popular government, are taken
from the inequalities which arise among men in the result of commercial
arts. And it must be confessed, that popular assemblies, when composed of
men whose dispositions are sordid, and whose ordinary applications are
illiberal, however they may be intrusted with the choice of their masters
and leaders, are certainly, in their own persons, unfit to command. How can
he who has confined his views to his own subsistence or preservation, be
intrusted with the conduct of nations? Such men, when admitted to
deliberate on matters of state, bring to its councils confusion and tumult,
or servility and corruption; and seldom suffer it to repose from ruinous
factions, or the effect of resolutions ill formed or ill conducted.

The Athenians retained their popular government under all these defects.
The mechanic was obliged, under a penalty, to appear in the public
market-place, and to hear debates on the subjects of war and of peace. He
was tempted by pecuniary rewards, to attend on the trial of civil and
criminal causes. But, notwithstanding an exercise tending so much to
cultivate their talents, the indigent came always with minds intent upon
profit, or with the habits of an illiberal calling. Sunk under the sense of
their personal disparity and weakness, they were ready to resign themselves
entirely to the influence of some popular leader, who flattered their
passions, and wrought on their fears; or, actuated by envy, they were ready
to banish from the state whomsoever was respectable and eminent in the
superior order of citizens; and whether from their neglect of the public at
one time, or their mal-administration at another, the sovereignty was every
moment ready to drop from their hands.

The people, in this case, are, in fact, frequently governed by one, or a
few, who know how to conduct them. Pericles possessed a species of princely
authority at Athens; Crassus, Pompey, and Caesar, either jointly or
successively, possessed for a considerable period the sovereign direction
at Rome.

Whether in great or in small states, democracy is preserved with
difficulty, under the disparities of condition, and the unequal cultivation
of the mind, which attend the variety of pursuits, and applications, that
separate mankind in the advanced state of commercial arts. In this,
however, we do but plead against the form of democracy, after the principle
is removed; and see the absurdity of pretensions to equal influence and
consideration, after the characters of men have ceased to be similar.




SECTION III.

OF THE MANNERS OF POLISHED AND COMMERCIAL NATIONS.


Mankind, when in their rude state, have a great uniformity of manners; but
when civilized, they are engaged in a variety of pursuits; they tread on a
larger field, and separate to a greater distance. If they be guided,
however, by similar dispositions, and by like suggestions of nature, they
will probably in the end, as well as in the beginning of their progress,
continue to agree in many particulars; and while communities admit, in
their members, that diversity of ranks and professions which we have
already described as the consequence or the foundation of commerce, they
will resemble each other in many effects of this distribution, and of other
circumstances in which they nearly concur.

Under every form of government, statesmen endeavour to remove the dangers
by which they are threatened from abroad, and the disturbances which molest
them at home. By this conduct, if successful, they in a few ages gain an
ascendant for their country; establish a frontier at a distance from its
capital; they find, in the mutual desires of tranquillity, which come to
possess mankind, and in those public establishments which tend to keep the
peace of society, a respite from foreign wars, and a relief from domestic
disorders. They learn to decide every contest without tumult, and to
secure, by the authority of law, every citizen in the possession of his
personal rights.

In this condition, to which thriving nations aspire, and which they in some
measure attain, mankind having laid the basis of safety, proceed to erect a
superstructure suitable to their views. The consequence is various in
different states; even in different orders of men of the same community;
and the effect to every individual corresponds with his station. It enables
the statesman and the soldier to settle the forms of their different
procedure; it enables the practitioner in every profession to pursue his
separate advantage; it affords the man of pleasure a time for refinement,
and the speculative, leisure for literary conversation or study.

In this scene, matters that have little reference to the active pursuits of
mankind, are made subjects of inquiry, and the exercise of sentiment and
reason itself becomes a profession. The songs of the bard, the harangues of
the statesman and the warrior, the tradition and the story of ancient
times, are considered as the models, or the earliest production, of so many
arts, which it becomes the object of different professions to copy or to
improve. The works of fancy, like the subjects of natural history, are
distinguished into classes and species; the rules of every particular kind
are distinctly collected; and the library is stored, like the warehouse,
with the finished manufacture of different artists, who, with the aids of
the grammarian and the critic, aspire, each in his particular way, to
instruct the head, or to move the heart.

Every nation is a motley assemblage of different characters, and contains,
under any political form, some examples of that variety, which the humours,
tempers, and apprehensions of men, so differently employed, are likely to
furnish. Every profession has its point of honour, and its system of
manners; the merchant his punctuality and fair dealing; the statesman his
capacity and address; the man of society his good breeding and wit. Every
station has a carriage, a dress, a ceremonial, by which it is
distinguished, and by which it suppresses the national character under that
of the rank, or of the individual.

This description may be applied equally to Athens and Rome, to London and
Paris. The rude, or the simple observer, would remark the variety he saw in
the dwellings and in the occupations, of different men, not in the aspect
of different nations. He would find, in the streets of the same city, as
great a diversity, as in the territory of a separate people. He could not
pierce through the cloud that was gathered before him, nor see how the
tradesman, mechanic, or scholar, of one country, should differ from those
of another. But the native of every province can distinguish the foreigner;
and when he himself travels, is struck with the aspect of a strange
country, the moment he passes the bounds of his own. The air of the person,
the tone of the voice, the idiom of language, and the strain of
conversation, whether pathetic or languid, gay or severe, are no longer the
same.

Many such differences may arise among polished nations, from the effects of
climate, or from sources of fashion, that are still more hidden or
unobserved; but the principal distinctions on which we can rest, are
derived from the part a people are obliged to act in their national
capacity; from the objects placed in their view by the state; or from the
constitution of government, which, prescribing the terms of society to its
subjects, had a great influence in forming their apprehensions and habits.

The Roman people, destined to acquire wealth by conquest, and by the spoil
of provinces; the Carthaginians, intent on the returns of merchandise, and
the produce of commercial settlements, must have filled the streets of
their several capitals with men of a different disposition and aspect. The
Roman laid hold of his sword when he wished to be great, and the state
found her armies prepared in the dwellings of her people. The Carthaginian
retired to his counter on a similar project; and, when the state was
alarmed, or had resolved on a war, lent of his profits to purchase an army
abroad.

The member of a republic, and the subject of a monarchy, must differ;
because they have different parts assigned to them by the forms of their
country: the one destined to live with his equals, or to contend, by his
personal talents and character, for pre-eminence; the other, born to a
determinate station, where any pretence to equality creates a confusion,
and where nought but precedence is studied. Each, when the institutions of
his country are mature, may find in the laws a protection to his personal
rights; but those rights themselves are differently understood, and with a
different set of opinions, give rise to a different temper of mind. The
republican must act in the state, to sustain his pretensions; he must join
a party, in order to be safe; he must lead one, in order to be great. The
subject of monarchy refers to his birth for the honour he claims; he waits
on a court, to shew his importance; and holds out the ensigns of dependence
and favour, to gain him esteem with the public.

If national institutions, calculated for the preservation of liberty,
instead of calling upon the citizen to act for himself, and to maintain his
rights, should give a security, requiring, on his part, no personal
attention or effort; this seeming perfection of government might weaken the
bands of society, and, upon maxims of independence, separate and estrange
the different ranks it was meant to reconcile. Neither the parties formed
in republics, nor the courtly assemblies, which meet in monarchical
governments, could take place, where the sense of a mutual dependence
should cease to summon their members together. The resorts for commerce
might be frequented, and mere amusement might be pursued in the crowd,
while the private dwelling became a retreat for reserve, averse to the
trouble arising from regards and attentions, which it might be part of the
political creed to believe of no consequence, and a point of honour to hold
in contempt.

This humour is not likely to grow either in republics or monarchies: it
belongs more properly to a mixture of both; where the administration of
justice may be better secured; where the subject is tempted to look for
equality, but where he finds only independence in its place; and where he
learns, from a spirit of equality, to hate the very distinctions to which,
on account of their real importance, he pays a remarkable deference.

In either of the separate forms of republic or monarchy, or in acting on
the principles of either, men are obliged to court their fellow citizens,
and to employ parts and address to improve their fortunes, or even to be
safe. They find in both a school for discernment and penetration; but in
the one, are taught to overlook the merits of a private character for the
sake of abilities that have weight with the public; and in the other to
overlook great and respectable talents, for the sake of qualities engaging
or pleasant in the scene of entertainment and private society. They are
obliged, in both, to adapt themselves with care to the fashion and manners
of their country. They find no place for caprice or singular humours. The
republican must be popular, and the courtier polite. The first must think
himself well placed in every company; the other must choose his resorts,
and desire to be distinguished only where the society itself is esteemed.
With his inferiors, he takes an air of protection; and suffers, in his
turn, the same air to be taken with himself. It did not, perhaps, require
in a Spartan, who feared nothing but a failure in his duty, who loved
nothing but his friend and the state, so constant a guard on himself to
support his character, as it frequently does in the subject of a monarchy,
to adjust his expense and his fortune to the desires of his vanity, and to
appear in a rank as high as his birth, or ambition, can possibly reach.

There is no particular, in the mean time, in which we are more frequently
unjust, than in applying to the individual the supposed character of his
country; or more frequently misled; than in taking our notion of a people
from the example of one, or a few of their members. It belonged to the
constitution of Athens, to have produced a Cleon, and a Pericles; but all
the Athenians were not, therefore, like Cleon, or Pericles. Themistocles
and Aristides lived in the same age; the one advised what was profitable,
the other told his country what was just.




SECTION IV.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.


The law of nature, with respect to nations, is the same that it is with
respect to individuals: it gives to the collective body a right to preserve
themselves; to employ undisturbed the means of life; to retain the fruits
of labour; to demand the observance of stipulations and contracts. In the
case of violence, it condemns the aggressor, and establishes, on the part
of the injured, the right of defence, and a claim to retribution. Its
applications, however, admit of disputes, and give rise to variety in the
apprehension, as well as the practice of mankind.

Nations have agreed universally, in distinguishing right from wrong; in
exacting the reparation of injuries by consent or by force. They have
always reposed, in a certain degree, on the faith of treaties; but have
acted as if force were the ultimate arbiter in all their disputes, and the
power to defend themselves, the surest pledge of their safety. Guided by
these common apprehensions, they have differed from one another, not merely
in points of form, but in points of the greatest importance, respecting the
usage of war, the effects of captivity, and the rights of conquest and
victory.

When a number of independent communities have been frequently involved in
wars, and have had their stated alliances and oppositions, they adopt
customs which they make the foundation of rules, or of laws, to be
observed, or alleged, in all their mutual transactions. Even in war itself,
they would follow a system, and plead for the observance of forms in their
very operations for mutual destruction.

The ancient states of Greece and Italy derived their manners in war from
the nature of their republican government; those of modern Europe, from the
influence of monarchy, which, by its prevalence in this part of the world,
has a great effect on nations, even where it is not the form established.
Upon the maxims of this government, we apprehend a distinction between the
state and its members, as that between the king and the people, which
renders war an operation of policy, not of popular animosity. While we
strike at the public interest, we would spare the private; and we carry a
respect and consideration for individuals, which often stops the issues of
blood in the ardour of victory, and procures to the prisoner of war a
hospitable reception in the very city which he came to destroy. These
practices are so well established, that scarcely any provocation on the
part of an enemy, or any exigence of service, can excuse a trespass on the
supposed rules of humanity, or save the leader who commits it from becoming
an object of detestation and horror.

To this, the general practice of the Greeks and the Romans was opposite.
They endeavoured to wound the state by destroying its members, by
desolating its territory, and by ruining the possessions of its subjects.
They granted quarter only to enslave, or to bring the prisoner to a more
solemn execution; and an enemy, when disarmed, was, for the most part,
either sold in the market or killed, that he might never return to
strengthen his party. When this was the issue of war, it was no wonder that
battles were fought with desperation, and that every fortress was defended
to the last extremity. The game of human life went upon a high stake, and
was played with a proportional zeal.

The term _barbarian_, in this state of manners, could not be employed
by the Greeks or the Romans in that sense in which we use it: to
characterize, a people regardless of commercial arts; profuse of their own
lives, and those of others; vehement in their attachment to one society,
and implacable in their antipathy to another. This, in a great and shining
part of their history, was their own character, as well as that of some
other nations, whom, upon this very account, we distinguish by the
appellations of _barbarous_ or _rude._

It has been observed, that those celebrated nations are indebted, for a
great part of their estimation, not to the matter of their history, but to
the manner in which it has been delivered, and to the capacity of their
historians, and other writers. Their story has been told by men who knew
how to draw our attention on the proceedings of the understanding and of
the heart, more than on external effects; and who could exhibit characters
to be admired and loved, in the midst of actions which we should now
universally hate or condemn. Like Homer, the model of Grecian literature,
they could make us forget the horrors of a vindictive, cruel, and
remorseless treatment of an enemy, in behalf of the strenuous conduct, the
courage, and vehement affections, with which the hero maintained the cause
of his friend and of his country.

Our manners are so different, and the system upon which we regulate our
apprehensions, in many things so opposite, that no less could make us
endure the practice of ancient nations. Were that practice recorded by the
mere journalist, who retains only the detail of events, without throwing
any light on the character of the actors; who, like the Tartar historian,
tells us only what blood was spilt in the field, and how many inhabitants
were massacred in the city; we should never have distinguished the Greeks
from their barbarous neighbours, nor have thought, that the character of
civility pertained even to the Romans, till very late in their history, and
in the decline of their empire.

It would, no doubt, be pleasant to see the remarks of such a traveller as
we sometimes send abroad to inspect the manners of mankind, left,
unassisted by history, to collect the character of the Greeks from the
state of their country, or from their practice in war. "This country," he
might say, "compared to ours, has an air of barrenness and desolation. I
saw upon the road troops of labourers, who were employed in the fields; but
no where the habitations of the master and the landlord. It was unsafe, I
was told, to reside in the country; and the people of every district
crowded into towns to find a place of defence. It is, indeed, impossible,
that they can be more civilized, till they have established some regular
government, and have courts of justice to hear their complaints. At present
every town, nay, I may say, every village, acts for itself, and the
greatest disorders prevail. I was not indeed molested; for you must know,
that they call themselves nations, and do all their mischief under the
pretence of war.

"I do not mean to take any of the liberties of travellers, nor to vie with
the celebrated author of the voyage to Lilliput; but cannot help
endeavouring to communicate what I felt on hearing them speak of their
territory, their armies, their revenues, treaties, and alliances. Only
imagine the church-wardens and constables of Highgate or Hampstead turned
statesmen and generals, and you will have a tolerable conception of this
singular country. I passed through one state, where the best house in the
capital would not lodge the meanest of your labourers, and where your very
beggars would not choose to dine with the king; and yet they are thought a
great nation, and have no less than two kings. I saw one of them; but such
a potentate! He had scarcely clothes to his back; and for his majesty's
table, he was obliged to go to the eating-house with his subjects. They
have not a single farthing of money; and I was obliged to get food at the
public expense, there being none to be had in the market. You will imagine,
that there must have been a service of plate, and great attendance, to wait
on the illustrious stranger; but my fare was a mess of sorry pottage,
brought me by a naked slave, who left me to deal with it as I thought
proper: and even this I was in continual danger of having stolen from me by
the children; who are as vigilant to seize opportunities, and as dexterous
in snatching their food, as any starved greyhound you ever saw. The misery
of the whole people, in short, as well as my own, while I staid there, was
beyond description. You would think that their whole attention were to
torment themselves as much as they can: they are even displeased with one
of their kings for being well liked. He had made a present, while I was
there, of a cow to one favourite, and of a waistcoat to another; [Footnote:
Plutarch in the life of Agesilaus,] and it was publicly said, that this
method of gaining friends was robbing the public. My landlord told me very
gravely, that a man should come under no obligation that might weaken the
love which he owes to his country; nor form any personal attachment beyond
the mere habit of living with his friend, and of doing him a kindness when
he can.

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