CHAPTER IV ROME AND AMERICA —A CONTRAST; NOT A THE great political contribution made to the world in the closing years of the eighteenth century was the principle of Federalism, which a century later was to become known as Imperialism. From Europe, America borrowed her political philosophy; her institutions had been modeled and her intellect influenced by the accumulated wisdom and practices of English civilization derived from its various sources. Now America begins to mould a political philosophy of her own. No human institution springs matured from the brain of any one man; no one man is sole originator of a thought, although he may have been the first to give it expression, which entitles him, so far as the world is concerned, to the priority of invention. Ideas that are in the mind of one man are in the minds of many others, they are in the air; and although they remain unexpressed they unconsciously influence thought until the time comes when they find utterance and make themselves felt. Federalism was a discovery when it was first applied to America. Until that time the world had known the existence of no federated republic as it exists in the place of its birth on the soil of the New World. The so-called republics of Greece and Rome were no more republics in the true sense of the word than their people were filled with the spirit of democracy. From Rome to England, in the day of the Heptarchy, in medieval times, through the Middle Ages, to a period so late as the closing years of the last century, in Asia as well as in Europe, history records numerous instances of bunds and confederations, of republics and allied states, of leagues and coalitions, whose people were united, sometimes for the moment and again for years, for a common purpose, usually to resist aggression and not infrequently to carry on a war of aggression, to spread commerce, or to gain territory. But these unions of political expediency were no more republics as America taught the world the meaning of republicanism than was the Germanic Confederation a republic or Britain a democracy in the time of the Saxons. "Old germs had brought forth new fruits that were essentially original and that fairly may be called American. The natural product thus evolved was a cluster of distinct and essentially free communities. The idea of joining these communities for common defense and general welfare grew so naturally under the then existing conditions that the resultant notion of a republic may with equal propriety be called American."1 The world reveres a fetish, and the more ob1 Avery: A History of the United States and its People, vol. 11, p. 344. scured it is in tradition and covered with the patina of the ages the more avidly will the sciolist venerate it; and the universal passion for education has given three quarters of mankind a smattering of knowledge and relieved it of the burden of thinking. Every schoolboy has been taught that Rome was a republic, and he carries that belief with him through life. Rome is the horrible example to Americans. Rome was great, but Rome perished because she gave herself up to corruption and luxury. As Rome died, so shall the United States unless she heeds the warning and turns back to the Spartan life of the fathers. Spencer somewhere terms history the Newgate Calendar of nations, — a very happy characterization, and it might also with equal truth be termed the epic of fairy tales, for the pages of history are strewn with myth. The most popular of all the historical fables, which has perhaps done more mischief than all the others combined, by having perverted and confused the youthful mind, even the inquiring mind of more mature years, is the legend of the "Roman Republic," and the attempt to draw from it a moral applicable to the American Republic. Rome, it is true, was a republic in name and the pre-Christian conception of republicanism, but it affords no more just measure of comparison with present conditions than the statistics of railway accidents when Stephenson started the Rocket on its first memorable journey would determine whether railway traveling is more dangerous now than it was three quarters of a century ago. In the time of the Consuls there existed no real democracy and no true republic. There was always a dictator, sometimes so officially styled and at other times masquerading under a gentler name, who held power not at the will of the people but by the force of his legions or the more simple and direct method of bribery. The essence of democracy is the power of the people, it is the one power which is effective in the United States, fashionable although it is to sneer at the people and to magnify the power of the political and plutocratic boss, — and that power can only rest on universal suffrage, which makes every individual member of society a "sovereign," even if through his own laches he surrenders his sovereign rights. In the Roman Republic did the people ever exercise sovereign rights?1 Instead of the suffrage being universal, it was restricted; instead of the Tribunes being subordinate to the law, they were superior to it; instead of taking their authority from the people, they bribed them.2 It was always a one-man power; always one unscrupulous or ambitious man was contending against another; if bribery failed, "bands of supporters" re 1 Cf. Guizot: History of Civilization, Eighteenth Lecture, passim. 2 "To increase the popularity of his cause he [Clodius] then began to bribe the public with wholesale donations of corn bought up in all parts of Italy, wasting on this purpose the money brought home by Pompey, which was to have served for the administration of Cæsar's Land Law." Ferrero, The Greatness and Decline of Rome, vol. 11, p. 29. sisted "hired ruffians";1 fearing to offend a Pompey and yet unwilling to quarrel with a formidable colleague, the Tribunes would pass a law and then nullify it by a provision, so that the whole political history of Rome is full of "these strange legal expedients." If Rome had her Clodius, Greece had her Cleon. When Rome fought, it is true she employed her own citizens, but her ranks were augmented with mercenaries; Cæsar, who had entered Gaul as the destroyer of the German power, enrolled the Germans against the Gauls, and it was "the vigorous horsemen of Germany" who routed the cavalry of Vercingetorix and enabled Cæsar to capture Alesia.3 The splendor of Rome was its degradation, in its greatness were the seeds of decay. The power and popularity of the plutocrats were bought by the corruption of the plebeians; the rich debauched the poor; the poor demoralized the rich. Temples were erected by patrons of extravagant feasts and games, not to gratify a love of art or to satisfy their generous impulses, but because the surest means to gain popular favor was lavish expenditure, which often could not be avoided. The vain or ambitious man was either flattered into giving or forced to yield to the coercion of the mob, which knew it had but to demand and its demand would be satisfied.4 1 Ferrero: Op. cit., p. 30. • Ferrero: Op. cit., p. 133 et seq. 2 Ferrero: Op. cit., p. 30. 4 Cf. Dill: Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, p. 4. |