41. Common conclusions as to the tendency to communi INTRODUC- Was liable to decay, and that political wisdom was incaTION. pable of forming a community in which the seeds of that decline were not perceptible, which seemed the common lot of earthly things. It became in consequence a generally received opinion, that nations, like individuals, had decay in all a certain length of life allotted to them, which it was ties. impossible, by any means, to extend beyond the destined period; and that a season of activity and vigour was necessarily followed by one of lassitude and corruption. The image," says Mr Ferguson, “of youth and old age was applied to nations; and communities, like single men, were supposed to have a period of life, and a length of thread, which was spun by the Fates, in one part uniform and strong, in another weakened and shattered by use, to be cut when the destined era is come, and to make way for a renewal of the emblem in the case of those who rose 1 Civil So- in succession."1 "Carthage," says Polybius, "being so much older than Rome, had felt her decay so much the sooner," and the survivor too, he foresaw, carried in her bosom the seeds of mortality. But while such was imagined, from former experience, to be the unavoidable fate of freedom wherever established, a variety of causes were silently operating, which communicated an unknown energy to the social system, and infused into modern states, even in periods of apparent decline, a large intermixture of the undecaying youth of the human race. ciety, 340. 42. Causes which restored fluence of Christianity. I. The first of these was the CHRISTIAN RELIGION. Slavery had been the ruin of all the states of antiquity. The influence of wealth corrupted the higher orders; and liberty. In the lower, separated by a sullen line of demarcation from their superiors, furnished no accession of strength to revive their energies. But the influence of a religion which proclaimed the universal equality of mankind in the sight of Heaven, and addressed its revelations in an especial manner to the poor, destroyed this ruinous distinction. In many states slavery gradually yielded to the rising influence of Christianity; the religious houses were the TION. first who emancipated their vassals; their exhortations INTRODUCwere unceasingly directed to extort the same concession from the feudal barons. They were often unsuccessful during life, but more frequently succeeded on the approach of death human selfishness was more willing to purchase eternal salvation by imposing a loss on others than by bearing it itself. On the ecclesiastical estates themselves the first shoots of industrious freedom began to spring. While the vassals of the military proprietors were sunk in slavery, or lost in the sloth which follows so degraded a state, industry was reviving under the shadow of the monastic walls, and the free vassals of the religious establishments were flourishing in the comparative security of their protection. Modern historians, living in an age when the shield of superstition was no longer required, and its influence unfelt, have erred immensely in their estimate of its importance at an earlier and in a more unhappy period. They forgot that when reason is in its infancy, passion predominant, and ignorance universal, it is by images addressed to the senses alone that violence can be restrained, innocence protected, or the supremacy of mental over physical strength asserted. But if we go back in imagination to the sanguinary passions and universal bloodshed of the dark ages, we shall feel the value of any influences, how strange soever in the eyes of enlightened reason, which restrained the excesses of power when no other means of coercing it existed, which made the baron tremble before spiritual, and therefore unseen power, even in the midst of his armed bands, and secured that protection to industry under the shadow of the monastery's cross, which it would have sought in vain beneath the shelter of the castle-wall. 43. of European The clearest proof of the truth of these principles, and of the incalculable influence which the superstitions, wisely Difference inculcated in a barbarous age by the Romish church, and Asiatic had in checking the devastation of northern conquest, conquest. and putting a curb on the violence of power when no northern INTRODUC- other means of checking its excesses existed, is to be found TION. in the wide difference between the settlement of the northern conquerors in Asia and Europe. Philosophers are never weary of expatiating on the extraordinary difference between the civilisation in these two quarters of the globe on the restraints on tyranny which exist in the latter, while they are unknown in the former, and the vast development of mental power and social happiness which has taken place amidst European freedom, compared to what obtains under eastern despotism. They would do well to consider to what cause this remarkable difference is really to be ascribed. The race of conquerors which overran both was originally sprung from the same root. The Cumri, who first planted their race in the British isles, and who have given their lasting appellation to the western mountain ranges of Britain, were a branch of the same horde as the Kupepo whom Herodotus mentions as appearing with the first dawn of history on the shores of the Bosphorus,+ and a part of whose descendants afterwards perished by the legions of Marius. The Gauls spread themselves over France, Britain, Lombardy, and Greece; their conquering arms gave a lasting appellation to a province of Asia; and it was their swords, more even than the Numidian horse, which so long enabled Hannibal, without aid from Carthage, to make head against the Roman power.§ The Goths and Huns, whose descendants have formed the most powerful nations of modern times, originally migrated from the wilds of Tartary; and the first impulse was given to the wave of barbarians which overthrew the Roman empire, by the defeats which the Scythians had sustained on the frontiers of China.|| * Cumberland and Cumbria, or Wales; and the Cumraes in the Firth of Clyde in Scotland. Herodotus, lib. iv. 11, 12. + Galatia. § See this subject amply discussed in Thierry, Histoire des Gaulois, vol. i. pp. 30-279; a most interesting work, by a brother of the historian of the settlement of the Normans in England, and his rival at once in industry and genius. || See Gibbon, cap. xxvi. vol. iii. 371-575. TION. The climate of Europe does not vary from that of a similar INTRODUC latitude in Asia, except in the greater heat in summer and cold in winter, arising from the difference between an inland and maritime situation. 44. which it is ascribed. How, then, has it happened that the same conquerors, subduing and settling in substantially the same physical Causes to circumstances, should have given birth to nations so to be essentially and diametrically opposite as those of Europe and Asia? Why have freedom and knowledge been sheltered from the lances of the one, and both invariably perished, from the earliest times, under the sabres of the other? And whence is it that the same corruption, which has so speedily in every age consumed or enfeebled the descendants of Asiatic conquest, has, after the lapse of a thousand years, still made comparatively little impression on the offspring of Gothic invasion? Simply, because the religion of the two quarters of the globe in which the same conquerors settled was different: because polygamy has not in Europe spread its jealousies, nor the haram its seductions; because superstitious belief, in barbarous times, restrained power by imaginary terrors, and Christian charity, in civilised, assuaged suffering by real blessings; because slavery has generally disappeared before the proclaimed equality of men, and a perpetual renovation been thus provided to the richer classes; because war has been softened by the humanity breathed into its conflicts; because learning, sheltered under the sanctity of the monastery, has survived the devastation of ignorance, and freedom, nursed by devotion, has acquired a strength superior to all the forces of despotism. 45. ence of It was not only by the equality which it proclaimed, and the security from violence which it afforded, that the Great influinfluence of religion favoured the growth of freedom. By religious the enthusiasm which it awakened, from the universal enthusiasm interests which it addressed, the mass of the people were affairs. called into political activity; thousands, to whom the on human TION. INTRODUC- blessings of liberty were unknown, and whose torpor no temporal concerns could dispel, were roused by the voice of religious fervour. The freedom of Greece, the discipline of Macedonia, produced only a transient impression on human affairs; but the fanaticism of Mahomet convulsed the globe. The ardour of chivalry led the nobles into action; the ambition of monarchs brought the feudal retainers into the field: but the enthusiasm of the Crusades awakened the dormant strength of the western world. With the growth of religious zeal, therefore, the basis of freedom was immensely extended ; 1 Tytler's into its ranks were brought, not the transient ebullitions of popular excitement, but the stern valour of fanaticism; and that lasting support which neither the ardour of the Flanders. city, nor the independence of the desert, could afford, was at length drawn from the fervour of the cottage.1 Scotland. Hume's Mann's 46. Art of The II. While the minds of men were thus warmed by the religious enthusiasm which was awakened, first by the Crusades, and subsequently by the Reformation, the Art of PRINTING, destined to change the face of the moral world, perpetuated the impressions thus created, and widened the circle over which they extended. spirit of religious freedom was no longer nourished only from the exhortations of the pulpit, or developed in the fervour of secluded congregations; it breathed into the permanent exertions of human thought, and spread with the increasing wealth and enlarged desires of an opulent state of society. The discoveries of science, the charms of genius, may attract a few in every age; but it is by religious emotion that the great body of mankind are chiefly to be moved: and it was by the diffusion of its enthusiasm, accordingly, that the greatest efforts of European liberty have been sustained. But the diffusion of knowledge, by means of the press, is not destined to awake mere transient bursts of popular feeling. By imbuing the minds of those master-spirits who direct human thought, it produces lasting impressions on society, |