dunbar07
Author: Unknown
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Essay VII

Of the Farther Tendency of Local Circumstances to Affect the Proceedings of Nations

Besides the comparative fertility of soils, the nature of their productions, and the position of the globe, there is a variety of local circumstances, which, by affecting the series of public events, are intimately connected with the civil order of the world.

The division of a country by mountains by lakes, or rivers, the vicinity or distance of the sea, insular or continental situation, and the relative condition of the surrounding nations, are causes which affect, in an eminent degree, the nature and success of public enterprize.

A fixed settlement is, in the order of things, an indispensable preliminary to the improvements of civil life. Men unattached to any soil, but accustomed to perpetual migration, are in no condition to cultivate arts, and seem incapable of conducting, for a length of time, any well-ordered system of operations. Such loose and disjointed members compose no regular body. Individuals, incorporated into no steady form, nor kept together by any local ties, can maintain only a temporary and precarious union, and deserve not the name of a nation. The progress then of mankind, in every climate, is considerably affected by the form and extent of their original settlement: and the occupants of an immense tract of country, where nature has set no bounds to dispersion, nor erected barriers against the incursions of other tribes, seem to be most inauspiciously constituted for the maintenance of civil liberty, or the growth of civil arts.

Unhappily, the genius of man, in the ruder ages, is peculiarly turned for war. The internal dissentions among the same people, or the hostile designs of different tribes, gave occasion, we may believe, to the first arrangements of political society.

The ideas of property ripen by slow degrees; and the maxims of jurisprudence are regulated by the fortune of arms.

In a country, therefor, affording no retreat to the vanquished, it is scarce possible, in the ruder ages, long to preserve the freedom of mankind. And while servitude is the only alternative compatible with subsistence, in this extremity, the most reluctant spirits will finally bend under the yoke of dominion.

Such causes operating at first within a narrow sphere, will afterwards prevail with a more diffusive influence. In proportion to the number of the vanquished tribes, the subjection of other tribes will be accomplished with greater ease: till at length various and distant nations, whose possessions were separated only by imaginary lines, falling successively under one dominion, the mansion of a little commonwealth becomes the capital of a vast empire.

Thus reluctant nations coalesce into a system. The same causes which proved destructive of their rights, in the first struggles of political life, will render future attempts for the recovery of them extremely hazardous; and the enlargement of territory beyond the antient limit, will more effectually prevent that union and concert, in the operations of subjects, which lead to the introduction of the more liberal plans of government.

The voice of liberty will be heard no more. She can no longer arm her associates in the cause of humanity. The monarch of a great empire sits secure upon the throne, and sets at defiance the murmuring of the people, and the revolt of provinces.

In this posture of things, the reign of despotism may long endure. The rivalship and jealousy, which animate independent states, cease to animate this larger system: nor can the sciences and arts, which raise and adorn society, be presumed to flourish under the malignant influence of a constitution tending so manifestly to the debasement of the human species.

Such consequences then may be traced up to a geographical source. Nor will the evils hence resulting, exhaust their forces in the open tracts of country where they began to flow. The torrent which covered the plains rolls on with increasing violence, and the best fenced territories are no longer able to resist its progress.

Nations, accordingly, situated with many advantages for interior policy, and whose frontiers seem little exposed to external annoyance, may have these advantages more than balanced by a dangerous vicinity to a growing empire.

We observe the nations of Tartary not only destitute of arts, but, notwithstanding barrenness of soil, and the possession of a climate accounted favourable to the independency of man, condemned to all the rigour and tyranny of despotic power.[A] A country, the nurse of heroes, that has so often sent forth tribes to be the conquerors of Asia, sees herself involved in the general servitude; and an accession to empires subdued by her own arms.

The Arabians, perhaps, are the only people under heaven who have remained, in all ages, exempt from a foreign yoke. Confident against the world on Arabian ground, they resisted the successive attempts of the Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman arms. Yet the vicinity of these empires was not regarded with indifference. It filled them with continual alarms, it circumscribed their projects, confined their genius to defensive war, and retarded the cultivation of the liberal arts. But when, in the decline of the Roman power, other nations presumed to be ambitious, the Arabians were capable of forming extensive plans of military and civil enterprize. Yet, in their own deserts alone, they are invincible, and there the race of Ishmael maintain to this day an independence on the Ottoman empire. There the human mind is still capable of bold and liberal efforts. A new sect of religion has, of late, appeared in those regions, of a genius uncommonly elevated.[Description de lţArabie, par M. Niebuhr.] It explodes every species of idolatry. It enjoins the belief and worship of one eternal Being, the Sovereign of the world, and establishes the doctrines of pure theism on the sole foundation of reason and nature. It considers Moses and a number of his successors in the East, as sublime teachers of wisdom, and, as such, worthy of respect and reverence. But it rejects all revelations, and denies that any book was ever penned by the angel Gabriel. How far this religion may diffuse itself is yet uncertain. But, though it may breathe a while in the free air of Arabia, it never can be cherished or tolerated in the Ottoman empire, where superstition is so necessary to conduct the machine of government.

Thus the fortune of the Arabians corresponds with the description of their country, which secures them from foreign conquest, and determines the measure of their obedience to civil power. And whether the history of this extraordinary people is accounted for by natural causes, or by a special interposition of Providence, the prediction concerning them is equally fulfilled: nor can it derogate from the authority of holy writ, that we observe the determinations of heaven to coincide with a regular and established order of second causes.

But the connexion of a settlement with the more general fortune of mankind, is chiefly discernible in the production of extended government.

As the political divisions of territory though fluctuating and precarious, have, however, at all times, some necessary dependence on the natural and permanent divisions of the terraqueous globe, the consequences arising from the magnitude of states and empires may often be referred ultimately to a geographical source. Local circumstances alone have set bounds to the devastation of conquest, and to the rage of war; have checked the tyranny of governments, and prevented the establishment of an universal empire: an establishment of such alarming tendency, that we can scarce resist supposing it to have been one design of Providence, in the natural divisions of the earth, to supersede the possibility of an event that would have proved so fatal to the improvement and liberties of mankind. Instead of those happy distinctions which furnish incentives to genius; instead of that variety of arts and sciences, which owe their existence to bold and original efforts of divided nations, there must have subsisted, throughout the earth, an uniformity of conduct and manners subversive of all liberal enterprize.

The different ages of society, like the different ages of man, require different discipline and culture. The maxims of policy applicable to one part of the world, are not always applicable to another; nor are the full advantages of any local oeconomy reconcileable, perhaps, with subordination to a general system. If, therefore, the best instituted government falls short of perfection, in order to improve its advantages it is necessary to circumscribe its dominion. To fix indeed mathematically the proportion of territory or of people, which is most consistent with public prosperity, and with the benefits of civil life, is an impossible problem in the science of government. But it is certain there are limits with regard to both; and all the inconveniences of universal dominion will be felt, in an inferior degree, throughout an extended empire.

Public affairs there sink into a quiescent form, genius is fettered by authority, or borne down by the weight of the prevailing system.

In small states men of wisdom have arisen, whose credit with the community has enabled them to patronize arts, and to conduct plans of public utility to the most successive issue. Legislators and politicians, acting at some favourable crisis, have been known, with a narrow circle, to controul established customs and manners, to reform civil institutions, and to innovate in all the essentials of government. But the reformation of a wide domain is an immense and laborious work, that needs a long preparation of time, and presupposes an intercourse with regions enlightened by philosophy and learning.

The reformation by Peter the Great is one of the most memorable in the annals of extended government. The flourishing condition of the arts in the system of nations, with which he connected his empire, was peculiarly favourable to the grandeur of his views.

The Czar availed himself of the conjuncture. Like the founders of antient states, he travelled into foreign nations to study mechanical and commercial arts, and legislative wisdom, and the whole science of government. By inviting artists and manufacturers from those nations to reside in his empire, he tried, by their example, to allure his people into the occupations of civil life.

To a profound discernment of his true interests, and to consummate sagacity in forming commercial and civil plans, he added all the qualifications most conducive to their success. Boldness, vigour, perseverance, he possessed in an eminent degree. And the example of a sovereign, who was himself a proficient in the detail of the arts, must have produced a wonderful effect on a people over whom his authority was unlimited. The establishment too of a standing army, which confirmed that authority, and carried his commands with irresistible force through the remotest provinces, tended to strengthen and maintain all his other establishments. And at last his triumphs in arms, which, at the treaty of Newstadt, rendered him the arbiter of the North, and secured the tranquility of his empire, favoured all the plans of his interior policy.

Yet so glorious a reign could animate a few parts only, without infusing life or vigour into so vast a body. The maxims of his policy have been pursued with ability by some of his successors on the throne of the Russias; and, above all, the present Empress, by the protection of arts, by the establishments of her police, and by a well-digested code of internal laws, emulates the honours of her illustrious predecessor; perhaps, in some instances, eclipses his fame. But it is the misfortune of Catharine, as of Peter, to execute plans on too large a scale: and, with so rare advantages, it is by the courtesy of Europe, if the Russians, at this day, are permitted to rank among civilized nations. The limits of the empire must be contracted, to give rapidity to its movements. And the late accession of territory, how greatly soever it may augment the revenue, or the splendor of the sovereign, tends in reality to encumber, in those regions, the efforts of the human species. So repugnant is the genius of extended government to refinement and liberal arts.

The history of the Chinese alone seems to form an exception to the general theory. And it must be owned, that, if a few nations have touched a higher stage of civility and refinement than that people, there is none on the records of the world, who have enjoyed, for so extended a period, along with a large proportion of public felicity, a mediocrity in arts and sciences.

Yet if the sciences in that empire are not on the decline, they seem for ages to have been stationary, or slowly progressive, and certainly have not arrived at such maturity and perfection as might be expected from the length of their course. Authority is there decisive of public opinion, and abridges the liberty of private judgment. Error is consecrated by antiquity. No spirit of philosophical enquiry animates the learned; and the freer excursions of genius are unknown.

In antient times, when the Greater and the Lesser Asia were divided among a number of states; when Assyria, Phoenicia, and Egypt, formed independent governments, science seems to have dawned upon the world with considerable lustre. But these appearances gradually vanished. The first empire of the Assyrians was not auspicious to mankind. Their second empire, by the union of Niniveh and Babylon, was still more alarming. Yet the Assyrians, the Medes, and the Egyptians, maintained a sort of balance of power, and seem to have flourished as rival and contending nations. But no sooner the Persians arose, and the world beheld at Persepolis a government more oppressive, more formidable, and more extended than had ever been erected at Niniveh, or at Babylon, that human nature was degraded in the East. And during a period of above two hundred years, while all things went forward in the West in little states, all things went backward throughout the immense provinces under the Persian sway.

Prior to this revolution, our acquaintance indeed with historical annals is imperfect. It is impossible to descend into the detail of more antient government. Yet, on authorities sacred and profane, it may be affirmed, that, long before the Persian greatness, the Egyptians, and other Eastern nations, were in possession of useful and ingenious arts, and not unacquainted with maxims of policy conducive to public felicity and order.

Egypt was divided early into distinct kingdoms; and the dynasties which fill her annals consisted, it is probable, of contemporary, not of successive monarchs. The reigns of her kings, before Sefostris, are celebrated as the reigns of the gods: and, if any credit is due to the history of that conqueror, it was perhaps the power of his arms which shook the foundations of antient governments, and brought on the first general catastrophe of nations.

If, however, the empire of Sefostris, like that of Alexander, devolved not entire upon his successors, human affairs might have returned into their former course, or at least some nations might have recovered their antient freedom and prosperity.

What may have happened in a period so remote, cannot now be determined with certainty. But, in periods well illustrated, great monarchies arose in the East: and the continent of Asia, so rarely intersected by mountains or rivers, seems to be the natural seat of extended dominion.

While European governments so often fluctuate, enlarge or contract their limits, are torn asunder by intestine commotions, or are overwhelmed with foreign irruptions, the great contests for dominion on the theatre of Asia have seldom diversified the form of Asiatic establishments. General revolutions by conquest, more frequent in that quarter of Europe, have not been productive of similar effects. The Asiatic governments are soon re-established nearly on the same foundations; and one spirit predominates amidst all the vissicitudes of power.

The stability of the Chinese government, amidst the shocks and revolutions of conquest, is commonly alleged as a proof of the wisdom with which it is framed. But in a country of such extent and population, the disproportion of numbers between the conquerors and the vanquished, and the character of those conquerors, who have no fixed usages, manners, or institutions of their own to come into competition with the established system, sufficiently account for its immutability, without regard to the degree of its perfection.

And if the system of manners, laws, and religion, established in China, is not shaken or subverted by internal causes, it promises to withstand the most furious innundations of the Tartars, and may go down triumphant to the latest posterity. Thus China forms an illustrious example of the connexion of human affairs with geographical limits. Secure on the east and south by the ocean, and on the west by inaccessible deserts, she is vulnerable on the side of Tartary alone. All her military operations are exhausted in one direction, and with one view. And by the efforts of an industrious and active policy, she erected, many ages ago, an artificial barrier for defence, unequalled for extent or magnificence in any other age or country. But that barrier, the work of men, could not defeat the intention of nature; and, in defiance of their wall, it was necessary for the Chinese to submit to conquerors, who should incorporate with them into one body, subject to the same head.

Next in magnificence to that of China is the wall of Caucasus, called by the Orientals the wall of Gog and Magog. It extended from the Caspian to the Black Sea, and is supposed, by some antiquarians, to have been built by Alexander the Great, in order to cover the frontiers of his empire from the incursions of the Scythians. But it is probably a more antient fabric. The lofty spirit of Alexander would hardly have stooped to such a dastardly policy; nor does it appear from the course of Alexanderţs victories, that he ever approached the Caspian gates.

Such stupendous monuments of art declare the sense of Asia concerning the magnitude of impending dangers; and equally indicate talents for pacific enterprize, and an incapacity for war. Yet, if Asia were divided and subdivided like Europe, climate alone would not give rise to, and perpetuate, such general servitude. And if the description of Europe resembled that of Asia, our climates would not be productive of freedom. The extended government of the Romans came to be as violent and tyrannical as Eastern despotism.

To maintain, therefore, a due balance of power, and to prevent the rapacity of sovereigns from transgressing those geographical limits which nature seems to have affixed to dominion, is an object of the first importance to the general liberties of Europe.

It ought also to be remembered by sovereigns grasping at dominion, that if, by the connivance or supineness of other powers, they are suffered to attain the ends of their ambition, they assume a dangerous pre-eminence; they exchange, for precarious greatness, the most solid advantages; and, by the magnitude of dominion, in a country like Europe, are likely to precipitate its fall. Let them remember the counsel of Augustus Caesar to his successors, ţnever to enlarge the territories of the Romans;ţ and learn, from the example of that great people, to avoid the paths which lead first indeed to the subversion of civil liberty, but finally to the dissolution of empire.

The discovery of America has opened an immense field to the ambition of the states of Europe. Instead of augmenting their territorial possessions at home, they began, from that aera, to form distant establishments by conquest or by colonization, and to erect, in another hemisphere, a new species of empire. But between countries so widely separated, a political union subsists with difficulty: and when discontents arise, distance from the seat of government affords singular advantages to provinces that mediate revolt.

Local preference can never be rendered consistent with the best ends of government. The relation of a colony to the antient country, rightly understood, is a relation of perfect equality. The terms which denote parental and filial relation, when descriptive of local ties, and intended to distinguish the cultivators of the antient soil from the cultivators of territory more recently acquired, are metaphors extremely liable to abuse. The one country is no more the mother, than it is the daughter. They are both the children of the same political parent, and that parent is the government to which they owe equal allegiance.

But, when colonies are regarded in the light of subordinate provinces, as appendages to government, and not entitled to the same privileges and immunities with the parent-state, the lovers of civil liberty will acquiesce with reluctance in such invidious distinctions. Jealousies ripen into disaffection. Political independency figures in the imagination, and is aspired after as an elevation of rank.

The fabric of colonial subordination in all the governments of Europe seems to stand in need of repair. And, unhappily, the freest of those governments was the first to be made sensible of its defects.[B]

When the passions of a divided public were wound up to the highest pitch, when the charges of injustice, oppression, tyranny, on one side, were retorted on the other by those of sedition, ingratitude, rebellion, argument and sound reasoning were little regarded in the contest. And at the instance when the wisdom of the British councils resolved, by the fullest communication of privilege, and the most liberal construction of provincial claims, to remove every ground of jealousy and distrust, the insidious interposition of a common enemy defeated the generous plan.

The Rubicon was already passed; and the colonies had dared to commit their cause to the events of war.

Perhaps there is room to hope that a sense of common interest may still prevail; that mutual affection and regard may yet revive in people of the same manners, the same religion, and the same blood; and that some medium may yet be found to disjoin the American councils and arms from those of France, and re-unite them, by more natural and indissoluble ties, to the British monarchy. To the state of pupillage and dependence, which seems indeed to be at an end, may succeed a connexion of a more equal and dignified nature, favourable to the happiness and grandeur of both countries, and in which both countries may acquiesce with honour. But if mutual attachment fail, to recal American allegiance by the power of our arms, if not an impracticable, is certainly a most hazardous attempt. It is to contend, is some degree, with that course of nature, which so often emancipates colonies at the age of manhood, and with all those local circumstances which threaten the disruption of empire.

The geographical divisions of the American continent are certainly auspicious to civil liberty; and seem to oppose the establishment of such extended governments as have proved, in the antient hemisphere, a source of the most destructive and debasing servitude.

The local circumstances under review, whose operations, in so many instances, are fully discernible, solve, we may believe, in part, the histories of other countries, where appearances are more equivocal; and aided or opposed by other causes, have been, and will be, attended with consequences proportionably serious and important all over the globe. By their immediate connexion with interior policy, they are, to a state considered apart from every other, of no small account. But, in the mutual relations of a number of states, the territory of each, and the nature of its frontiers, by affecting political independency and the balance of power, present considerations of still superior moment.

To stand sequestered and alone, is as fatal to the genius of governments as to that of men; and the noblest enterprizes of art, or exertions of policy, may often be referred to situations which have excited the rivalship, the jealousy, and even the antipathy of nations. The antipathy, which so long subsisted between Rome and Carthage, contributed, in no small degree, to render both states illustrious. But the maxim, ţdelenda est Carthago,ţ was neither dictated by honour, by justice, nor by sound policy. And the catastrophe of Carthage, instead of advancing the prosperity, hastened the decline of the Roman name. Far different was the conduct of the Lacedaemonians, in the plenitude of dominion. For when, by the fortune of arms, it was in their power to have annihilated the rival state, ţHeaven forbid,ţ said the Lacedaemonians, ţthat we should put out one of the eyes of Greece!ţ

This was the language of a discerning people, capable of moderation in victory, and conscious of those political relations which give life and energy to national enterprize.

Happy, in this respect, were the governments of antient Greece. Happy, on a larger scale, the governments of modern Europe.

Posterity may perhaps contemplate the blessings of an equal and liberal intercourse, more widely disseminated. They may contemplate, from a concurrence of various causes and events, some of which are hastening into light, the greater part, or even the whole habitable globe, divided among nations free and independent in all the interior functions of government, forming one political and commercial system. Or, perhaps, while every people is capable of progress, there is an incompatibility in the contemporary civilization of different regions: nor ought we to expect that perfection, which seems to be denied to every work of man, in the regulations of commerce, in the science of politics, or in the arts of civil government.

But I launch not on the immense ocean of possibility, and of future contingency. To compare past events, to estimate the actual attainments of men, and to point out their connexion with mechanical and local causes, is my immediate province.

NOTES.

NOTE [A]

The political servitude of the Tartars is thus accounted for in the theory of Montesquieu.

In Asia there is properly no temperate zone. Without that gradation in the races of mankind which obtain in Europe, the strong nations are immediately opposed to the weak. The Tartars accordingly make conquests in the south of Asia, the region of pure despotism. But the despotism, congenial with those climates, is embraced by the conquerors, and fixing its roots in a great empire, extends its branches in all directions, till they finally over-shadow the plains of Tartary, and stretch a far way to the North.

Thus the part of Tartary, which bred the conquerors of China, is now annexed to the Chinese empire. And even among the independent tribes, despotism, by the contagion of example, is equally predominant.

In parts of Tartary, colonized by the Chinese, the people are become mortal enemies to the parent state; yet, transferring to their new mansions the servile spirit of the Chinese government, they remain, under a separate establishment, subject to despotic sway.

LţEsprit des Loix, l. 17, ch. 5.

NOTE [B]

Mr Hume, in the first volume of his Essays, delivers an observation which ought, he contends, to be fixed as an universal axiom in politics, ţthat though free governments have been commonly the most happy for those who partake of their freedom; yet are they the most ruinous and oppressive to their provinces.ţ But the maxim, though plausible in theory, and illustrated by the examples of Rome and Carthage, ought not to be established without limitation and reserve.

The system of colonizing among the Greeks was the most splendid that can well be imagined. Their colonies were considered from the beginning, as rising states flourishing under the guardianship and patronage of the antient governments; and were suffered, without jealousy or distrust, to rise to equal eminence and distinction. On the most amicable and generous footing, an intercourse was long maintained between the colony and the antient government, tending to their mutual prosperity.

But as a colony, thus established, evidences rather a generous dereliction of sovereignty in the parent state, than the moderate exercise of its dominion, the example of the Greeks will hardly be considered as forming an exception from the above maxim concerning the peculiar severity of provincial government, as exercised in free states. Yet, if we pass from antient to modern times, it may be affirmed that, before the date of the present contest, the conduct of the English towards colonies, was less exceptionable than that of any other European state. Spain and Portugal, not content with the advantages of an exclusive commerce, derive a direct revenue from their American settlements: and the first attempt of England to imitate the example of those imperious and arbitrary states, created discontents which were the immediate forerunners of revolt. Though the government of Spain had scarce any merit either in projecting, or in effectuating settlements upon the continent of America, the jealousy of that government with regard to those settlements knew no bounds. Of late, indeed, a more enlightened policy in the court of Madrid has somewhat relaxed the rigour of oppression. England treated its colonies for a long time with neglect, and urged the highest pretensions to dominion, at that period when they were the most capable of resistance.

That provincial government, as it has been generally conducted, has been a system of preference or restraint, is consonant to the experience of ages. And the Author of Observations on the Nature and Value of Civil Liberty, has rightly numbered all such governments among those which deserve to be accounted tyrannical and oppressive. England can only claim the equivocal praise of being less tyrannical and oppressive than the rest of Europe.

ţIn what way, then,ţ says a Writer of sound political discernment, ţhas the policy of Europe contributed to the first establishment, or to the present grandeur of the colonies of America? In one way, and in one way only, it has contributed a good deal. Magna virum Mater! It bred and formed the men who were capable of atchieving such great actions, and of laying the foundation of so great an empire; and there is no other quarter of the world of which the policy is capable of forming, or has ever actually and in fact formed, such men. The colonies owe to the policy of Europe the education and great views of their active and enterprizing founders; and some of the greatest and most important of them owe to it scarce any thing else.ţ

Dr Smithţs Enquiry, etc. vol. ii. p. 189.