Reflect a moment fleet when we were besieging Troy." on the past history of this wonderful people. What were they while they remained free and independent,—when Greece resembled a collection of mirrors set in a single frame, each having its own focus of patriotism, yet all capable, as at Marathon and Platea, of converging to one point and of consuming a common foe? What were they then? The fountains of light and civilization, of truth and of beauty, to all mankind! they were the thinking head, the beating heart, of the whole world! They lost their independence, and with their independence their patriotism; and became the cosmopolites of antiquity. It has been truly observed by the author of the work for which Palm was murdered, that, after the first acts of severity, the Romans treated the Greeks not only more mildly than their other slaves and dependants, but behaved to them even affectionately and with munificence. The victor nation felt reverentially the presence of the visible and invisible deities that gave sanctity to every grove, every fountain, and every forum. "Think," (writes Pliny to one of his friends) "that you are sent into the province of Achaia, that true and genuine Greece, where civilization, letters, even corn, are believed to have been discovered; that you are sent to administer the affairs of free states, that is, to men eminently free, who have retained their natural right by valour, by services, by friendship, lastly by treaty and by religion. Revere the gods their founders, the sacred influences represented in those gods; revere their ancient glory and this very old age which in man is venerable, in cities sacred. Cherish in thyself a reverence of antiquity, a reverence for their great exploits, a reverence even for their fables. Detract nothing from the liberty, or the dignity, or even the pretensions of any state; keep before thine eyes that this is the land which sent us our institutions, which gave us our laws, not after it was subjugated, but in compliance with our petition.”* And what came out of these men, who were eminently free without patriotism, because without national independence? (which eminent freedom, however, Pliny himself, in the very next sentence, styles the shadow and residuum of liberty.)† While they were intense patriots, they were the benefactors of all mankind, legislators for the very nation that afterwards subdued and enslaved them. When, therefore, they became pure cosmopolites, and no partial affections interrupted their philanthropy, and when yet they retained their country, their language, and their arts, what noble works, what mighty discoveries may we not expect from them? If the applause of a little city, the first-rate town of a country not much larger than Yorkshire, and the encouragement of a Pericles, produced a Phidias, a Sophocles, and a constellation of other stars scarcely inferior in glory, what will not the applause of the world effect, and the boundless munificence of the world's imperial masters? Alas! no Sophocles appeared, no Phidias was born; individual genius fled with national independence, and the best products were cold and laborious copies of what their fathers had thought and invented in grandeur and majesty. At length nothing remained, but dastardly and cunning slaves, who avenged their own ruin and degradation by assisting to degrade and ruin their conquerors; and the golden harp of their divine language remained only as the frame on which priests and monks spun their dirty cobwebs of sophistry and superstition! If then in order to be men we must be patriots, and * Lib. VIII. Ep. 24.-Ed. + Quibus reliquam umbram et residuum libertatis nomen eripere, durum, ferum, barbarumque est.—Ib.-Ed. patriotism cannot exist without national independence, we need no new or particular code of morals to justify us in placing and preserving our country in that relative situation which is most favourable to its independence. But the true patriot is aware that this object is not to be accomplished by a system of general conquest, such as was pursued by Philip of Macedon and his son, nor yet by the political annihilation of the one state, which happens to be its most formidable rival;-the unwise measure recommended by Cato, and carried into effect by the Romans in the instance of Carthage. Not by the latter;—for rivalry between two nations conduces to the independence of both, calls forth or fosters all the virtues by which national security is maintained;-and still less by the former; for the victor nation itself must at length, by the very extension of its own conquest, sink into a mere province; nay, it will most probably become the most abject portion of the empire, and the most cruelly oppressed, both because it will be more feared and suspected by the common tyrant, and because it will be the sink and centre of his luxury and corruption. Even in cases of actual injury and just alarm the patriot sets bounds to the reprisal of national vengeance, and contents himself with such securities as are compatible with the welfare, though not with the ambitious projects of the nation, the aggressions of which had given the provocation for as patriotism inspires no super-human faculties, neither can it dictate any conduct which would require such. He is too conscious of his own ignorance of the future, to dare extend his calculations into remote periods; nor, because he is a statesman, arrogates to himself the cares of Providence and the government of the world. How does he know, but that the very independence and consequent virtues of the nation, which in the anger of cowardice he would fain reduce to absolute insignificance, and rob even of its ancient name, may in some future emergence be the destined guardians of his own country; and that the power which now alarms, may hereafter protect and preserve it? The experience of history authorizes to believe not only in the possibility, but even the probability, of such an event. An American commander,* who has deserved and received the highest honours which his grateful country, through her assembled representatives, could bestow upon him, once said to me with a sigh: "In an evil hour for my country did the French and Spaniards abandon Louisiana to the United States. We were not sufficiently a country before: and should we ever be mad enough to drive the English from Canada and her other North American provinces, we shall soon cease to be a country at all. Without local attachment, without national honour, we shall resemble a swarm of insects that settle on the fruits of the earth to corrupt and consume them, rather than men who love and cleave to the land of their forefathers. After a shapeless anarchy and a series of civil wars, we shall at last be formed into many countries; unless the vices engendered in the process should demand further punishment, and we should previously fall beneath the despotism of some military adventurer, like a lion consumed by an inward disease, prostrate and helpless beneath the beak and talons of a vulture, or yet meaner bird of prey."† * Decatur.-Ed. + See Table Talk, p. 168, 2nd edit. --Ed. ESSAY XIV. Ό, τι μὲν πρὸς τὸν τοῦ ὅλου πλοῦτον, μᾶλλον δὲ πρὸς τὶ φάντασμα πόλεως ἁπάσης, ὅ πανταχῆ καὶ οὐδαμῆ ἑστὶ, φέρει μάθημα καὶ ἐπιτήδευμα, τοῦτο χρήσιμον καὶ σόφον τὶ δοξασθήσεται· τῶν δὲ ἄλλων καταγελᾷ ὁ πολιτικός. Ταύτην τὴν αἰτίαν χρὴ φάναι τοῦ μήτε ἄλλο καλὸν, μήτε τὰ πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον μεγαλοπρέπως ἀσκεῖν τὰς πόλεις, τῶν πολίτων μάλ' ἐνίοτε οὐκ ἀφυῶν ὄντων, δυστυχούντων γε μήν. Πῶς λέγεις ; Πῶς μὲν οὖν αὐτοὺς οὐ λέγοιμ' ἄν τὸ παράπαν δυστυχεῖς, οἷς γε ἀνάγκη διὰ βίου πεινῶσι τὴν ψυχὴν ἀεὶ τὴν αὐτῶν διεξελθεῖν. PLATO.* Whatever study or doctrine bears upon the wealth of the whole, say rather on a certain phantom of a state in the whole, which is every where and no where, this shall be deemed most useful and wise; and all else is the state-craftsman's scorn. This we dare pronounce the cause why nations torpid on their dignity in general, conduct their wars so little in a grand and magnanimous spirit, while the citizens are too often wretched, though endowed with high capabilities by nature. How say you? Nay, how should I not call them wretched, who are under the unrelenting necessity of wasting away their life in the mere search after the means of supporting it? IN the preceding essay I treated of what may be wisely desired in respect to our foreign relations. The same sanity of mind will the true patriot display in all that regards the internal prosperity of his country. He will reverence not only whatever tends to make the component individuals more happy, and more worthy of happiness; but likewise whatever tends to bind them. more closely together as a people;-that as a multitude * De Legibus, viii.—The Greek is chiefly taken from the beginning of this book of the Laws; but it is not taken consecutively; some of the expressions are from other parts of Plato, and some seem to be the Author's own.-Ed. |