[146] Japan now runs a grave risk of such retrogression.
[147] Cp. Cunningham's Western Civilisation, i, 109.
[148] The point is argued at greater length by the author in an article on "The Economics of Genius" in the Forum, April, 1898 (rep. in Essays in Sociology, vol. ii).
[149] Cp. Tiele, Outlines of the History of Religion, Eng. tr. pp. 205, 207, and the present writer's Short History of Freethought, 2nd ed. i, 122–24.
[150] The civilisations of North America and the English "dominions," while showing much diffusion of average culture, produce thus far relatively few of the highest fruits because of social immaturity and the smallness of their culture class.
[151] Aristotle, Politics, ii, 12; v, 4.
[152] Grote (ii, 150) argues that the need to move the cattle between high and low grounds promoted communication between "otherwise disunited villages." But that would be a small matter. The essential point is that, whatever the contacts, the communities remained alien to each other.
[153] See Stubbs, Const. Hist. of England, 4th ed. iii, 632–33, as to England in the fifteenth century; and Michelet, Introd. to Renaissance (vol. vii of Hist. de France).
[154] See below, pt. vi, ch. i, § 2.
[155] This discussion also goes back for at least two centuries. See Shaftesbury's Characteristics, Misc. iii, ch. i (vol. iii, pp. 137, 152).
[156] Note, in this connection, the tactic of Mr. Balfour in the election struggle of 1909–10.
[157] This was written, of course, before the recent uprising.
[158] Cp. Professor Giles, The Civilisation of China, pp. 1–19, as to the little-recognised diversity of Chinese speech, stock, and climate.
[159] Since these words were written China in turn has had her new birth, vindicating the doctrine above set forth.
PART II
ECONOMIC FORCES IN ANCIENT HISTORY
Chapter I
ROMAN ECONOMIC EVOLUTION
By singling out one set of the forces of aggregation and disintegration touched on in the foregoing general view, it is possible to get a more concrete idea of what actually went on in the Roman body politic. It is always useful in economic science, despite protests to the contrary, to consider bare processes irrespectively of ethical feeling; and the advantage accrues similarly in the "economic interpretation of history."[160] We have sufficiently for our purpose considered Roman history under the aspects of militarism and class egoism: it remains to consider it as a series of economic phenomena.
This has been facilitated by many special studies. Gibbon covers much of the ground in chapters 6, 14, 17, 18, 29, 35, 36 and 41; and Professor Guglielmo Ferrero sheds new light at some points in his great work, The Greatness and Decline of Rome (Eng. trans. 5 vols. 1907–1911), though his economics at times calls for revision. Cp. Alison on "The Fall of Rome," in Essays, 1850, vol. iii (a useful conspectus, though flawed by some economic errors); Spalding's Italy and the Italian Islands, 3rd ed. 1845, i, 371–400; Dureau de la Malle, Économie politique des Romains, 1840, t. ii; Robiou et Delaunay, Les Institutions de l'ancienne Rome, 1888, vol. iii, ch. 1; Fustel de Coulanges, Le Colonat romain, etc.; Finlay, History of Greece from its Conquest by the Romans, ed. 1877, ch. i, §§ 5–8; Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, vol. i, 1864, chs. xi, xii, xx (a work full of sound criticism of testimonies); W.T. Arnold, Roman Provincial Administration, 1879; Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilisation and Decay, 1897, ch. i; and Dr. Cunningham's Western Civilisation, vol. i, 1899. Among many learned and instructive German treatises may be noted the Preisschrift of R. Pöhlmann, Die Uebervölkerung der antiken Grossstädte, Leipzig, 1884. Special notice is due to the recent work of W.R. Patterson, The Nemesis of Nations, 1907—a valuable study of slavery.
As we have first traced them, the Romans are a cluster of agricultural and pastoral tribes, chronically at war with their neighbours, and centring round certain refuge-fortresses on one or two of the "Seven Hills." Whether before or after conquest by monarchic Etruscans, these tribes tended normally to fall into social grades in which relative wealth and power tended to go together. The first source of subsistence for all was cattle-breeding and agriculture, and that of the richer was primarily slave labour, a secondary source being usury. Slaves there were in the earliest historic times. But from the earliest stages wealth was in some degree procured through war, which yielded plunder in the form of cattle,[161] the principal species of riches in the ages before the precious metals stood for the command of all forms of wealth. Thus the rich tended to grow richer even in that primitive community, their riches enabling them specially to qualify themselves for war, so getting more slaves and cattle, and to acquire fresh slave labour in time of peace, while in time of war the poor cultivator ran a special risk of being himself reduced to slavery at home, in that his farm was untilled, while that of the slave-owner went on as usual.[162] Long before the ages described as decadent, the lapse of the poor into slavery was a frequent event. "The law of debt, framed by creditors, and for the protection of creditors, was the most horrible that has ever been known among men."[163] When the poorer cultivator borrowed stock or seed from the richer, he had first to pay a heavy interest; and when in bad years he failed to meet that liability he could be at once sold up and finally enslaved with his family, so making competition all the harder for the other small cultivators. As against the plainly disintegrating action of such a system, however, wars of conquest and plunder became to some extent a means of popular salvation, the poorer having ultimately their necessary share in the booty, and, as the State grew, in the conquered lands. Military expansion was thus an economic need.
In such an inland community, commerce could grow but slowly, the products being little adapted for distant exchange. The primitive prejudice of landholders against trade, common to Greece and Rome, left both handicraft and commerce largely to aliens and pariahs.[164] The traders, as apart from the agriculturists