The Menace of Privilege, by Henry George Jr.
Installment 57

We are pleased to present, in installments, a very rare yet significant book written by former Congressman Henry George Jr. in 1905. Earlier installments are available at the Progress Report Archive.

end of CHAPTER 23, CIVILIZATIONS GONE BEFORE

How the Roman Civilization Rotted

It is not that the Romans did not have a good code of laws. Of all people of which we know they preeminently had the genius for law. They were lawgivers to succeeding nations.

Nor was it that they did not begin with good morals. They were essentially moral. They were at beginning, as Sallust says, "the most religious of all men." Froude says in his "Caesar," "They built temples and offered sacrifices to the highest human excellences, to 'Valor,' to 'Truth,' to 'Good Faith,' to 'Modesty,' to 'Charity,' to 'Concord.'"

In these qualities lay all that raised man above the animals with which he had so much in common. In them, therefore, were to be found the link which connected him with the divine nature, and moral qualities were regarded as divine influences which gave his life its meaning and its worth. The "Virtues" were elevated into beings to whom disobedience would be punished as a crime, and the superstitious fears which run so often into mischievous idolatries were enlisted with conscience in the direct service of right action.

Morality thus ingrained in the national character and grooved into action creates strength, as nothing else creates it. The difficulty of right conduct does not lie in knowing what it is right to do, but in doing it when known. Intellectual culture does not touch the conscience. It provides no motives to overcome the weakness of the will, and with wider knowledge it brings also new temptations. The sense of duty is present in each detail of life; the obligatory "must" which binds the will to the course which right principle has marked out for it produces a fiber like the fiber of the oak. ("Caesar: a Sketch," Chap. IL)

Yet in face of all this, public and private morality melted down to almost nothing in the furnace of passions awakened by the despoilment of the masses for the advantage of the few. "The ties of family life," says Mommsen, "became relaxed with fearful rapidity. The evil of grisettes and boy favorites spread like a pestilence, and, as matters stood, it was not possible to take any material steps in the way of legislation against it." Long before Caesar's time, he tells us, marriage had become on both sides a matter of mercantile speculation.

Celibacy and childlessness became more and more common, especially among the upper classes. While among these marriage had been for long regarded as a burden which people took upon them at the best in the public interest. . . . We encounter even in Cato's sentiments the maxim to which Polybius a century before traced the decay of Hellas, that it is the duty of a citizen to keep great wealth together, and therefore not to beget too many children. Where were the times when the designation "children-producer" (proletarius) had been an honor for the Roman? ("The History of Rome," Book V, Chap. XI.)

We find Cicero repudiating his wife Terentia, because he desired a new dowry; Augustus compelling the husband of Livia to repudiate her when she was already pregnant, that he might marry her himself; Cato ceding his wife, with the consent of her father, to his friend Hortensius, and resuming her after his death; Maecenas continually changing his wife; Sempronius Sophus repudiating his wife because she had once been to the public games without his knowledge; Paulus Aemilius taking the same step without assigning any reason, and defending himself by saying, "My shoes are new and well made, but no one knows where they pinch me."

Nor did women show less alacrity in repudiating their husbands. Seneca denounced this evil with especial vehemence, declaring that divorce in Rome no longer brought with it any shame, and that there were women who reckoned their years rather by their husbands than by the consuls. Christians and Pagans echoed the same complaint.

According to Tertullian, "divorce is the fruit of marriage." Martial speaks of a woman who had already arrived at her tenth husband; Juvenal, of a woman who had eight husbands in five years. But the most extraordinary recorded instance of this kind is related by St. Jerome, who assures us that there existed at Rome a wife who was married to her twenty-third husband, she herself being his twenty-first wife. (Vol.11, Chap. V.)

To appreciate what this means, observe what Taine, in his "Ancient Régime," tells us: That under the old regime 270,000 persons constituted the privileged classes of France -- the classes that sat upon the necks of the people, and at last caused the horrors of the Revolution. This was but little more than one per cent. of that nation's population, which at that time was approximately 26,000,000. ("The Ancient Regime," Book I, Chap. II, Sec. I.)

Those privileged classes comprised the nobility and the clergy. They were the direct offspring of feudalism which had its roots in the soil. A fifth of the territory of France at that time belonged to the crown and the communes, a fifth to the Third Estate or middle class, a fifth to the rural population, a fifth to the nobles and a fifth to the clergy.

"Accordingly," remarks Taine, "if we deduct the public lands, the privileged own one half the kingdom" which "at the same time is the richest, for it comprises almost all the large and handsome buildings, the palaces, castles, convents and cathedrals, and almost all the valuable movable property, such as furniture, plate, objects of art, the accumulated masterpieces of centuries." (Book I, Chap II, Sec. II.)

Reduced to its lowest terms this means: that the privileged classes of France before the Revolution, constituting one per cent. of the population, owned one half the land, and almost all the important improvements and valuable movables.

Rousseau summed up the attitude of the privileged classes toward the rest of the population in these words, "I make an agreement with you wholly at your expense, and to my advantage, which I shall respect as long as I please, and which you shall respect as long as it pleases me."

And as a result of this order of things, we have the court at Versailles. "It is said," remarks Taine, "that a hundred thousand roses are required to make an ounce of the unique perfume used by Persian kings; such is this drawing-room, the frail vial of crystal and gold containing the substance of a human vegetation. To fill it a great aristocracy had to be transplanted to a hothouse and become sterile in fruit and flowers, and then in the royal alembic, its pure sap is concentrated into a few drops of aroma. The price is excessive, but only at this price can the most delicate perfumes be manufactured."

How much this sounds like young Mr. Rockefeller's parable, that modern great fortunes are produced like the American Beauty rose -- by nipping off most of the surrounding buds.

The price is, indeed, excessive. Says Taine again, "Each largess of the monarch, considering the state of the taxes, is based on the privation of the peasants, the sovereign, through his clerks, taking bread from the poor to give coaches to the rich." From wanton heedlessness a quarter of the Soil of France was, according to competent authority, lying waste. Listen to the testimony of the English traveler, Arthur Young, who journeyed through France, making notes even after the first mutterings of the Revolution had begun: --

Montauban-de-Bretagne, Sept. 5, 1788. - One third of what I have seen of this province seems uncultivated, and nearly all of it is in misery. What have kings, and ministers, and parliaments, and states to answer for their prejudices, seeing millions of hands that would be industrious, instead idle and starving, through the execrable maxims of despotism, or the equally detestable prejudices of a feudal nobility.

Nantes, Sept.21, 1788. -Mon dieu! said I to myself, do all the wastes, the deserts, the heath, the ling, furze, broom and bog that I have passed for 300 miles lead to this spectacle ? What a miracle, that all this splendor and wealth of the cities of France should be so unconnected with the country ! There are no gentle transitions from ease to comfort, from comfort to wealth. You pass at once from beggary to profusion, from misery in mud cabins to Mademoiselle St. Hubert in splendid spectacles at 500 livres a night. . . . Maine and Anjou have the appearance of deserts.

Mar-le-Tour, July 13,1789.-Walking up a long hill, to ease my mare, I was joined by a poor woman, who complained of the times, and that it was a sad country. Demanding her reasons, she said that her husband had but a morsel of land, one cow, and a poor little horse, yet they had a franchar (forty-two pounds) of wheat and three chickens to pay as quit-rent to one Seigneur; and four franchar of oats, one chicken, and one franc to pay to another, besides very heavy tailles and other taxes. She had seven children. . . . This woman, at no great distance, might be taken for sixty or seventy, her figure was so bent and her face so furrowed and hardened by labor; but she said she was only twenty-eight.

If morals lost by this, society was infinitely the gainer. Having got rid of the annoyance and dullness caused by the husband's presence, the freedom was extreme. The coquetry, both of men and women, kept up social vivacity and daily provided piquant adventures.

We all know how difficult it is for a member of the smart set to strike out something truly original in one's whole mode of living, but here we have it. A young married couple of the smartest set are deeply in love; but at the request of the wife, upon their return from their summer villa, she is to have her own house and servants, carriages and stables, in fact, a complete and costly establishment of her own, in the very next street to that in which her husband lives, close to millionaires' row. This semi-detached couple will be frequent dinner guests at each other's tables.

"Freedom, facilities, Monsieur l'Abbé: without these, life would be a desert." Such was the utterance of Cardinal Rohan to his secretary. It was in that order of things in France when the cassock took equal liberty and license with the robe. And what his Eminence, the Cardinal, meant by "freedom and facilities," we learn from a manuscript from which Taine quotes, describing how the Cardinal conducted a hunt on his estate at Saverne: --

Six hundred peasants and keepers ranged in a line a league long from early in the morning and beat up the surrounding country, while hunters, men and women, are posted at their stations. "For fear that the ladies might be frightened if left alone by themselves, the men whom they hated least were always left with them," and as nobody was allowed to leave his post before the signal, "it was impossible to be surprised." ("The Ancient Regime," Book II, Chap. II, Sec. VI.)

Will not the observant and thoughtful find much food for serious meditation in these things when taken in connection with facts and tendencies among us?

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