The Rise and Fall of Empires: Writings from Augustine, Niebuhr, and Paterson

“It is time for America to hear the truth… Don’t let anyone tell you that God has appointed America as his messianic force, a kind of policeman of the whole world…I can hear God saying to America, “You’re too arrogant! If you don’t change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and give it to a nation that doesn’t even know my name.” – MLK, from a speech delivered in 1967.

American exceptionalism finds its root in corrupted theological doctrine. The conservative Christian Right has been particularly vulnerable to this shallow framework. Not only have Christian churches become ensnared in this tangled web of destructive lies -- arguably, the religious tradition currently seen with the strongest ties to the doctrine of American exceptionalism is Mormonism and its umbrella Latter Day Saints (LDS). Properly educated historians and rational theologians reject these distorted worldviews as nothing more than twisted fiction. Unfortunately, in an era where the ignorant have the biggest mouths, voices of reason are ignored. So, the biggest loud mouth chump of all, Glenn Beck (Mormon/LDSer), as well as Pat Robertson (Christian Right), Rush Limbaugh (big dummy) and other far right-winger morons will continue to possess an outsized influence -- in proportion to their actual numbers -- over significant portions of the American public.

Augustine of Hippo, considered the founding father of Christian theology, down to Reinhold Niebuhr, whom I share the opinion to be the most important Christian thinker of the 20th Century, taught the church a very different worldview than the one we currently hear spouted from the radical right on talk radio, tv, and the pulpit. Among many important things, these two giants of intellectual thought instructed us that all empires rise and fall, and the reasons they rise and the reasons they fall are common and are centrally due to the failings of humans at the seat of privilege –- more specifically, the inability to escape the unquenchable thirst of power, the blindness of pride, and the devouring from greed. Like the empires before it, America has shown its vulnerability to the very same failings.

This blog entry will be different than the others I have written. Today I offer segments from Augustine’s and Niebuhr’s most famous works. I will also provide a section of material from an American founding father William Paterson. These thinkers, writing at critical junctures in world history -- Augustine just after the fall of Rome, Niebuhr in the early 1930s at the height of the Great Depression and at the rise of fascism and communism, and Paterson at the time of the American Revolution -- have important words to share with us in our time of global economic and political crisis. They remind us that this great nation can, and will be brought down to a humbled position just like past empires. When the rule of privileged, ruling classes -- in our case, the executive class of global corporations -- becomes more concerned about self-preservation and private profit than in the general interests of the public good or in the purposes of the commonwealth, the seeds of destruction are sown. With ignorant pride, unbridled power, and ravaging greed, the executive class of our age is on course to lead this nation to the same fate of empires past. Only through repentance -- a complete and total turning away from current wrong doing and ill practices and turning back to a just and equitable path -- can our corporate leadership begin to live up to the great command charged to all by the One God -- YHWH -- the One Who Is -- the I Am -- and that is, to love our neighbor. Otherwise,furious wrath soon follows.

Read, reflect, and come to understanding:

Excerpts from St. Augustine’s “City of God”…

[Reprimanding his country for their arrogance even as the nation faced collapse.] “What insanity is this! This is not error but plain madness. When, by all accounts, nations in the East were bewailing your catastrophe (speaking of Rome’s fall), when the greatest cities in the farthest parts of the earth were keeping days of public grief and mourning, you were asking the way to the theatres… …It was just this corruption, this moral disease, this overthrow of integrity and decency, that the great Scipio dreaded for you, when he stopped the building of theatres, when he saw how easily you could be corrupted and perverted by prosperity… … He did not think that a city is fortunate when its walls are standing, while its morals are in ruins. But the temptations of the wicked demons had more effect on you than the precautions of men endowed with foresight. Thus you refuse to be held responsible for the evil that you do… … Prosperity depraved you; and adversity could not reform you… …You have learned no salutary lesson from calamity; you have become the most wretched, and you have remained the most worthless, of mankind.”

[Summarizing the work of the pagan Roman historian Sallust who wrote on the transition of the early nation from the rule of kings to a republic –- think here of revolution against King George and the establishment of early U.S. and the rapid expansion that ensued] “I will therefore impose restraint on myself, and employ the evidence of Sallust himself, whose praise of the Romans gave rise to this discussion. ‘Justice and morality’, he says, ‘prevailed among them by nature as much as by law.’ He was commending the period after the expulsion of the kings, a period of enormous expansion in an incredibly short space of time. In spite of this, he also admits, at the very beginning of the first book of his History, that even at the time when the government had passed from kings to consuls, after a short interval the injustices of the powerful classes led to a separation between plebs and patres (in other words, elites and working class), and to other disputes in the city. He records the high standard of morality and the degree of concord which marked the history of Rome between the Second Punic War and the last, but he ascribes as the reason for this desirable state of things not the love of justice, but the fear that peace was unreliable while Carthage still stood (essentially, patriotic fervor and the beating of war drums against an outside enemy kept the working class within the nation from an uprising); and that was why Nasica resisted the annihilation of Carthage… …‘After the destruction of Carthage there came the highest pitch of discord, greed, ambition, and all the evils which generally spring up in times of prosperity.’ We infer from this that those evils generally spring up and increase even before such times. Hence he continues with the reason for his statement, “For the injustices of the powerful classes leading to separation between plebs and patres and other disputes, were found in the city right from the beginning: and the rule of equity, justice and restraint after the expulsion, that is, the ejection of the kings lasted only as long as the threat from Tarquim and the critical war with the Etruscans continued.” Thus you observe that Sallust alleges fear to have been responsible for that brief period of ‘the rule of equity, justice and moderation which followed the expulsion, that is the ejection of the kings.” Notice how Sallust proceeds: “After that, the patricians reduced the plebeians to the condition of slavery; they disposed of the lives and persons of the plebs in the manner of kings; they drove men from their lands; and with the rest of the people disenfranchised, they alone wielded supreme power. Oppressed by such harsh treatment, and especially by the load of debt, the plebeians, after enduring the simultaneous burden of tribute and military service in continual wars, at length armed themselves, and took up a position on the Mons Sacer and the Aventine; thus they gained for themselves the tribunes of the plebs and other rights. The Second Punic War (again, the invoking of an outside enemy) brought an end to the strife and rivalry between the two parties.” Here is a picture of the condition of the Romans in so short a time after the expulsion of the kings… …Furthermore, if this is what the period was like, when the Roman state is reported to have been at the height of excellence, what do we suppose is to be said or thought of the period following? For to quote the words of the same historian, “the state of the country gradually changed, from the height of excellence to the depth of depravity.” This is the period, as Sallust relates, following the destruction of Carthage. In Sallust’s history we can read a brief record and description of these times –- how the moral deterioration, which set in during times of prosperity, continued until the Civil Wars. “And from that time,” he says, “the degradation of traditional morality ceased to be a gradual decline and became a torrential downhill rush. The young were so corrupted by luxury and greed that it was justly observed that a generation had arisen which could neither keep its own property or allow others to keep theirs.”… …You see, I am sure, and anyone who pays attention cannot fail to observe…”

[Commenting on the self-interest-driven mindset of the day.] ‘So long as it lasts,’ they say, ‘so long as it enjoys material prosperity, and the glory of victorious war, or, better, the security of peace, why should we worry? What concerns us is that we should get richer all the time, to have enough extravagant spending every day, enough to keep our inferiors in their place. It is all right if the poor serve the rich, so as to get enough to eat and to enjoy a lazy life under their patronage; while the rich make use of the poor to ensure a crowd of hangers-on to minister to their pride; if the people applaud those who supply them with pleasures rather than those who offer salutary advice; if no one imposes disagreeable duties, or forbids perverted delights; if kings are interested not in the morality but the docility of their subjects; if provinces are under rulers who are regarded not as directors of conduct but as controllers of material things and providers of material satisfactions, and are treated with servile fear instead of sincere respect. The laws should punish offences against another’s property, not offences against a man’s own personal character. No one should be brought to trial except for an offence, or threat of offence, against another’s property, house, or person; but anyone should be free to do as he likes about his own, or with his own, or with others, if they consent. There should be a plentiful supply of public prostitutes, for the benefit of all those who prefer them, and especially for those who cannot keep private mistresses. It is a good thing to have imposing houses luxuriously furnished, where lavish banquets can be held… …Anyone who disapproves of this kind of happiness should rank as a public enemy: anyone who attempts to change it or get ride of it should be hustled out of hearing by the freedom-loving majority; he should be kicked out, and removed from the land of the living. We should reckon the true gods to be those who see that the people get this happiness and then preserve it for them.’

[Commenting on the ignorance of his day and the belief that somehow theirs times and their days and their nation were somehow different and set apart from history.] “These illiterates imagine that there is something extraordinary in the mishaps of their own time and that they did not happen in other periods; those who know this idea to be false conceal their knowledge and support this delusion, to make it seem that the rest are justified in their complaints. I was therefore bound to prove that the facts were very different.”

[On empires.] “Is it reasonable, is it sensible, to boast of the extent and grandeur of empire, when you cannot show that men lived in happiness, as they passed their lives amid the horrors of war, amid the shedding of men’s blood –- whether the blood of enemies or fellow-citizens –- under the shadow of fear and amid the terror of ruthless ambition? The only joy to be attained had the fragile brilliance of glass, a joy outweighed by the fear that it may be shattered in a moment.”

[On the rise and fall of Rome.] “Accordingly, if we want a picture of the condition of the commonwealth at that time, and of its previous condition, we may find it in Cato’s judgment, when he says: ‘Do not imagine that it was by force of arms that our ancestors made a great nation out of a small community. If that were true, we should today have a far more glorious nation. In allies, in our own citizens, in armaments, in horses, we have greater resources that they enjoyed. But it was other causes that made them great, causes that with us have ceased to exist –- policy, a mind that is free because not at the mercy of criminal passions. Instead of these we have self-indulgence and greed, public poverty and private opulence. We praise riches: we pursue a course of sloth. No distinction is made between good men and bad: the intrigues of ambition win the prizes due to merit. No wonder, when each of you thinks only of his own private interest, when at home you are slaves to your appetites, and to money and influence in your public life. The consequences is that an attack is being launched on a republic left without defenses.’ These words of Cato, or of Sallust, might lead one to suppose that all the Romans of antiquity, or the majority of them, resembled those of who they speak so highly. That is not so. Otherwise the remarks of the same historian, quoted in my second book, would be untrue. Sallust tells us that the injustices of the powerful classes led to a secession of the plebeians from the patricians, and that from the beginning there were other domestic dissensions, and that the era of just moderation in government lasted after the expulsion of the kings only as long as the threat from Tarquim (outside enemy) remained until the end of the major war against Etruria which Rome had engaged in because of Tarquim. But after that the plebeians were treated like slaves under the rule of the patricians, who handled them with the same violence as the kings, drove them from their lands, and wielded sole power, all others being disenfranchised. These discords, with one side aiming at domination, the other seeking to avoid slavery, were only ended by the Second Punic War, because then once again came the pressure of a serious threat, which checked their restless spirits, and distracted them from these discords by a more urgent anxiety, and recalled them to domestic concord. But it was by a mere handful of men, good men in their way, that the great public interests were managed; and it was thanks to the foresight of those few that those domestic ills were rendered tolerable and alleviated, and thus the country advanced to greatness. Sallust adds that in reading or hearing of the many splendid exploits of the Roman people, in peace and war, on land and sea, he has been interested to observe what was the principal basis for their great achievements. He knew that on many occasions a mere handful of Romans had matched great enemy battalions and that Rome had waged war with scanty resources against opulent kings. And he declares that, after much reflection, he had reached the conclusion that all this success was due to the exceptional qualities of a small minority, and that this minority was responsible for the victory of poverty over riches… ‘But,’ he continues, ‘when luxury and idleness had corrupted the city, then, conversely, the greatness of the country supported the vices of generals and magistrates.’ The virtue of the few, the moral quality of those who stride towards glory, honor, and power by the right path, that is, by virtue itself –- this is what Cato also praises. Hence came the energy at home, which he mentions, that brought riches to the public treasure, while private fortunes remained straightened. He contrasted this with the perverted situation after the moral corruption had set in, when we find the public purse empty and private pockets well-lined.”

[On ignorance and those choosing not to see the truth.] “Stupidity glories in never yielding to the force of truth; that is how it effects the ruin of anyone who is under the dominion of this monstrous moral fault. It is a disease proof against all efforts to treat it, not through any fault in the physician, but because the patient is himself incurable.”

[On why there never really was a Roman commonwealth.] “This brings me to the place where I must fulfill, as briefly and clearly as I may, the promise I gave in the second book. I there promised that I would show that there never was a Roman commonwealth answering to the definitions advanced by Scipio in Cicero’s “On the Republic.” For Scipio gives a brief definition of the state, or commonwealth, as the ‘weal of the people.’ Now if this is a true definition, there never was a Roman commonwealth, because the Roman state was never the ‘weal of the people’, according to Scipio’s definition. For he defined a ‘people’ as a multitude ‘united in association by a common sense of right and a community of interest’. He explains in the discussion what he means by a ‘common sense of right’, showing that a state cannot be maintained without justice, and where there is no true justice there can be no right. For any action according to right is inevitably a just action, while no just action can possibly be according to right. For unjust human institutions are not to be called or supposed to be institutions of right, since even they themselves say that right is what has flowed from the fount of justice; as for the notion of justice commonly put forward by some misguided thinkers, that it is ‘the interest of the strongest’, they hold this to be a false conception. Therefore, where there is no true justice there can be no ‘association of men united by a common sense of right’, and therefore no people answering to the definition of Scipio, or Cicero… …If, therefore, a commonwealth is the ‘weal of the people’, and if a people does not exist where there is no ‘association by a common sense of right’, and there is no right where there is no justice, the irresistible conclusion is that where there is no justice there is no commonwealth.”

Excerpts from Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Moral Man and Immoral Society” –

“Most rational and social justifications of unequal privilege are clearly afterthoughts. The facts are created by the disproportion of power which exists in a given social system. The justifications are usually dictated by the desire of the men of power to hide the nakedness of their greed, and by the inclination of society itself to veil the brutal facts of human life from itself. This is a rather pathetic but understandable inclination; since the facts of man’s collective life easily rob the average individual of confidence in the human enterprise. The inevitable hypocrisy, which is associated with all of the collective activities of the human race, springs chiefly from this source: that individuals have a moral code which makes the actions of collective man an outrage to their conscience. They therefore invent romantic and moral interpretations of the real facts, preferring to obscure rather than reveal the true character of their collective behavior. Sometimes they are as anxious to offer moral justifications for the brutalities from which they suffer as for those which they commit. The fact that the hypocrisy of man’s group behavior, about which we shall have much more to say later, expresses itself not only in terms of self-justification but in terms of moral justification of human behavior in general, symbolizes one of the tragedies of the human spirit: its inability to conform its collective life to its individual ideals. As individuals, men believe that they ought to love and serve each other and establish justice between each other. As racial, economic, and national groups they take for themselves, whatever their power can command.

The disproportion of power in a complex society which began with the transmutation of the pastoral to the agrarian economy, and which destroyed the simple equalitarianism and communism of the hunting and nomadic social organization, has perpetuated social injustice in every form through all the ages. Types of power have changed, and gradations of social inequality have varied, but the essential facts have remained unchanged… …All through history one may observe the tendency of power to destroy its very raison d’etre. It is suffered because it achieves internal unity and creates external defenses for the nation. But it grows to such proportions that it destroys the social peace of the state by the animosities which its exactions arouse, and it enervates the sentiment of patriotism by robbing the common man of the basic privileges which might bind him to this nation… …(quoting Plutarch) “The poor folk go to war, to fight and to die for the delights, riches, and superfluities of others.” In the long run these pretensions are revealed and the sentiment of patriotism is throttled in the breasts of the disinherited.”

[On democracies in general.] “The rise of modern democracy, beginning with the Eighteenth Century, is sometimes supposed to have substituted the consent of the governed for the power of royal families and aristocratic classes as the cohesive force of national society. This judgment is partly true but not nearly as true as the uncritical devotees of modern democracy assume. The doctrine that government exists by the consent of the governed, and the democratic technique by which the suffrage of the governed determines the policy of the state, may actually reduce the coercive factor in national life, and provide for peaceful and gradual methods of resolving conflicting social interests and changing political institutions. But the creeds and institutions of democracy have never become fully divorced from the special interests of the commercial classes who conceived and developed them. It was their interest to destroy political restraint upon economic activity, and they therefore weakened the authority of the state and made it more pliant to their needs. With the increased centralization of economic power in the period of modern industrialism, this development merely means that society as such does not control economic power as much as social well-being requires; and that the economic, rather than the political and military, power has become the significant coercive force of modern society. Either it defies the authority of the state or it bends the institutions of the state to its own purposes. Political power has been made responsible, but economic power has become irresponsible in society. The net result is that political power has been more responsible to economic power. It is, in other words, again the man of power or the dominant class which binds society together, regulates its processes, always paying itself inordinate rewards for its labors. The difference is that owners of factories, rather than owners of land, exert the power, and that it is more purely economic and less military than that which was wielded by the landed aristocrats. Needless to say, it is not completely divorced from military power. It may on occasion appropriate the police and the army of the state to defend its interests against internal and external foes. The military power has become the hired servant and is no longer the progenitor of economic ownership.”

[On the role of ignorance of the masses in perpetuating unjust leadership.] “The stupidity of the average man will permit the oligarch, whether economic or political, to hide his real purposes from the scrutiny of his fellows and to withdraw his activities from effective control… …The ultimate sources of social conflicts and injustices are to be found in the ignorance and selfishness of men… …Thus, for instance, a laissez faire economic theory is maintained in an industrial era through the ignorant belief that the general welfare is best served by place the least possible political restraints upon economic activity. The history of the past hundred years is a refutation of the theory; but it is still maintained, or is dying a too lingering death, particularly in nations as politically incompetent as our own. Its survival is due to the ignorance of those who suffer injustice from the application of this theory to modern industrial life but fail to attribute their difficulties to the social anarchy and political irresponsibility which the theory sanctions. Their ignorance permits the beneficiaries of the present anarchic industrial system to make dishonest use of the wanting prestige of laissez faire economies. The men of power in modern industry would not, of course, capitulate simply because the social philosophy by which they justify their policies had been discredited. When power is robbed of the shining armor of political, moral and philosophical theories, by which it defends itself, it will fight on without armor; but it will be more vulnerable, and the strength of its enemies is increased. When economic power desires to be left alone it uses the philosophy of laissez faire to discourage political restraint upon economic freedom. When it wants to make use of the police power of the state to subdue rebellions and discontent in the ranks of its helots, it justifies the use of political coercion and the resulting suppression of liberties by insisting that peace is more precious than freedom and that its only desire is social peace. A rational analysis of social facts easily punctures this pretension.”

[On the self-deception of the executive class.] “The moral attitudes of dominant and privileged groups are characterized by universal self-deception and hypocrisy. The unconscious and conscious identification of their special interests with general interests and universal values, which we have noted analyzing national attitudes, is equally obvious in the attitude of classes. The reason why privileged classes are more hypocritical than underprivileged ones is that special privilege can be defended in terms of the rational ideal of equal justice only, by proving that it contributes something to the good of the whole. Since inequalities of privilege are greater than could possibly be defended rationally, the intelligence of privileged groups is usually applied to the task of inventing specious proofs for the theory that universal values spring from, and that general interests are served by, the special privileges which they hold. The most common form of hypocrisy among the privileged classes is to assume that their privileges are the just payments with which society rewards useful or meritorious functions… …Dominant groups indulge in other hypocrisies beside the claim of their special intellectual fitness for the powers which they exercise and the privileges which they enjoy. Frequently they justify their advantages by the claim of moral rather than intellectual superiority. Thus the rising middle classes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries regarded their superior advantages over the world of labor as the just rewards of a diligent and righteous life. The individualism of nineteenth century political economy and the sanctification of the prudential virtues in Puritan Protestantism were used by the middle classes to give themselves as sense of moral superiority over both the leisured classes and the industrial workers. This individualism, and the emphasis upon the virtues of thrift and diligence, allowed them to believe that the poverty of the workers was due to their laziness and their improvidence.”

[On the use of war to maintain privilege.] “So persistent is the cry of peace among the ruling classes and so strong the seeming abhorrence of every form of violence and anarchy that one might imagine them actuated by the purest pacifist principles, were it not for the fact that they betray no pacifist scruples when they consider international affairs. Most insistent upon peace within the nation, they are most easily provoked to join issue in martial combat with other nations. Sometimes specific economic interests prompt their bellicose ardor; at other times they find it convenient to strengthen their rule at home by permitting the fever of war and the resultant hysteria of patriotism to confuse their interests with the general welfare more perfectly than would be possible in a sober nation. More than one ruling caste has saved itself by an opportune war.”

[Little resistance from the weakened.] “All societies of the past perpetrated and perpetuated social injustice without meeting significant resistance from those who were victimized by the social system. There were indeed slave revolts in antiquity and peasant rebellions in the Middle Ages; but there were sporadic and usually ineffectual. They represented the rebellious vehemence of hungry men who lacked a social philosophy to give dignity and sustained force to their efforts, and a political strategy adequate to the problem which they faced… …(but he adds) Who is better able to understand the true character of a civilization than those who suffer most from its limitations? Who is better able to state the social ideal in unqualified terms than those who have experienced the bankruptcy of old social realities in their own lives? Who will have more creative vigor in destroying the old and building the new than those in whose lives hunger, vengeance, and holy dreams have compounded a tempestuous passion?... …The disinherited of every age have dreamt of a just society.”

[Special privilege.] “Special privileges make all men dishonest. The purest conscience and the clearest mind is prostituted by the desire to prove them morally justified.”

[Hunger.] “It may be that workers will not turn revolutionists until their present state of misery can be compared with a previous state of comparative security; but it is equally certain that hunger, and not envy or impatience with injustices, produces revolution.”

……..

The following paragraphs are excerpts from John O’Connor’s biography on William Paterson titled “Lawyer and Statesman (1745-1806). Paterson was a first generation American, born in Ireland. His family was of average means; his father was a tin plate worker. He studied at Princeton, then called the College of New Jersey. He later obtained a law degree. He was a signer of the Constitution, a Supreme Court Justice, an Attorney General of New Jersey, and a U.S. Senator. Paterson also authored “The Growth and Decline of Empires.”

On Paterson’s education at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University)…

“The dual role of the college – to train social and political leaders as well as clergymen – was expressed in the curriculum. Students were required to study mathematics and science along with the classics and theology. This tendency to merge other disciplines with religion was not unusual. America’s best-known revivalists, Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield, had both recognized the value of such secular studies, providing, of course, that theology remained supreme. As Douglas Sloan has recently explained, “divinity would not supplant the regular disciplines, such as natural philosophy and political philosophy, but it would determine goals and ensure that such subjects be used in the service of society.” This frame of mind was reinforced as the precepts of the Scottish Enlightenment were institutionalized at Princeton by John Witherspoon, who became president of the college in 1768.”

From Paterson’s “The Growth and Decline of Empires.”…

“The rise and fall of empires compose the most curious and interesting part of history,” Paterson began. Moralists characteristically concentrate on why things fall apart, and Paterson was far more interested in the collapse of empires than he was in their beginnings. Like the writers of ancient Greece and Rome, who dealt in idle fictions and “preposterous fables” about the origins of their own states, writers who described the early history of England through the “traditions of the vulgar, the songs of the druids, the fables of the canonized monks” were unworthy of regard. Every legend, “however groundless, that tended to please national vanity was dwelt upon with rapture,” and even accounts that were at first “founded in truth were so worked up and coloured by the pencil of fiction” that they were now useless to the critical observer. “They may aide the flights of the poet,” Paterson continued, but they “degrade the dignity of the historian; they may decorate the pages of the former, but they debase those of the latter.”

With a characteristic blend of rationalism and Protestantism, Paterson turned to the decline of empires: “Though the existence of a state cannot be prolonged beyond the decree of heaven, yet its dissolution may in general be accounted for by natural means.” Subscribing to the organic theory of politics then in vogue, he explained that the causes of decline were inherent in every state. “Physicians tell us, that from our birth there is some peccant humour in the body, which gradually increases, and at length brings on its dissolution: so in the body politick; the principles of death are interwoven in the very frame and texture of every political establishment.”

Invariably some “dead-doing principle” would creep in without the early symptoms being recognized to secretly debilitate and eventually destroy the government. And still worse, whenever a nation reached its crisis stage, “men of a pestilential turn” always arose to satisfy their own interests and “urge on the ruin” of the nation as a whole: “like vultures they hover, to prey upon and devour it.”

To illustrate his point, Paterson turned to the example of Great Britain and to a defense of the British constitution. In a limited monarchy like that of Great Britain, he explained, the way to keep the internal elements of destruction from taking over was to preserve the balance of the constitution and “not to suffer the smallest encroachment, as it will be an inlet to tyranny.” He attacked in no uncertain terms the “shallow politicians and pretending patriots” who clamored about maintaining “ the balance of power among neighboring and independent states,” but at the same time struggled to destroy the balance within the state for their own objectives. It made no difference to him whether the balance was upset in order to increase the privileges of the king of those of the people, for “the first introduces despotism and the latter anarchy, which generally ends in the tyranny of a single person.” Paterson propounded as eternal truth “that all faction tends to tyranny; history evinces, that, whichsoever party prevail, the people are sure to be oppressed… because every party does more or less take humour, prejudice and passion for principle, and therefore the interest of a party and that of a state is for the most party totally different.”

Totally detestable, then, “were those princes and men, who espouse or create a party in order to disunite the people.” “Princes of this cast” could be found in the experiences of modern nations as well as in the annals of ancient history. They “always have some iniquitous scheme in view: They hope perhaps amidst the shock of contending parties to effect what otherwise they could not.” This is an unmistaken reference to George III and his alleged attempts to buy the support of a party in Parliament and subvert the constitution.

This elucidation of this theme brought Paterson to the body of his address and to the explanation that the first “mark of declension” within a state occurs when “grievances though complained of and abuses through petitioned against, remain unredressed; when public defaulters, though accused, and ministers, though impeached, pass unchastized and even unnoticed.”

A case such as this was an indication that one party had become so powerful that it “may deviate most grossly from the known rule of law, and make the most terrible inroads upon the constitution with impunity.” In the tradition of Whig politics, Paterson saw it as the responsibility of the people to remain extremely vigilant and, by petitioning and using the press or whatever means necessary, “to restrain those in power… and in general make them walk in the track prescribed by law.”
….
In his address, Paterson severely criticized ministers who broke in upon the constitution in even trifling ways “to serve a present expedient, or to supply a present exigency… They do it perhaps to procure ease and quiet from some pressing disturbance, perhaps to rid themselves of an instant perplexity, or to allay the tumult and clamour of a vexatious and unreasonable populace.” But once a decision is make to breach the constitution, “one encroachment naturally leads to another, till at length the civil establishment is wholly overthrown.”

Evil and designing ministers could advance their schemes only if the public let down its guard. Paterson himself underscored this key motion: “Slavery is generally preceded by sleep. All history confirms, that times of imaginary security are commonly times of the greatest danger.” He thought that nations like Britain that “hath freedom to lose” should be especially vigilant, and he seemed to chastise his countrymen who were less concerned about the activities of their king and his ministers as he emphasized the “appearance of fatality when a people are at ease and thoughtless, inattentive to the conduct of their rulers, and sunk, as it were, into languor, and a state of insuperable lethargy.”

Paterson described how “an artful prince, abetted by a set of obsequious dependents, generally prepossesses the people in his favor, and does everything in his power to beguile them into a belief of their security, and indeed fairly to lay them asleep. His first acts of oppression wear the semblance of law; he breaks in upon their privileges little by little, and is extremely cautious to clothe everything he does in the venerable garb of legal authority… Danger is then imminent when the appearance of justice is maintained. The form of law is made use of merely to destroy the substance.”

George III had proudly proclaimed himself a constitutional monarch, but, in Paterson’s eyes, he was notorious for using Parliament to achieve his personal ends.
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Putting aside constitutional questions, Paterson’s address proceeded to consider several lessons of social and political philosophy that could also help to explain the decline of great nations. Among them were the ill effects of standing armies, the unequal distribution of wealth, the multiplicity of laws, and the domestic effects of foreign wars.

It was a most deadly symptom of decline when “a standing army is kept up in times of profoundest peace.” ….”When the mass of common soldiers are made up of persons of no property, and profligate manners, and abandoned principles; when too they conceive themselves as a distinct body within a state, and look upon the interests of the people as opposed to their own; who can think of so mercenary or graceless crew in any other light than as tools of oppression, and instruments in the hands of the enterprising spirit to work out the ruin of a state?”

Next in his catalogue of “dead-doing principles” Paterson listed an unequal distribution of wealth. “The excessive opulence of some and extreme poverty of others” encouraged “perpetual clamour and discord.”
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Another token of decline was the “multiplicity of laws… which swelled to an enormous bulk, and multiplied to an almost endless variety have a natural tendency to elude justice, introduce chicanery, and keep up a spirit of contention… When laws are too numerous or complicated, or, if they do not err on this score, too vague and obscure, a spirit of litigation will seize upon every class of people, and render life vexatious and troublesome.”
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Finally, war could presage the internal degeneracy of the nation in a number of ways. If nations, he wrote, “take up arms (which at times is inevitable) it should be on the best motives, and for the justest cause. For war however successfully carried on insensibly exhausts a nation, and endangers its destruction: war interrupts the course of trade, depopulates the country, relaxes the force of laws, and what is still worse, imperceptibly bring on corruption of manners.”… “A rapid succession of expensive wars, arising chiefly from continental connections, has, within less than a century, begot in the British government a new mischief of a terrible aspect. The national debt, the unhappy consequences of long and chargeable wars, is now swelled to an enormous sum, and must fill every breast with the most alarming apprehensions. Already its effects are severely felt; trade is burdened with heavy imposts, and taxes of every kind surprisingly increase. Look forward and a prospect still more dreadful opens to view.” As Paterson saw it, the debt was too great for there to be any hope of paying it off – national bankruptcy was inevitable. Disgrace, confusion, dissension, and ruin would be the result.
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The final third of Paterson’s address was devoted to an emotional, sermonlike discourse on “luxury and corruption of manners.” … He then launched into a tirade against the evil effects of luxury. “Luxury effiminates and torments the opulent, and tempts the indigent, who are destitute of the means of pleasure, to acquire them by fraud and violence. Luxury turns the brave to cowards, and the industrious to thieves. Luxury begets profusion, profusion begets want, and want begets venality and dependence. A general depravity of manners is the necessary consequence of unbounded opulence, which poisons every rank in life and generally proves the bane of affluent states. The most chargeable superfluities are considered as the necessaries of life; these grow upon us every hour, and people now-a-days cannot subsist without articles, which a few years ago were wholly unknown.”

Although luxury was “dressed up as a virtue” and given names such as “taste, elegance, politeness, fashion,” Paterson was convinced of its sinfulness (i.e. its characteristic of death and decay). In the tone of an evangelical preacher, he attacked the “contagion” beginning “smooth and flowery,” luxury and voluptuousness lull men so that “nothing is listened to but the music of adulation and the song of pleasure.” Conscience and reflection had been silenced “in the roar of obstreperous jollity.” He could only hope for a rebirth of conscience, which “breaks upon the hour of mirth, dashes the brightest joys with sorrow, and pours poison in the bowl of sensuality.” … Temptations of a luxurious life were what led public officials down the paths of corruption. The “insuperable lethargy” he had noted before could be tied to the “enfeebling lull” of luxury.

“Lo! What splendid edifices, what costly furniture, what magnificent apparel, what voluptuous festivity, what luxurioius banquets! The enfeebling lull of music, sprightly dances, gay gardens, splendid theatres, gilded baths, intoxicating masquerades, luxuriant tables, and public gaming houses are now looked upon as innocent and even necessary gratifications. How often are fortunes dissipated, and health impaired in loose festivity, and luxurious enjoyments?”

“We tread close upon the heels of our brethren in Britain, we imitate them in dress, in manners, in equipage, in riot, in voluptuousness, in every softening pleasure and degrading vice. Infatuated Americans! So swiftly to lay hold of every luxurious habit, and so eagerly to lick up every foreign and pernicious vice. Where now is that simplicity in manners and in dress more enchanting far than the false glitter and borrowed refinements?”
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There was a likelihood that luxury would breed more luxury, but the most frightening possibility derived from the proposal to establish in the colonies a nobility on the Old World model.
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“Is not a nation far gone in luxury and on the verge of ruin, when places in Parliament are made merchandise and merely bought and sold, when most things are carried by a bare majority often procured by little arts, when electors give up their dirty souls for pay, and when in short corruption is reduced to a system? Is not a nation far gone in luxury, when crowds of prostitutes set themselves up for sale, when the land swarms with spies and parasites and sychophants, when nothing is sought for but wealth to sate avarice, and titles to sate vanity? Is it not an evident token of degeneracy and mark of declension, when pensions are bestowed undeservedly, and taxes multiplied unnecessarily, merely to keep up a number of obsequious dependents, or a legion of rascally tax-gatherers? When trade is fettered with severe restrictions, when the people groan under an enormous national debt, when selfishness, venality, and licentiousness universally prevail, is not the prospect terrible, has it not an appearance of fatality?”
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“Let Rome, let Athens, let Sparta speak.”

Peace

Jeremy MacNealy