race. When nations have become unfit for self-government, not merely in the constitutional sense of the term, but in the sense of not being able to select from among their body persons of sufficient probity to conduct the government without open profligacy, the frank brutality of foreign barbarians is preferable to the polite scoundrelism of native citizens. As national history begins with an invasion, or what is equivalent thereto, so it may end with an invasion which terminates the native despotism. The relation between the effete conquered nations and the conquerors is subject to considerable variety, depending, however, more upon the stage of national progress in which the conquerors may happen to be than upon the condition of the conquered, for in no stage are different nations more uniform and alike than in the last stage of stagnant despotism. There is no greater equaliser than age in nations or in men. "Plurima sunt juvenum discrimina: pulchrior ille Et jam læve caput, madidique infantia nasi."-JUVENAL. The conquerors of effete nations are usually those migratory and unsettled tribes, who, nurtured in the rough forest or the mountain, make occasional descents on the peaceful inhabitants of the plain. If the latter are conquered while they are simple agriculturists, the result is the foundation of an aristocracy and a progressive nation. If the attack is made while the nation is sound, healthy, and not enervated by luxury, the result is that which followed the attack of the Gauls against Rome in the 108th Ol., or of Xerxes against Greece. If, on the other hand, the nation is unwarlike and corrupt, success awaits the invaders as it did the Macedonians and afterwards the Romans in Greece, the Turks in the Byzantine empire, the Tartars in China, the Moguls in Hindostan, and the French and Austrians in Italy. The species of conquest most easy of any to make is the conquest of a nation already sunk under a central despotism; for, as has been truly said, "The subjects of a despotic government are so wonderfully ignorant of what is passing, and, from the habit of slavery, so indifferent to public events, except in so far as they affect their own private convenience from day to day, that they bear the greatest political changes with an apathy hardly to be conceived by the knowing, jealous inhabitants of a free society."* But when that conquest is made, a new nation is not founded. The conquered remain the same abject, servile, corrupt wretches that the governed had been under the stagnant despotism, without hope, without faith, without loyalty, and without respect. The conquerors, meanwhile, take the place of the old despotic functionaries. These are the pashas of Turkey, the generals of Alexandria, the prefects of Rome in Greece and Egypt. Each has committed to his watchful care one member of the long captive train of fair anile cities and dowager queens of the ocean. Now there will be no more progress after such a conquest than before, because, according to the view which this book is intended to establish, national progress consists in a development of the commons or subject race, aided, it may be, by certain changes in the aristocrats. The conquered subjects of these despotisms have passed through their development, and never, so far as history discloses to us, is the course retraversed. It is obvious that the position of the conquerors is one of great temptation, for they settle not among a hardy, simple population whom it would take little to arouse against their conquerors, a population submissive only because, strong themselves, they acknowledge the new race to be stronger. The possession of such a class of subjects urges the aristocrats to the maintenance of their * Lord Dudley's Letters, p. 102. vigour and martial habits, while at the same time if they wanted luxuries they would have to invent them. On the contrary, the warriors who settle among an effete and luxurious nation, versed in the arts of civilised delight, are easily accepted as more honest rulers than those who went before them, have little to fear from the open attack of their subjects, and are quickly taught by them all the ways of accomplished effeminacy. Instead, therefore, of joining, like the aristocrats who conquer a simple agricultural peasantry in the course of national progress which has been sketched in the foregoing essays, these conquerors soon acquire the peaceful, idle habits of the effete nations they have conquered, and themselves give way as soon as a relay of stronger and hardier men comes to compete their empire. Such have been the causes of the degeneracy of the Turks in Europe, of the Mahometans in India, the Mantchoo Tartars in China, the Macedonians in Greece, the Parthians in Babylonia and Persia.* But even when they have fallen from their high estate, and, in common with their former subjects, are ruled by new masters, there is to be observed in them a higher feeling of honour, less low and sordid cunning and depravity than the twice conquered race exhibits. For ages the descendants of the two races are capable of being distinguished by their ethical qualities. It is, I think, impossible to deny that such conquests as these are beneficial to the conquered in proportion to the probity and moderation of the conquerors; and as each successive layer wears out, the new race provides for the nation a want severely felt, namely, a set of rulers less dastardly and depraved than those before in office. A curious fate was that of the functionarism of imperial * Niebuhr, H. R. v. 309, sqq. † Among other witnesses of this contrast between the Mahometan and the Hindoo in British India, is Mr. Mill (Hist. of British India, ii. 434—457). So between the Mantchoo Tartars and the Chinese, M. Huc (Huc's China, i. 169). Rome. No sooner was despotic functionarism completely established than the character of functionaries became intolerably corrupt*; but instead of the barbarians at once making a successful incursion and totally outrooting the Romans from the government, they were gradually absorbed into the government; and the native functionarism, too corrupt to go on without infusion of new blood, was from the time of Diocletian gradually supplanted by barbarians, and at last saw, in the person of Maximin, a barbarian for its central head. After that the only political change in Roman civilisation is the increased degree in which the native rulers were supplanted by the rude but brave and frank barbarians. It is manifest that the incongruity between warlike tribesmen and cultivated townsmen must be so great as, irrespective of their governmental position, to preclude all sympathy between the two races; and therefore for a refined effete population, the most suitable rulers are those more akin to themselves in civilisation, however alien they may be in moral character. I have no hesitation in saying that the Mahometan conquest of India conferred a benefit upon the conquered people. After their conquest the Mahometan character declined, and the same good that resulted from their conquest to those whom they conquered now results to both Mahometan and Hindoo from the British dominion. To a population incapable of self-government, in any sense of the term, there is supplied a tribe of rulers on whose probity and good intentions all can implicitly rely, while the civilisation of the conquerors prevents their being those foes to order and security which rude warriors often are. Were their British rulers removed, the natives of India would feel, like the Cappadocians of old, naked without their chains. The Parsees alone are fit for freedom, and they are too few to live without rulers and *Montesquieu, Grandeur et Décad., ch. xvii. protectors belonging to a strange race. So necessary is an absolute government for the Hindoos and Mahometans, that our Parliament occasionally presents to the world one of the most curious spectacles that the incongruity between nations in different stages ruled by one race can produce, the spectacle of the senate of a country that makes freedom its boast framing a despotic government for India. In another way also the rule of India by the English is curious. Our countrymen who go out to India do not depart from us for ever to live as conquerors, but after a period of rule, long enough to imbue them with many of the personal characteristics of conquerors, they return to their native country plain and even humble citizens. Those who are most like the conquering settlers of other countries are the serjeants, who purchase their discharge and settle in India. According to the common report, they soon give way to the corrupt influences of the natives, and contribute but negatively to the renown of England or the benefits derived from our rule; and among the causes of the late mutiny, General Jacob enumerates the lowering of the English character, produced by a long residence in India, a curious operation of the same causes which softened the first Teutonic conquerors of Italy and of France, and the Macedonians in Greece. This government by prefecture is perhaps the most beneficial that can be established in a country of corrupt morality, so long as the morality of the nation which supplies the prefects is high. Our Indian government will continue to be a blessing to the natives, so long as our character for probity remains. If that fails, then our government would be worse than that of the Arabs, the Tartars, or the Persians, for they, living permanently in the country, would take some interest in relieving it from utter misery, while a corrupt English Verres going to it, but as a mine to make money out of, would return to spend that money in the only country to which he had |