The Old Roman World | Page 8

rule, executive talents; and these qualities, eminently adapted to worldly greatness, made the Romans universal masters, even if they do not make them interesting. They developed great strength, resource, will, and even made them wise in administration, possibly great civilizers, since centralized power is better than anarchies; yet these traits do not make us love them, or revere them. Providence doubtless ordered the universal monarchy, which only universal war could establish, for the good of the world at that time, for the advancement of civilization itself. Universal dominion must be succeeded by universal peace, and in such a peace the higher qualities and virtues and talents can only be manifested, so that the Roman rule was not a calamity, but a very desirable despotism. Yet despotism it was,--cold, remorseless, self-seeking. War made the Romans practical, calculating, overbearing, proud, scornful, imperious.
[Sidenote: Success of the Romans in war.]
But war made them a great people, and made them eminent in certain great qualities. Their success in war is tantamount to saying that in one great field of genius, which civilization honors, they not merely distinguished themselves, and gained a proud fame which will never die out of the memory of man, but that they have had no equals in any age. War enabled them to build up a vast empire, which empire gave a great impulse to ancient civilization.
[Sidenote: Providence seen in the ascendency of great nations.]
There is something very singular and mysterious in the results of wars which are caused and carried on by unprincipled and unscrupulous men. They are made to end in substantial benefits to the human race. The wrath of man, in other words, is made to praise God, showing that He is the Sovereign ruler on this earth, and uses what instruments He pleases to carry out his great and benevolent designs. However atrocious the causes of wars, and execrable the spirit in which they are carried out, they are ever made to subserve the benefit of future ages, and the great cause of civilization in its vast connections. Men may be guilty, and may be punished for their wickedness, and execrated through all time by enlightened nations; still they are but tools of the higher power. I do not say that God is the author of wars any more than He is of sin; but wars are yet sent as a punishment to those whom they directly and immediately affect, while they unbind the cords of slavery, and relax the hold of tyrants. They are like storms in the natural world: they create a healthier moral life, after the disasters are past. Those ambitious men, who seek to add province to province and kingdom to kingdom, and for whom no maledictions are too severe, since they shed innocent blood, rarely succeed unless they quarrel with doomed nations incapable of renovation. Thus Babylon fell before Cyrus when her day had come, and she could do no more for civilization. Thus Persia, in her turn, yielded to the Grecian heroes when she became enervated with the luxuries of the conquered kingdoms. Thus Greece again succumbed to Rome when she had degenerated into a land where every vice was rampant. The passions which inflamed Cyrus, and Alexander, and Pompey were alike imperious, and their policy was alike unscrupulous. They simply were bent on conquest, and on establishing powerful empires, which conquests doubtless resulted in the improvement of the condition of mankind. There is also something hard and forbidding in the policy of successful statesmen. We are shocked at their injustice, cruelty, and rapaciousness; but they are often used by Providence to raise nations to preeminence, when their ascendency is, on the whole, a benefit to the world. There is nothing amiable or benign in the characters of such men as Oxenstiern, Richelieu, or Bismarck, but who can doubt the wisdom of their administration? It is seldom that any nation is allowed to have a great ascendency over other nations unless the general influence of the dominant State is favorable to civilization; and when this influence is perverted the ascendency passes away. This is remarkably seen in the history of the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman Empires, and still more forcibly in the empire of the popes in the Middle Ages, and of the vast influence of France and England during the last hundred years. This is both a mystery and a fact. It is mysterious that bad men should be allowed to succeed so often, but it is one of the sternest facts of life, only to be explained on the principle that they are instruments in the hands of the Great Moral Governor whose designs we are not able to fathom, yet the wisdom of which is subsequently, though imperfectly, made known. It was wicked in the sons