"Lycurgus was not frightened at idleness! A Lacedemonian, happening to be in Athens (where idleness was forbidden) during the punishment of a citizen who had been found guilty, asked to see the Athenian thus condemned for having exercised the rights of a free man....It was one of the principles of Lycurguss, acted upon for several centuries, that free men should not follow lucrative professions....The women disdained domestic labor; they did not spin their wool themselves, as did the other Greeks ; they left their slaves to make their clothing for them."--Pastoret: History of Legislation.
Could any thing be more contradictory? Lycurgus proscribed property among the citizens, and founded the means of subsistence on the worst form of property,--on property obtained by force.
What wonder, after that, that a lazy city, where no industry was carried on, became a den of avarice? The Spartans succumbed the more easily to the allurements of luxury and Asiatic voluptuousness, being placed entirely at their mercy by their own coarseness.The same thing happened to the Romans, when military success took them out of Italy,--a thing which the author of the prosopopoeia of Fabricius could not explain.It is not the cultivation of the arts which corrupts morals, but their degradation, induced by inactive and luxurious opulence.The instinct of property is to make the industry of Daedalus, as well as the talent of Phidias, subservient to its own fantastic whims and disgraceful pleasures.Property, not wealth, ruined the Spartans.
When Solon appeared, the anarchy caused by property was at its height in the Athenian republic."The inhabitants of Attica were divided among themselves as to the form of government.Those who lived on the mountains (the poor) preferred the popular form;those of the plain (the middle class), the oligarchs; those by the sea coast, a mixture of oligarchy and democracy.Other dissensions were arising from the inequality of fortunes.The mutual antagonism of the rich and poor had become so violent, that the one-man power seemed the only safe-guard against the revolution with which the republic was threatened." (Pastoret:
History of Legislation.)
Quarrels between the rich and the poor, which seldom occur in monarchies, because a well established power suppresses dissensions, seem to be the life of popular governments.
Aristotle had noticed this.The oppression of wealth submitted to agrarian laws, or to excessive taxation; the hatred of the lower classes for the upper class, which is exposed always to libellous charges made in hopes of confiscation,--these were the features of the Athenian government which were especially revolting to Aristotle, and which caused him to favor a limited monarchy.Aristotle, if he had lived in our day, would have supported the constitutional government.But, with all deference to the Stagirite, a government which sacrifices the life of the proletaire to that of the proprietor is quite as irrational as one which supports the former by robbing the latter; neither of them deserve the support of a free man, much less of a philosopher.
Solon followed the example of Lycurgus.He celebrated his legislative inauguration by the abolition of debts,--that is, by bankruptcy.In other words, Solon wound up the governmental machine for a longer or shorter time depending upon the rate of interest.Consequently, when the spring relaxed and the chain became unwound, the republic had either to perish, or to recover itself by a second bankruptcy.This singular policy was pursued by all the ancients.After the captivity of Babylon, Nehemiah, the chief of the Jewish nation, abolished debts; Lycurgus abolished debts; Solon abolished debts; the Roman people, after the expulsion of the kings until the accession of the Caesars, struggled with the Senate for the abolition of debts.
Afterwards, towards the end of the republic, and long after the establishment of the empire, agriculture being abandoned, and the provinces becoming depopulated in consequence of the excessive rates of interest, the emperors freely granted the lands to whoever would cultivate them,--that is, they abolished debts.No one, except Lycurgus, who went to the other extreme, ever perceived that the great point was, not to release debtors by a coup d'etat, but to prevent the contraction of debts in future.
On the contrary, the most democratic governments were always exclusively based upon individual property; so that the social element of all these republics was war between the citizens.
Solon decreed that a census should be taken of all fortunes, regulated political rights by the result, granted to the larger proprietors more influence, established the balance of powers,--in a word, inserted in the constitution the most active leaven of discord; as if, instead of a legislator chosen by the people, he had been their greatest enemy.Is it not, indeed, the height of imprudence to grant equality of political rights to men of unequal conditions? If a manufacturer, uniting all his workmen in a joint-stock company, should give to each of them a consultative and deliberative voice,--that is, should make all of them masters,--would this equality of mastership secure continued inequality of wages? That is the whole political system of Solon, reduced to its simplest expression.
