The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1873-02-22

/ usually about what The government may
be, and the public opinion that sustained
men was like them. We may safely date
the decline of Rome from the triumvirate,
for then her people had lost the native sim.
plicity that made them powerful. Pass on
a few years and the details of her history
become sickening, no crime is too great to
be committed by her rulers and connived
at by her people, and when the emperor
was overtaken in his crime by the hand OF
violence, the people seem to have cared lit
tie who succeeded as long as the vintage
was full. People who believe the world to
be growing worse, ought to read the his
tory of the past, and they must be strangely
prejudiced they do not end with thanks
giving that they live in the Nineteenth
Century, rather than in the Fourth.
Our country has not yet been sold to the
highest bidder, and but one President has
been murdered. Well christianity appear
ed; its mission is presumed to be the re-
form of the world, but in the hands of
Constantine, it too, became a means of
corruption, until religion was worse than
politics. Seldom has the christian religion
seen darker day than that which made it
the State religion in land as hopelessly
demoralized as Rome. One of the best
characters in her later history is Julian the
Apostate. The hour of vengeance was
coming, when the religion and politics of a
country become alike corrupt; when her
priests lead in the drinking festivals, God
finds mode of punishment. He may not
pour birthstone upon it as on Sodom, but
it's punishment will be none the less sure
Across the Danube came the barbarous
hosts of the north, the emperors, careless
of anything but their pleasures, made scant
resistance, and Rome fell victim, not of
arms, but of luxury and license, a warning
to all succeeding ages to avoid the rocks on
which she made shipwreck. Familiarity
with her early history destroys all POSSIBLE
ity ofsympathy with her later misfortunes,
but does not destroy the lesson taught
Rome fell prey, not to the valor of the
Goths, but to her own drunkenness; but
at some periods of her history, familiarity
with its records make it contemptible.-
Such was never more the case than when
the bloody Justinian or Helena sat upon
the throne and gave laws to the eastern
churches. Just then arose purer, if
less true faith, in the Arabian Deserts
The rise and spread of the faith of Islam
was not because it was true, but because
its professors were better men-less addict
ed to the use of wine, more Injured to hard
ships than those who obeyed the emperor.
The almost instantaneous spread of the
new faith from Mecca to Gibralter would
seem stranger than it does, did we not
know something of the character of those
they opposed. That the religion of Ma
hommed gained the place it did, was be-
cause its believers were sober, earnest men,
opposed to a religion the very priests of
which were drunkards; and of course the
t1ocks worse than the priests. But the
Greek Empires existed living death, I'M
til the dawn of our centuries; but vengeance
came at last, when in 1852, Mahommed
strobe up the aisle of St. Sophia's, and
from her altar proclaimed the prophet of
Mecca. The altar scarcely more desecrated
then, than it has been in the centuries
past; even the very pride that reared it was
in defiance of the principles of the religion
to which its affairs were dedicated.
Here, l close sketch that might be the |
of volume. History often re-
peats, and the nations that now divide the |
empires of the world must fall as those of |
the past have done, if they give way to the
same vices. After all, the security of any |
nation is not in its wealth, or arms, but in
the simple virtue of her people. If Eng
land and America walk in the steps of
Rome, their fate will be similar. Our hope |
is in sobriety, justice, simplicity; lacking
these it may not be long till the New Zeal
ander sits upon the arches of London
bridge to sketch the ruins of the city or
some Patagonian Layard will dig rare
from the site of New York.
The lessons of the past is, that sin is
not alone reproach to, but the destruction
of any people, and the more thoroughly the |
future learns this lesson from the past, the |
more hopeful will its prospects be.