ordered the servant to look out half a dozen of the best and choicest wine in his cellar, to take it to the butcher, and beg his acceptance of it as a small present from his master. The servant was surprised, but did as he was ordered. A short time after, he came and informed Machiavelli that the butcher had been stabbed and killed on the spot by a man whom he had insulted. Machiavelli smiled, and said:"You see that present of mine acted like poison upon him. Instead of repressing his violent temper, and correcting his ill manners, as he might have done if I had resented his insolence at the time, he has gone on from bad to worse, till he has at last met with the proper punishment."

In the case of Spain, besides that universal dissolution of all morality which is the inevitable consequence of a system of universal conquest and plunder, and which was common to her with Rome and Turkey, there was another point of coincidence with Rome, though not with Turkey. Spain, like Rome, had once possessed institutions comparatively good, which gave her a certain amount of health, strength, and energy as a nation. These institutions the first princes of the House of Austria-Charles V., his minister, Cardinal Ximenes, and his son, Philip II., who were to Spain what the Cæsars were to Rome, -almost entirely destroyed. The difference between the empire which Philip II. inherited from his father, and the empire which he left to his successors, is a

true measure of the effect of the work of these profound politicians, who deemed themselves able not merely to overreach and subjugate man, but to circumvent God. They received, at their accession to power, a nation which, from its valour, its intelligence, and its energy, seemed able to conquer all the world. By first destroying the institutions which had produced that valour, that energy, and that intelligence, and then extending their work of corruption and degradation, by seeking to conquer all the world, they left to after ages the same nation in such a state of decrepitude and decay, that but for its extent of territory, and the compact and naturally defensive form of that territory, Spain would have been blotted from among the nations of the earth, as Athens and Carthage and Rome had been blotted from the roll of nations. Such appears to be the retribution decreed by the eternal laws of the Omnipotent, as the punishment for the lust of unjust dominion, and for all the robbery, cruelty, and oppression perpetrated in the pursuit of that dominion.

I have mentioned, in the preceding chapter, as some measure of the decline of a nation's strength, the immense sums laid out upon houses and palaces. That cruel tyrant and savage bigot, Philip II., is said to have laid out upon the Escurial, the largest palace in Europe, about three millions sterling.

No change took place in the form of the govern

ment of the Turks similar to that which took place in the form of the government of the Spaniards, by the abolition of the free constitutional assembly, called the Cortes, to account for the decline of their military strength. From the first, the government of Turkey was a pure military despotism. The Sultan ruled with the same absolute power as the general of an army; considering all his subjects as slaves, whose lives and properties were at his disposal. As there were, consequently, no principles in the constitution of the Turkish government to act as checks upon misgovernment, or as preservatives or restoratives of its original strength (for it possessed originally the strength and energy which belong to an energetic military despotism), the wonder is not that it should in time fall into decrepitude, but that it should continue vigorous so long as it did. Lord Bacon, who views the subject without reference to the form or goodness of the government, attributes the power and greatness which the Turks, as well as some other nations, possessed for a time, to their making the profession of arms their principal honour, study, and occupation. And he adds, "that it is a most certain oracle of time, that those States that continue long in that profession (as the Romans and Turks principally have done) do wonders; and those that have professed arms but for an age have, notwithstanding, commonly attained that greatness in that age, which

maintained them long after, when their profession and exercise of arms hath grown to decay."* Bacon also considers it as an advantage possessed by the Turks that they never were without a specious ground or pretext for quarrels and wars, whereby their military qualities might be kept in constant exercise. "The Turk," he says, "hath at hand, for cause of war, the propagation of his law or sect-a quarrel that he may always command.”

Notwithstanding, however, all these advantages, the strength of the Turkish system began after a time to exhibit unequivocal symptoms of decline. The Essay of Lord Bacon above quoted was written nearly three hundred years ago, and yet he there says of that greatness, which is the consequence of military strength" the Turks have it at this day, though in great declination." Bacon's statement is in accordance with the facts. The principal causes assigned for the decline of the Turkish power were the habit contracted by Suleiman I., towards the end of his days (he died in 1566), of no longer presiding in person at the divan, the promotion of his favourites to the first dignities of the State, the influence of the harem in public affairs, and the immense power and wealth of the grand vizirs. † More than a century after this, however, the Turks threatened all Europe; but they never altogether recovered from the defeats

* Essay on the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates. † Turquie, par Jouannin et Van Gaver, p. 155. Paris, 1853.

they received, first, from John Sobieski, under the walls of Vienna, in 1683, and thirty-three years later, from Eugene, at Peterwardeïn. The strength of their position still protected them from total destruction; and in their case the world was enabled to see of what quality are the dregs of a military despotism suffered to run out its full course. For a time the head of a military despotism must possess some of the qualities, such as courage, hardihood, and sagacity, which raised the first man-of whom he is the representative to his post. But when conquest has procured wealth and the means of luxury, and time has given a certain degree of stability to the dominion at first conquered and held by valour, unremitted toil, and peril, the head of a military despotism no longer possesses either the qualities of a general or a statesman, of a hardy soldier or a constitutional king. He becomes an effeminate sensualist, who rules his empire and commands his armies through the ministers of his pleasures, and the whole machine of his government becomes one mass of imbecility, rottenness, and corruption. Thus the strength of the Turks lasted as long as the Sultan was a man of energy, who devoted his time to labour and not to pleasure, and while, as a consequence of this devotion to the duties of his place, he gave all the highest posts under him to the greatest military merit. But even when Montecuculi wrote, this mortal disease had com