Failing The Trial of Prosperity
A 1794 book explains why democracy is doomed
Robert Bisset (1759-1805) hated democracy. His book 'Sketch of Democracy’, written in 1794, predicted why it’s failing in the West today.1
Democracy, he points out, invariably fails ‘the trial of prosperity’ for four main reasons.
Without war, civil war
The Roman republic decayed after the defeat of Carthage. Fear of an external enemy unites people. Without this, they descend into quarrelling:
“Had a Hannibal always continued to hover over the Romans, their democracy might have produced no dreadful convulsions.”
But "no eminent leader remained to employ them abroad, and divert their attention from internal politics.”
Without an external enemy, democracy becomes its own enemy. Without war, civil war.
Identity is forged in conflict. For fallen man, war isn't merely about competing over scarce resources.
It’s an expression of our bellicosity.
Handouts are harmful
In Rome, “bread and circuses” meant “the lowest of the populace could subsist with little industry.”
But prosperity affords idleness. And idleness breeds vice.
“Exemption from the necessity of bodily labor, in minds either by power or by habits unfitted for intellectual exertions and rational enjoyments, never fails to produce vice and corruption. Idleness in such, naturally causes debauchery.”
Work isn't something we do to fix problems. Without it, there will always be problems.
Our bodies and minds are made for work.
All men are not political equals
Any system that can’t admit this is doomed to fail.
Consider, Bisset says, how “the trial of prosperity” increases the risk of bribery. Even small bribes can swing the votes of “men of no rank or property”.
Oligarchy then ensues:
“The frequent accessions to the number of votes from the emancipation of slaves debased the commons as a body, and rendered them, as extension of suffrage to men of no rank or property must always do, more easily influenced by factious and designing men.”
As the Bible warns, all things obey money.
Degrading politics
Democracy means appealing to ignorant voters. This means using debased tactics. And this degrades politics.
“Extension of suffrage to the lowest orders, every real patriot then must reprobate as the source of political corruption and moral depravity.”
Rome, Bisset reminds us, owed its rise to ‘aristocratic authority and exertions’ and its fall to democracy.
Why democracy fails the prosperity test
Bisset's four reasons explain why the comfort of modernity is also its curse.
Without war, civil war.
Prosperity affords idleness; idleness breeds vice.
Men are not political equals.
Appealing to the ignorant degrades politics.
The whole book is available online here: https://archive.org/details/sketchdemocracy00bissgoog