Saturday, March 11, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

It's a cliche, I guess, and I shouldn't have been so surprised, but the parallels between the fall of the Holy Roman Empire and the US today are amazing.

I bought a book, A Short History of Italy, Henry Dwight Sedgwick, at Strand for a dollar several years ago, and just rescued it from our storage room at Garden City, Long Island.

Sedgwick, a member of an old New England family, was a important historian in his day. He writes that the City of Rome was the head of the world. That from East and West, North and South, "booty, spoils, taxes and tribute flowed into Rome. But, he remarks, that the riches acquired by conquest had "brought the seeds of Evil" with them.

"Society was divided into the very rich and the very poor. The simple laborious life of freeman was gone. The regular occupations of production had been abandoned to serfs and slaves; moderate incomes and plain living had disappeared. The middle class had been thrust down to the level of the plebs. In the country the small proprietors had been reduced to a position little better than serfs, while the great landlords had got vast tracts of land into their hands. Taxes had become heavier and heavier as the exigencies of the Empire grew; great numbers of officials were maintained and great mercenary armies. The rich controlled the government, and shifted almost the whole burden of taxation from their own shoulders to those of the poor. In the cities had grown up a vicious unemployed class, living on the distribution of bread which was paid for out of public revenues."