inertia, of torpor, I will not say of oppression, because there is no feeling of this, but at any rate of repression. The case is not unexampled. There have been a large number of little aristocratic republics, where the subjects have been treated in this way, like sheep, well looked after and, in a material sense, happy, but without any intellectual or moral activity. Is this civilization? And is such a people civilizing itself?"
I do not know whether it is actually civilizing itself; but certainly the people of whom he speaks might be very "civilized." Otherwise, we should have to rank among savage tribes or barbarians all the aristocratic republics, of ancient and modern times, which Guizot confessedly includes as instances of his hypothesis. The general instinct would certainly be offended by a method that forbids not only the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, and the Spartans to enter the temple of civilization, but also the Venetians, the Genoese, the Pisans, and all the free Imperial cities of Germany, in a word all the powerful municipalities of the last few centuries. This conclusion seems in itself too violently paradoxical to be admitted by the common sense to which it appeals; but besides this, it has, I think, to face a still greater difficulty. These little aristocratic States which, owing to their form of government, Guizot refuses to accept as capable of civilization, have never, in most cases, possessed a special and unique culture. However powerful many of them may have been, they were in this respect assimilated to peoples who were differently governed, but very near them in race; they merely shared in a common civilization. Thus, though the Carthaginians and the Phoenicians were at a great distance from each other, they were nevertheless united by a similar form of culture, which had its prototype in Assyria. The Italian republics took part in the movement of ideas and opinions which were dominant in the neighbouring monarchies. The Imperial towns of Swabia and Thuringia were quite independent politically, but were otherwise wholly within the sweep of the general progress or decadence of the German race. Hence while Guizot is distributing his orders of merit among the nations
