1776

It is an interesting coincidence -- if coincidence it is -- that the first edition of Edward Gibbon's monumental cautionary tale on empires, "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," came out in the same year, 1776, that a bunch of dissatisfied prominent North American colonists met in Philadelphia, Pa., and hammered out the Declaration of Independence, a document that announced the emergence of a new nation. That year Gibbon hadn't actually finished his book. He spent the next 12 years getting the rest of it worked out, just as the American Revolutionary War, having already started the year before, had another seven years to run.

It's too much to suppose that Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and the others had that quickly read Gibbon's account of the Roman experiences with government, but undoubtedly they had studied some of the same histories as those that Gibbon consulted, as had writers like Thomas Paine and John Locke, whose thoughts about what good government should be influenced the writers and signers of the Declaration.

Gibbon's task was more comfortable by far. With his military life behind him -- he had served in the British militia during the Seven Years War while seeing no action -- he had only to sit back in London and Switzerland and take 20 years to pull togther his comprehensive history of the latter days of Rome. The American patriots meanwhile had to worry about going to the gallows together instead of separately while in the meantime forming a new government from scratch -- a government that not only would last for a while but also would have the flexibility to meet all sorts of future changes in conditions.

This past 4th of July, as on every 4th of July, people like to ask others what that holiday means to them.

On most 4ths of July, it doesn't mean much to me, and I think that if they were honest with themselves, most Americans would say the same, because with each passing year the idea of independence from the British becomes more abstract and distant in time and urgency. And if I had been around in the Revolutionary War era, I doubt that I would have noticed much change in conditions anyway.

But usually, when I think of the founding of this country, I like to wonder what those signers of the Declaration would think if they could see their new nation now. It's fortunate that the future can't be accurately predicted, because otherwise there would've been a lot of quill-quivering in that room! The presentday complexity and power of this country is so mind-boggling that at times the state of things seems to be beyond the true comprehension even of the large bodies of people who are charged with keeping things going.

Also this year in particular, the 4th of July reminds me to be grateful that there are enough people with the same high ideals that (aside from the slavery that they couldn't bring themselves to end) were generally to be found in that room of the Signers -- people who still have the interest and the fortitude to oppose and counteract the huge number of those in today's U.S. who have the same degree of mistaken notions, obsessive self-interest, and evil intentions as did the members of the Praetorian Guard, the Legions, and those with imperial pretensions, who, acting together, set into motion the events that led to a long series of very unhappy years for the Romans before the final breakup of their empire.

In 1776 Gibbon's British Empire had yet to hit its peak and color half the globe pink. Still in that year the wheels started turning that would lead to the loss of Britain's most important colony, and meanwhile the representatives of that small collection of 13 states on the North American East Coast that declared themselves United thereby started the ball rolling to create what would become the American Empire. Never mind that its leaders have long pretended not to see the country that way, just as the ancient Romans studiously stayed away from calling their supreme leaders dictators or kings, when that was in fact what they were.