present some process of social degeneration, which we must perforce recognise, and which, pending a satisfactory analysis, may conveniently be distinguished by the name of ‘decadence.’ I am well aware that though the space I have just devoted to the illustration of my theme provided by Roman history is out of all proportion to the general plan of this address, yet the treatment of it is inadequate and perhaps unconvincing. But those who are most reluctant to admit that decay, as distinguished from misfortune, may lower the general level of civilisation, can hardly deny that in many cases that level may for indefinite periods shew no tendency to rise. If decadence be unknown, is not progress exceptional? Consider the changing politics of the unchanging East[1]. Is it not true that there, while wars and revolutions, dynastic and religious, have shattered ancient states and brought new ones into being, every community, as soon as it has risen above the tribal and nomad condition, adopts with the rarest exceptions a form of government which, from its very generality in Eastern lands, we habitually call an ‘oriental despotism’? We may crystallise and re-crystallise a soluble salt as often as we please, the new crystals will always resemble the old ones. The crystals, indeed, may be of different sizes, their component molecules may occupy different positions within the crystalline structure, but the structure itself will be of one immutable pattern. So it is, or seems to be, with these oriental states. They rise, in turn, upon the ruins of their predecessors, themselves predestined to perish by a like fate. But whatever their origin or history, they are always either autocracies or aggregations of autocracies; and no differences of race, of creed, or of language seem sufficient to vary the violent monotony of their internal history. In the eighteenth century theorists were content to attribute the political servitude of the Eastern world to the unscrupulous machinations of tyrants and their tools. And such explanations are good as far as they go. But this, in truth, is not very far. Intrigue, assassination, ruthless repression, the whole machinery of despotism supply particular explanations of particular incidents. They do not supply the general explanation of the general phenomenon. They tell you how this ruler or that obtained absolute power. They do not tell you why every ruler is absolute. Nor can I furnish the answer. The fact remains that over large and relatively civilised portions of the world popular government is profoundly unpopular, in the sense that it is no natural or spontaneous social growth. Political absolutism not political freedom is the familiar weed of the country. Despots change but despotism remains: and if through alien influences, like those exercised by Greek cities in Asia, or by British rule in India, the type is modified, it may well be doubted whether the modification could long survive the moment when its