Commercial Success Can Weaken Character

Edinburgh Merchant Street 2026

The Spartan King Agesilaus, of the 4th Century BC, was asked why his city lacked defensive walls. His response was that his citizens, trained soldiers since childhood, were each a stone in the realm’s fortifications.

Ferguson specifically cites this when describing that a wealthy nation ‘can hire numbers of men, erect ramparts, and furnish the implements of war; [but] the possessions of the fearful are easily seized,..ramparts may be scaled where they are not defended by valour; and arms are of consequence only in the hands of the brave. The band [i.e. the soldiers] to which Agesilaus pointed as the wall of his city, made a defence for their country more permanent, and more effectual, than the rock and the cement with which other cities were fortified.’

Sparta’s free men were able to afford the time to train as its lands were farmed by state owned helots (or serfs) and in numbers that far exceeded the soldier citizens of Sparta. In Ferguson’s words, ‘We look for liberality of mind among those citizens who, by their fortunes, are relieved from sordid cares and attentions. This was the description of a free man at Sparta.’ In other words, the Spartans were free to focus on what mattered, which in those days was defence, and to control the helots from uprising.

Some two hundred pages later in his Essay on the History of Civil Society, Ferguson took the Spartan analogy further, ‘If equal justice and freedom should terminate in rendering every class equally servile, we make a nation of helots, and have no free citizens.’

On a separate, but related point in his manuscript, while Ferguson acknowledged the economic benefits of specialisation, he wrote, ‘The separation of professions serves, in some measure, to break the bands of society.’ Specialisation doesn’t just fragment know-how, it can shatter society. Two people might share a shift in the same trade, yet undertake tasks so distinct and narrow that they routinely pass within feet of the other without exchanging a word.

Bringing these thoughts together, Ferguson’s insight was that as a nation grew wealthier its citizens would become disenchanted, not feeling the need to build character nor defend its freedom. ‘When the price of freedom comes to be paid, the heavy sword of the victor may fall.’ Whether that victor be a foreign foe, or the inability to curb political extremism, income inequality, global warming or AI, Ferguson’s warning that a nation’s prosperity can erode character has universal ramifications.