which are erroneously, yet generally called the people, are monarchical, or for trusting power into the hands of one man. All dictators have become such by popular power, if the commotion tended to a general change of government. It was the case in Rome when Cæsar ruled. The party in the Netherlands which clamored for the return of the Stadtholder against that great citizen De Witt, and was bent on giving the largest extent of hereditary power to the house of Orange, was the popular party. Cromwell was mainly supported by the anti-institutional army and its adherents. We may go farther. The rise of the modern principate, that is, the vast increase of the power of the prince and the breaking down of the baronial power, was everywhere effected by the help of the people. We have not here to inquire, whether in many of these struggles the people did not consciously or instinctively support the prince or leader against his opponents, because the ancient institutions had become oppressive. At present, it is the fact alone which we have to consider.

Probably it was this fact, together with some other reasons which caused Mr. Proudhon, the socialist, to utter the remarkable dictum that "no one is less democratic than the people."

The fact is certain that, merely because supreme power has been given by the people, or is pretended to have been conferred by the people, liberty is far from being insured. On the contrary, inasmuch as this theory rests on the theory of popular absolutism, it is invariably hostile to liberty, and, generally, forms the foundation of the most stringent and odious des

potism. To use the words of Burke: "Law and arbitrary power are in eternal enmity. . . It is a contradiction in terms, it is blasphemy in religion, it is wickedness in politics, to say that any man can have arbitrary power. We may bite our chains if we will; but we shall be made to know ourselves and be taught that man is born to be governed by law; and he that will substitute will in the place of it is an enemy to God."4

I add the words of a greater man, the elder Pitt, ho

and be it remembered that he uttered them when he was an old man.

แ "Power," said he, "without right is the most detestable object that can be offered to the human imagination; it is not only pernicious to those whom it subjects, but works its own destruction. Res detestabilis et caduca. Under the pretence of declaring law, the commons have made a law, a law for their own case, and have united in the same persons the offices of legislator and party and judge." Frederic the Great, of Prussia, saw this very clearly, for he said "he could very well understand how one man might feel a desire to make his will the law of others, but why thirty thousand or even thirty millions should submit to it he could not understand." This is a dictum of a monarch who probably knew or suspected as little of an institutional self-government as any one, and who continually complained of the power of parliament in changing ministers, when

4 Mr. Burke said so in 1788.
5 He spoke of Wilkes's expulsion.
VOL. II.-7

England was his ally. But was he sincere when he wrote those words? Was he still in his period of philosophic sentiment? Did he really not see why it so often happens, or did he utter them merely as something piquant?

By whatever process this vast popular power is transferred, or pretended to be transferred-for we must needs always add this qualification—is of no manner of importance with reference to liberty. Immolation brings death, though it should be selfimmolation, and of the two species of political slavery, that is probably the worst which boasts of having originated from free self-submission, such as Hobbes believed to have been the origin of all monarchy, and of which recent history has furnished an apparent frightful instance.

Nothing is easier than to show to an American or English reader that the origin of power has of itself no necessary connection with liberty. What Ameri

6 Raumer gives the dispatches from Mitchell, the English minister near the court of Frederic. The minister reports many complaints of the king, of this sort. But Frederic is not the only one who thus complained. General Walsh, that native Frenchman, who became minister of Spain, did the same. See Coxe's Memoirs, mentioned before. So when Russian statesmen desire to show the superiority of their government, they never fail to dwell on the low position of an English minister, inasmuch as he depends upon a parliamentary majority, or, as an English minister expressed it, must be the minister of public opinion. See Mr. Urquhart's Collection. I believe it will always be found that, where absolute governments come in contact with those of freemen, the former complain of the instability of the latter. They consider a change of ministry a revolution.

can would believe that a particle of liberty were left him if his country were denuded of every institution, federal or in the states, except the president of the whole, though he should continue to be elected every four years by the sweeping majority of the country from New York to St. Francisco? Or what Englishman would continue to boast of self-government, if a civil hurricane were to sweep from his country every institution, common law and all, except parliament, as an "omnipotent" body indeed?

The opposite of what we have called institutional self-government is that liberty which Rousseau conceived of, when, in his Social Contract, he not only assigns all power to the majority, and almost teaches what might be called a divine right of the majority, but declares himself against all division. He insists upon an inarticulated, unorganized, uninstitutional majority. It is a view which is shared by many millions of people on the European continent, and has deeply affected all the late and unsuccessful attempts at conquering liberty. Rousseau wrote in a captivating style, and almost always plausibly, very rarely profoundly. The plausible, however, is almost invariably false in all vast and high spheres; still it is that which is popular with those who have had no experience to guide them; and since the theory of Rousseau has had so decided an influence in those parts, and since no one can understand the recent history without having studied the Social Contract,7

7 The Contract Social was the bible of the most advanced convention men. Robespierre read it daily, and the influence of that book can be traced throughout the revolution. Its ideas, its sim

that theory may be called Rousseauism, for brevity's sake.

We return once more to the despotism founded upon pre-existing popular absolutism. The processes by which the transition is effected are various. The appointment may deceptively remain in the hands of the majority, as was the case when the president of the French republic was apparently elected for ten years, after the second of December; or the prætorians may appoint the Cæsar; or there may be apparent or real acclamation for real or pretended services; or the emperor may be appointed by auction, as in the case of the emperor Didius; or the process may be a mixed one. The process is of no importance; the facts are simply these, that the power thus acquired is despotic, and hostile to self-government; secondly, the power is claimed on the ground of absolute popular power; and, thirdly, it becomes the more uncompromising because it is claimed on the ground of popular power.

plicity and its sentimentality had all their effects. Indeed, we may say that two books had a peculiar influence in the French revolution, Rousseau's Social Contract and Plutarch's Lives, however signally they differ in character. The translation of Plutarch by Amyot in the sixteenth century-it was the period of Les Cents Contre Unand subsequent ones, had a great effect upon the ideas of a certain class of reflecting Frenchmen. We can trace this down to the revolution, and in it we find with a number of leading men, a turn of ideas, a conception of republicanism formed upon their view of antiquity, and a stoicism which may be fitly called Plutarchism. It is an element in that great event. It showed itself especially with the Brissotists, the Girondists, and noble Charlotte Corday was imbued with it. A very instructive paper might be written on the influence of Plutarch, ever since that first translation, in French history.