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CHAPTER XXXII.

IMPERATORIAL SOVEREIGNTY.

THE Cæsars of the first centuries always claimed their power as bestowed upon them by the people, and went so far even as to assume the prætorians, with an accommodating and intimidated senate, as the bodies which represented, for the time, the people. The Cæsars never rested their power upon divine right, nor did they boldly adopt the Asiatic principle in all its nakedness, that power-the sword, the bowstring, the mere possession of power-is the only foundation of the right to wield it. The majestas populi had been transferred to the emperor.1 Such

1 The idea of the populus vanished only at a late period from the Roman mind; that of liberty had passed away long before. Fronto, in a letter to Marcus Aurelius (when the prince was Cæsar), mentions the applause which he had received from the audience for some oration which he (Fronto) had delivered, and then continues thus: "Quorsum hoc retuli? uti te, Domine, ita compares, ubi quid in cœtu hominum recitabis, ut scias auribus serviendum: plane non ubique et omni modo, attamen nonnunquam et aliquando. Quod ubi facies, simile facere te reputato, atque illud facitis, ubi eos qui bestias strenue interfecerint, populo postulante ornatis aut manumittitis, nocentes etiam homines aut scelere damnatos, sed populo postulante conceditis. Ubique igitur populus dominatur et præpollet. Igitur ut populo gratum erit, ita facies atque ita dices." Epist. ad Marc. Cæs. lib. i. epis. 1.

was their theory. Julius, the first of the Cæsars, made himself sole ruler by the popular element, against the institutions of the country.

If it be observed here that these institutions were effete, that the Roman city-government was impracticable for an extensive empire, and that the civil wars had proved how incompatible the institutions of Rome had become with the actual state of the people, it will be allowed-not to consider the common fact that governments or leaders first do everything to corrupt the people or plunge them into civil wars, and then, "taking advantage of their own wrong," use the corruption and bloodshed as a proof of the necessity to upset the government2-it will be allowed, I say, that at any rate Cæsar did not establish liberty, or claim to be the leader of a free state, and that he made his appearance at the very close of a long period of freedom, marking the beginning of the most fearful period of decadence which is recorded; and that, in general, all rulers vested with this imperatorial sovereignty3 unfortunately never prepare a better state of things with reference to civil

2 Not unlike the conduct of the powers surrounding Poland, before they had sufficiently prepared her partition. The government of Poland was certainly a very defective one, but it was the climax of historical iniquity in Russia, Austria and Prussia to declare, after having used every sinister means to embroil the Polish affairs, and stir up faction, that the Poles were unfit to be a nation, and as neighbors too troublesome.

3 The idea which I have to express, would have prompted me, and the Latin word Cæsareus would have authorized me, to use the term Cæsarean Sovereignty. It is unquestionably preferable to imperatorial sovereignty, except that the English term Cæsarean has acquired a peculiar and distinct meaning, which might even have

AND SELF-GOVERNMENT.

79

dignity and healthful self-government. They may establish peace and police; they may silence civil war, but they also destroy those germs from which liberty might sprout forth at a future period. However long Napoleon the First might have reigned, his whole path must have led him farther astray from that of an Alfred, who allowed self-government to spring up, or respected it where he found it. We can never arrive at the top of a steeple by descending deeper into a pit.

Whatever Cæsar was, he did not, at any rate, usher in a new and prosperous era, either of liberty or popular grandeur. What is the Roman empire after Cæsar? Count the good rulers, and weigh them against the unutterable wretchedness resulting from the worst of all combinations-of lust of power, lust of flesh, cupidity and cruelty-and forming a stream of increasing demoralization, which gradually swept down in its course everything noble that had remained of better times.

suggested the idea of a mordant pun. I have, therefore, given up this term, although I had always used it in my lectures. It will be observed that I use the term sovereignty in this case with a meaning which corresponds to the sense in which the word sovereign continues to be used by many, designating a crowned ruler. I hope no reader will consider me so ignorant of history and political philosophy, as to think I am capable of believing in the real sovereignty of an individual. If sovereignty means the self-sufficient primordial power of society, from which all other powers are derived— and unless it mean this we do not stand in need of the term-it is clear that no individual ever possessed or can possess it. On the other hand, it is not to be confounded with absolute power. My views on this important subject have been given at length in my Political Ethics, as I have said before.

The Roman empire did, undoubtedly, much good, by spreading institutions which adhered to it in spite of itself, as seeds adhere to birds, and are carried to great distances; but it did this in spite, and not in consequence of the imperatorial sovereignty.

How, in view of all these facts of Roman history and of Napoleon the First, the French have been able once more boastfully to return to the forms and principles of imperatorial sovereignty, and once more to confound an apparently voluntary divestment of all liberty with liberty, is difficult to be understood by any one who is accustomed to selfgovernment. Whatever allowance we may make on the ground of vanity, both because it may please the ignorant to be called upon to vote yes or no, regarding an imperial crown, and because it may please them more to have an imperial government than one that has no such sounding name; whatever may be ascribed to military recollections—and, unfortunately, in history people only see prominent facts, as at a distance we see only the steeples of a town, and not the dark lanes and crowding misery which may be around them; whatever allowance may be made, and however well we may know that the whole could never have been effected without a wide-spread centralized government and an enormous army-it still remains surprising to us that the French, or at least those who now govern, please themselves in the imperatorial forms of Rome, and in presenting popular absolutism as a desirable form

4 See paper on Elections in the appendix.

of democracy. As though Tacitus had written like a contented man, and not with despair in his breast, breathed into many lines of his melancholy annals!

Yet so it is. Mr. Troplong, now president, I believe, of the senate, said on a solemn occasion, after the sanguinary second of December, when he was descanting on the services rendered by Louis Napoleon: "The Roman democracy conquered in Cæsar and in Augustus the era of its tardy avènement.”5 If imperatorial sovereignty were to be the lasting destiny of France, and not a phase, French history would consist of a long royal absolutism; a short

5 A sepulchral inscription in honor of Massaniello had an allusion conceived in a similar spirit. I give it entire, as it probably will be interesting to many readers.

Eulogium

Thomæ Aniello de Amalfio

Cetario mox Cesareo

Honore conspicио
qui

Oppressa patria Parthenope

cum

Suppressione nobilium

Combustione mobilium

Purgatione exulum
Extinctione vectigalium

Proregis injustitia
Liberata

Ab his qui liberavit est peringrate occisus
Etatis suæ anno vigesimo septimo, imperii vero

Decennio

Mortuus non minus quam vivus
Triumphavit

Tantæ rei populus Neapolitanus tanquam immemor
Posuit.

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