ment and an enormous army1-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 phase 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 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." 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 struggle for liberty, with the long fag-end of Roman history-the avènement of democracy 1 See paper on Elections, in the appendix. 2 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 Thoma Aniello de Amalfio Cetario mox Cesareo Honore conspicuo Oppressa patria Parthenope сит Suppressione nobilium Combustione mobilium Purgatione exulum Proregis injustitia Ab his qui liberavit est peringrate occisus Decennio Mortuus non minus quam vivus Tantæ rei populus Neapolitanus tanquam immemor Posuit. in its own destroyer, the imperatorial sovereignty, but without the long period of Roman republicanism. The same gentleman drew up the report of the senatorial committee to which had been referred the subject, whether the people should be called upon to vote Yes or No on the question: Shall the republic be changed into an empire? This extraordinary report possesses historical importance, because it is a document containing the opinion of such a body as the French senate, and the political creed of the ruling party. I shall give it, therefore, a place in the appendix. It contains the same views mentioned above, but spread over a considerable space, occasionally with surprising untenableness and inconsistency. So little, indeed, has imperatorial sovereignty to do with liberty, that we find even the earliest Asiatics ascribing the origin of their despotic power to unanimous election. I do not allude only to the case of Daioces, related by Herodotus, but to the mythological books of Asiatic nations. The following extract from the Mongolian cosmogony, whose mythos extends over a vast part of the East, is so curious and so striking an instance of "the avènement of democracy"-though not a tardy one-and so clear a conception of imperatorial sovereignty without a suspicion of liberty, as a matter of course, since the whole refers to Asia, that the reader will not be dissatisfied with the extract. "At this time (that is, after evil had made its appearance on earth) a living being appeared of great beauty and excellent aspect, and of a candid and honest soul and clear intellect. This being confirmed the righteous possessors in their property, and obliged the unrighteous possessors to give up what they had unjustly acquired. Thereupon the fields were distributed according to equal measure, and to every one was done even justice. Then all elected him for their chief, and yielded allegiance to him with these words: We elect thee for our chief, and we will never trespass thy ordinances. On account of this unanimous election, he is called in the Indian language Ma-ha-Ssamati-Radsha; in Thibetian, Mangboi-b Kurbai-r Gjabbo; and in Mongolian, Olana-ergukdeksen Chagran (the many-elected Monarch.)”1 "In the name of the people," are the words with which commenced the first decree of Louis Napoleon, issued after the second of December, when he had made himself master of France, and in which he called upon all the French to state whether he should have unlimited power for ten years. If it was not their will, the decree said, there was no necessity of violence, for in that case he would resign his power. This was naive. But theories or words proclaimed before the full assumption of imperatorial sovereignty are of as little importance as after it. Where liberty is not a fact and a daily recurring reality, it is not liberty. The word Libertas occurs frequently on the coins of Nero, and still more often the sentimental words, Fides Mutua, Liberalitas Augusta, Felicitas Publica. Why, it may still be asked, did the Cæsars recur to the people as the source of their power, and why did the civilians say that the emperor was legislator, and power-holder, inasmuch as the majestas of the Roman people, who had been legislators and power-holders, had been conferred upon him? Because, partly, the first Cæsars, at any rate the very first, had actually ascended the steps of power with the assistance of some popular element, cheered on somewhat like a diademed tribune; because there was and still is no other actual source of power imaginable than the people, whether they positively give it, or merely acquiesce in the imperatorial power, and because, as to the historical fact by which power in any given case is acquired, we must never forget that the ethical element 1 The History of the East Mongols, by Ssanang Ssetsen Changsaidshi, translated into German, by I. J. Schmidt. I owe this interesting passage to my friend, the Rev. Professor J. W. Miles, who directed my attention to the work. 2 As the words stand above, I own, they may be variously interpreted; but it would evidently lead me too far, were I to attempt a full statement of the sense in which I take them, which indeed I have done at length in my Political Ethics. and that of intellectual consistency are so inbred in man that, wherever humanity is developed, a constant desire is observable to make actions, however immoral or inconsistent, at least theoretically agree with them. No proclamation of war has ever avowed, I believe, that war was simply undertaken because he who issued the proclamation had the power and meant to use it fas aut nefas.1 Even Attila called himself the scourge of God. No matter what the violence of facts has been, however rudely the shocks of events have succeeded one another, the first thing that men do after these events have taken place is invariably to bring them into some theoretical consistency, and to attempt to give some reasonable account of them. This is the intellectual demand ever active in man. The other, equally active, is the ethical demand. No man, though he commanded innumerable legions, could stand up before a people and say: "I owe my crown to the murder of my mother, to the madness of the people, or to slavish place-men." To appear merely respectable in an intellectual and ethical point of view, requires some theoretical decorum. The purer the generally acknowledged code of morality, or the prevailing religion is, or the higher the general mental system which prevails at the time, the more assiduous are also those who lead the public events, to establish, however hypocritically, this apparent agreement between their acts and theory, as well as morals. It is a tribute, though impure, paid to truth and morality. 1 The reader sufficiently acquainted with history will remember that the consul Manlius, when the Gallatians, a people in Asia Minor, urged that they had given no offence to the Romans, answered that they were a profligate people deserving punishment, and that some of their ancestors had, centuries before, plundered the temple of Delphi. Justin, the historian, says that the Romans assisted the Acarnanians against the Aetolians because the former had joined in the Trojan war, a thousand years before. But this principle does not act, even to a degree of caricature, in politics only. What cruelties have not been committed Pro majore Dei gloria! CHAPTER XXXIII. IMPERATORIAL SOVEREIGNTY, CONTINUED. CHARACTER EXAMINED. ITS ORIGIN AND IT has been said in the preceding pages that imperatorial sovereignty must be always the most stringent absolutism,1 especially when it rests theoretically on election by the whole people, and that the transition from an uninstitutional popular absolutism to the imperatorial sovereignty is easy and natural. At the time of the so-called French republic of 1848, it was a common way of expressing the idea then prevailing, to call the people le peuple-roi (the king-people,) and an advocate, defending certain persons before the high court of justiciary sitting at Versailles in 1849, for having invaded the chamber of representatives, and consequently having violated the constitution, used this remarkable expression," the people" (confounding of course a set of people, a gathering of a part of the inhabitants of a single city, with the people) "never violate the constitution."2 The Where such ideas prevail, the question is not about a change of ideas, but simply about the lodgement of power. minds and souls are already thoroughly familiarized with the idea of absolutism, and destitute of the idea of self-government. This is also one of the reasons why there is so much similarity between monarchical absolutism, such for instance 1 That absolutism and imperatorial sovereignty go hand in hand, was neatly acknowledged by an inscription over the sub-prefecture of Dunkerque, when the imperial couple passed it, in 1855. It was to this effect: À l'héritier de Napoléon, la ville de Louis XIV. 2 Mr. Michel, on the 10th of November. I quote from the French papers, which gave detailed reports. Mr. Michel, to judge from his own speech, seems to have been the oldest of the defending advocates. |