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When the first emotion wore off, he cursed himself for being moved by her expostulations; and was ten times more exasperated against her, for daring to defy his resentment at a time when she had every thing to fear. His despotic and unforgiving propensities stimulated him to a degree little short of madness.
In fact, the offences of the people fairly afforded the king the opportunity he had so long desired of carrying out his despotic views with an appearance of justice. With an impenetrable dissimulation Philip had hitherto fostered the general delusion that he was about to visit the provinces in person, while all along nothing could have been more remote from his real intentions.
He fell back until the General was around the corner, out of sight, and then went up to Billings. "Mister Billings," said he, sternly, "what was the General's orders about wearin' anything military?" "Outrageously tyrannical and despotic," answered Billings hotly. "But jest what you might expect from these Abolition satraps, who're throttlin' our liberties.
They were protected from government by authority or by minority; but they made the majority irresistible, and the plébiscite a tyranny. The Americans were aware that democracy might be weak and unintelligent, but also that it might be despotic and oppressive. And they found out the way to limit it, by the federal system, which suffers it to exist nowhere in its plenitude.
One of the greatest mischiefs which the despotic authority of ministers has occasioned in the world in these later times is a practice, occasioned by their own private mistaken interests, of always supporting superiors against their inferiors. It is a maxim borrowed from Machiavelli, whom few understand, and whom too many cry up for an able man because he was always wicked.
His last days must have been the reverse of agreeable in their retrospect; for it must constantly have been forced upon his mind that he had been made the chief instrument in the work of fastening upon the country he loved the most odious of the many despotic governments it has known, a government that confesses its inability to stand against the "paper shot" of journalists, and which has shackled the press after the fashion of Austrian and Russian dynasties; and all this had taken place, as he must have seen in his retirement, as the consequence of his having mistaken the voice of a party for the voice of France.
Great and encouraging is the reflection that there is a resource left us against the arrogant usurpations of despotic power; that its best-contrived plans against the liberty of mankind may be frustrated; that resolute opposition can weaken even the outstretched arm of tyranny; and that heroic perseverance can eventually exhaust its fearful resources.
Intimidated by this exertion of despotic power, they allowed the king's officers to enter the letters in their register; but afterwards adopted more vigorous resolutions.
If you and I had not known, in our occasional compositions, how to speak to the passions, as well as to the sober reason of mankind, we should not have acquired that despotic authority in the empire of wit which made us so formidable to all the inferior tribe of poets in England and France. Besides, sharp satirists want great patrons. Pope.
The conflict between England and Germany is a conflict, on the one hand, between a nation which believes in political liberty and national autonomy, where the Press is free and where the rulers are responsible to public opinion, and, on the other hand, a nation where public opinion is still muzzled or powerless and where the masses are still under the heel of an absolute government, a reactionary party, a military Junkerthum, and a despotic bureaucracy.
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