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Augustus and Tiberius were the first to adopt, as a useful engine, the science of the civilians; and their servile labors accommodated the old system to the spirit and views of despotism.
That night Châtillon gave a feast to his chief officers, and amongst his guests was Pierre Flotte, Chancellor of France, perhaps the ablest of those jurists by whose evil councils Philip the Fair was encouraged in the ideas of autocracy which led him to make the setting up of a despotism the policy of his whole life.
This makes the importance of Mr. Dillon's speech, that by his denunciation of any member who wishes to withdraw from this "voluntary" combination as a "traitor," and by his order to "close upon the money" of any such member, "and use it for the organisation," he brands the "organisation" as a subterranean despotism of a very cheap and nasty kind.
It is the people leaderless who are making havoc in Russia. This is merely to note the mortal fallibility of man, most fallible when herded in groups and prone to do in the aggregate what he would hesitate to do when left to himself and his individual accountability. Under a wise dispensation of power, despotism, we are told embodies the best of all government.
Who makes war? those who defend themselves? or those who attack others? Now if it be true that despotism is a continued attack upon mankind, then war comes from that quarter, and I have no where in the world heard that an unjust attack should not be opposed by a just defence. It is absurd to entreat nations not to disturb a peace which does not exist.
An earthly despotism would be the absolutely perfect earthly government, if the conditions were the same, namely, the despot the perfectest individual of the human race, and his lease of life perpetual.
He founded a parliament in a fit of considerable absence of mind; but it was with true presence of mind, in the responsible and even religious sense which had made his father so savage a Crusader against heretics, that he laid about him with his great sword before he fell at Evesham. Magna Carta was not a step towards democracy, but it was a step away from despotism.
The murderous and mischievous pranks of Imbize, Ryhove, and such demagogues, at Ghent and elsewhere, with their wild theories of what they called Grecian, Roman, and Helvetian republicanism, had inflicted damage enough on the cause of freedom, and had paved the road for the return of royal despotism.
Cicero, though present in Rome, had taken no part, and looked on in despair. The "good" were shocked at Pompey's precipitation. They saw that a civil war could end only in a despotism. "I have not met one man," Cicero said, "who does not think it would be better to make concessions to Caesar than to fight him. Why fight now?
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