ferred, 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 self-immolation; and of the two species of political slavery, that is probably the worst which boasts of having originated from free selfsubmission, 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 connexion with liberty. What American 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 selfgovernment 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,' that theory may be called Rousseauism, for brevity's sake.

We return once more to the despotism founded upon preexisting 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.

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 simplicity 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 Un-and 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.

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 bow-string, 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 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

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 dumnatos, 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. epist. 1.

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 government 2—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 sovereignty unfortunately never prepared a better state of things with reference to civil 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

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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 neighbours 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 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.

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.

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, it is difficult to be understood by any one who is accustomed to self-government. 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

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