"Power," said he, "without right is the most detestable object that can be offered to the human imagination; it is not only pernicious to those whom it subjects, but works its own destruction. Res detestabilis et caduca. Under the pretence of declaring law, the commons have made a law, a law for their own case, and have united in the same persons the offices of legislator, and party, and judge." Frederic the Great of Prussia, perceived this clearly, for he said "he could very well understand how one man might feel a desire to make his will the law of others, but why thirty thousand or thirty millions should submit to it he could not understand." This is the saying of a monarch who probably knew or suspected as little of an institutional self-government as any one, and who continually complained of the power of parliament in changing ministers, when England was his ally. But was he sincere when he wrote those words? Was he still in his period of philosophic sentiment? Did he really not see why this apparent transfer of power sq often happens, or did he utter them merely as something piquant?

By whatever process this vast popular power is transferred 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,

1 He spoke of Wilkes's expulsion.

2 Raumer gives the dispatches from Mitchell, the English minister near the court of Frederic. The minister reports many complaints of the king, of this sort. But Frederic is not the only one who thus complained. General Walsh, that native Frenchman, who became minister of Spain, did the same. See Coxe's Memoirs, mentioned before. So when Russian statesmen desire to show the superiority of their government, they never fail to dwell on the low position of an English minister, inasmuch as he depends upon a parliamentary majority, or, as an English minister expressed it, must be the minister of public opinion. See Mr. Urquhart's Collection. I believe it will always be found that, where absolute governments come in contact with those of freemen, the former complain of the instability of the latter. They consider a change of ministry a revolution.

that is probably the worst which boasts of having originated from free self-submission, 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 connection 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 of the president of the whole, though he alone were left to be elected every four years by the sweeping majority of the entire country, from New York to San 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 shows a bitter animosity to the representative system. He seeks, unconsciously to himself, for a legitimate source of public force, when he thinks he lays a foundation for liberty. In this he may be said to be original, at least in the idea of the permanent action of the social contract, or of the sovereignty not only residing in the people, but continuing to act directly and without checking institutions. For the rest, he only carried out the old French idea of unity of power, of centralization, which appeared to the French long before him, the summum bonum-not only in politics, but in all other spheres. The works of the great Bossuet show this pervading idea, in the sphere of theology; and numerous proofs have been given in the course of this work, that the principle of uncompromising unity was distinctly acknowledged and almost idolized by nearly all the leading statesmen of France from Richelieu, through the first revolution, and continues to be so down to

the present day. No one can understand the history of France who does not remember the ardor for unconstitutional unity of power, and what is intimately connected with it, the idea that this all-pervading and uncompromising power must do and provide for everything-the extinction of self-reliance. The socialists do not differ from the imperialists; on the contrary, society is with them a unit in which the individual is lost sight of, even in marriage and property.

Rousseau insists upon an inarticulated, unorganized, un-. institutional 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, often with impassioned fervor. Plausibility, however, generally indicates a fallacy, in all the higher spheres of thought and action; 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 France, and, since no one can understand the recent history of our race without having studied the Social Contract, that theory, for the sake of brevity, may be called Rousseauism.

1 One of the past statesmen of France, and renowned as a publicist, said to me, in 1851, when we discoursed on the remarkable extinction of former French royalty: "There is but one thing to which all Frenchmen cling with enthusiasm, almost with fanaticism, and that is absolute unity." Those statesmen who have not unconditionally joined this sentiment, such as Mr. Guizot, are considered unnational.

2 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 during this struggle we find with a

We return once more to that despotism which is founded upon pre-existing 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-the power thus acquired is despotic, and hostile to self-government; the power is claimed on the ground of absolute popular power; and it becomes the more uncompromising because it is claimed on the ground of popular power.

number of the 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 on the political sentiment of the French, ever since that first translation.

CHAPTER XXXII.

IMPERATORIAL SOVEREIGNTY.

THE Cæsars of the first centuries claimed their power as bestowed upon them by the people, and went even so far as to assume the prætorians, with an accommodating and intimidated senate, as the representatives, for the time, of 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 had become 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

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 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. epist. 1.