J. N. Larned

“ By the genius of Cæsar a new sovereignty—an imperial autocracy—was founded, on the ruins of the shattered Republic. By the shrewdness of his wise nephew, Octavius, its enduring organization was shaped. The mighty fabric of the Roman Empire which then arose, to dominate the world for centuries, and to dominate the history of the world perhaps forever, owed its greatness altogether to the effective organization of government which it embodied. It inherited all the corruptions and diseases in society which had sickened and destroyed the Republic ”

“ Domestic affections would choke or enervate in them that corporate passion which might otherwise be directed with unmitigated ardour towards their chief and centre. Clerical celibacy would exhibit to those who trod the outer courts of the great Christian temple, the impressive and subjugating image of a transcendental perfection, too pure not only for the coarser delights of sense, but even for the alloy of conjugal or parental love. It would fill the world with adherents of Rome, in whom every feeling would be quenched which could rival that sacred allegiance. ”

“ In the Roman polity the father only could be looked on as a citizen in the highest sense; his children, his grand-children, were in his power, from which, just like slaves, they could be released only by his own special act. Such was the origin of the name fathers, patres, patricians, a name round which such proud associations gathered, as the three tribes who had once been the whole Roman people shrank up into a special noble class in the midst of a new Roman people which grew up around them, but which they did not admit to the same rights as themselves. ”

“ Though the Czar insists upon having personally honest Ministers, mere honesty is not sufficient for governing a great empire. Truth does not penetrate to the ear of the autocrat; the Russian Press does not reflect public opinion with its currents, but is simply the speaking-tube of the reigning coterie, which has suppressed all papers opposed to it, while the foreign Press is only allowed to enter mutilated by the censorship. Some people have, indeed, the privilege to read foreign papers in their original shape, but the Autocrat of All the Russias does not belong to them. ”

“ Christianity, springing up in Judæa within the first century of the Empire, spread through and around it like an interlacing vine,—sweet and wholesome in its early fruits, strong as a bond, powerful as a regenerating influence. But when the ecclesiasticism of a politically fashioned Church had been grafted on the Christian vine, it bore then the evil seeds of new corruption, new discord, new maladies for the Roman world. ”

“ How contrary is this doctrine to the Catholic dogma of the full power divinely given to the sovereign Pontiff by our Lord Jesus Christ, to guide, to supervise, and govern the universal church, no one can fail to see and understand clearly and evidently. Amid so great a diversity of depraved opinions, we, remembering our apostolic duty, and solicitous before all things for our most holy religion, for sound doctrine, for the salvation of the souls confided to us, and for the welfare of human society itself, have considered the moment opportune to raise anew our apostolic voice. ”

“ In his early youth, the world was populous and wealthy, the empire rich and powerful. He conquered extensive realms and mighty nations and led kings captive to the footstool of Justinian, the lawgiver of civilisation. Old age arrived; Belisarius sank into the grave suspected and impoverished by his feeble and ungrateful master; and the world, from the banks of the Euphrates to those of the Tagus, presented the awful spectacle of famine and plague, of ruined cities, and of nations on the brink of extermination. ”

“ Even the detractors who defend her conduct on the plea that she was a dastard and a dupe are compelled in the same breath to retract this implied reproach, and to admit, with illogical acclamation and incongruous applause, that the world never saw more splendid courage at the service of more brilliant intelligence; that a braver if not 'a rarer spirit never did steer humanity.' A kinder or more faithful friend, a deadlier or more dangerous enemy, it would be impossible to dread or to desire. Passion alone could shake the double fortress of her impregnable heart and ever active brain. ”

“ The man to whom all this was due became at once the leading figure in the world. It became clear that when his career of conquest was over yet another task would devolve on him, if he chose to accept it—the re-organisation of the central government at Rome. ... His gathered power overhung the state like an avalanche ready to fall; and in the possible path of an avalanche it is waste of time and labour to build any solid work. So these years, for Cæsar as for the rest, are years of plotting and intrigue on one side, and of half-hearted government on the other. ”

“ Cicero was consul that year, and the official responsibility of the government was on his shoulders. The central conspirators were a desperate, disreputable clique of men, who had everything to gain and nothing to lose by revolution. Behind them were all the discontents and malignant tempers of demoralized and disorganized Rome; and still behind these were suspected to be, darkly hidden, the secret intrigues of men like Cæsar and Crassus, who watched and waited for the expiring breath of the dying republic. ”

“ Nothing can be more contemptible than the regular military resistance which Spain offers to an invader; nothing more formidable than the energy which she puts forth when her regular military resistance has been beaten down. Her armies have long borne too much resemblance to mobs; but her mobs have had, in an unusual degree, the spirit of armies. ... Castile, Leon, Andalusia, Estremadura, rose at once; every peasant procured a firelock or a pike; the Allies were masters only of the ground on which they trod. ”

“ The Roman rabble which was nominally sovereign and the oligarchy which ruled actually, by combined bribery and brow-beating of the populace, had both been worse corrupted and debased by the increasing flow of tribute and plunder from provinces and subject states. Rome had familiarized itself with mob violence, and the old respect for authority and for law was dead. The soldier with an army at his back need not stand any longer in awe of the fasces of a tribune or a consul. ”

“ Far from allowing himself to be cast down by the magnitude or the imminence of the danger, he derived from that very circumstance, not only the resolution of fighting to the last extremity, but also the energy to conceive and to execute a project which will continue to be the admiration of the world, and an everlasting lesson to nations oppressed by foreign rule. He had always thought that some day, sooner or later, the whole of Europe would rise against Napoleon's tyranny, provided that an opportunity for such a rising were afforded to it by a prolonged resistance in certain points. ”

“ Amid its immeasurable wealth, Spain was bankrupt. The gold, and silver, and precious stones of the West, emptied themselves into a land the poorest and most debt-laden in Europe, the most spiritually ignorant despite the countless churches, the most notorious for its dissolute nobility, its worthless officials, its ignoble family relations, its horrible moral aberrations pervading all grades of the population ”

“ Of all ages in history the sixth is the one in which the doctrine that the Roman Empire came to an end at some time in the fifth sounds most grotesque. Again the Roman armies march to victory, to more than victory, to conquest, to conquests more precious than the conquests of Cæsar or of Trajan, to conquests which gave back Rome herself to her own Augustus. We may again be met with the argument that we have ourselves used so often; that the Empire had to win back its lost provinces does indeed prove that it had lost them ”

“ If Rome had been the home of independence, Constantinople was the home of slavery; from thence issued the dogmas of passive obedience to the Church and throne; there was but one right—that of the empire; but one duty—that of obedience. The general name of citizen, which was equivalent, in language, to men living under the same law, was replaced by epithets graduated according to the credit of the powerful or the cowardice of the weak. ”

“ Republican Rome had ended in monarchy by the decadence of her institutions and customs, by the very effect of her victories and conquests, by the necessity of giving to this immense dominion a dominus. But after she had begun to submit to the reality of a monarchy, she retained the worship of republican forms. The Empire was for a long time a piece of hypocrisy; for it did not dare to give to its rulers the first condition of stability, a law of succession. The death of every emperor was followed by troubles, and the choice of a master of the world was often left to chance. ”

“ Viewed merely as a spectacle designed for public amusement, and indicating the taste of the people, the Olympic games might justly claim to be ranked far above all similar exhibitions of other nations. It could only be for the sake of a contrast, by which their general purity, innocence, and humanity would be placed in the strongest light, that they could be compared with the bloody sports of a Roman or a Spanish amphitheatre, and the tournaments of our chivalrous ancestors, examined by their side, would appear little better than barbarous shows. ”

“ This Panjab is the open door, the only one by which the European of earlier days was able to descend upon the plains of India for conquest and a new home. ... In the Panjab every foot of the land is a romance. No one knows how many armies have shivered in the winds of the hills of Afghanistan, and then pounced down through the Khaibar Pass into India, and overspread the country, until the people could rise and destroy the stranger within the gates. Whenever a European invader of Asia has reached well into the continent, his dream has always been India. ”

“ Seeing how great their services were to the civilization of Greece and Rome, and how admirable were those virtues of industry, activity, and splendid courage that they brought to their work, how is it that the classic writers speak of the Phœnicians with so little sympathy? and why does the modern historian, in spite of his breadth and freedom from bias, find it difficult to treat them even with justice? ”

“ The arts and the inventions, the knowledge and the books which suddenly became vital at the time of the Renaissance, had long lain neglected on the shores of the Dead Sea which we call the Middle Ages. It was not their discovery which caused the Renaissance. But it was the intellectual energy, the spontaneous outburst of intelligence, which enabled mankind at that moment to make use of them. The force then generated still continues, vital and expansive, in the spirit of the modern world. ”

“ All the acts of the Roman Republic ran in the name of the Senate and People, as if the Senate were half the state, though its number seems still to have been limited to Three Hundred members. The Senate of Rome was perhaps the most remarkable assembly that the world has ever seen. Its members held their seats for life; once Senators always Senators, unless they were degraded for some dishonourable cause. ”

“ For in England there is no written constitution; the powers of Parliament, of King, Lords, and Commons, acting together, are literally boundless. But in your Union, it is not only possible that President, Senate, or House of Representatives, acting alone, may act illegally; the three acting together may act illegally. For their powers are not boundless, they have no powers but such as the terms of the constitution, that is, the original treaty between the States, have given them. Congress may pass, the President may assent to, a measure which contradicts the terms of the constitution. ”

“ We call those great who have devoted their lives to some noble cause, and have thereby influenced for the better the course of events. Measured by that standard, Roger Williams deserves a high niche in the temple of fame, alongside of the greatest reformers who mark epochs in the world's history. He was not the first to discover the principles of religious liberty, but he was the first to proclaim them in all their plenitude, and to found and build up a political community with those principles as the basis of its organization. ”

“ The actors may have been men of ordinary merit, but the events of which they were the agents effected the mightiest revolutions in society. The frame of the ancient world was broken to pieces, and men long looked back with wonder and admiration at the fragments which remained, to prove the existence of a nobler race than their own. The Eastern Empire, though too powerful to fear any external enemy, was withering away from the rapidity with which the State devoured the resources of the people. ”

“ There is, perhaps, no other instance of a State so deeply and so permanently sundered by the Reformation. Other governments adopted or rejected the reformed religion for their dominions as a whole; the Confederacy, by its constitution, was constrained to allow each Canton to determine its religion for itself; and the presence of Catholic and Reformed States side by side, each clinging with obstinacy to the religion of their choice, became the origin of jealousies and wars which have threatened more than once to rend asunder the ties of union. ”

“ In all the lands which had obeyed Rome, and were included in the nominal supremacy of the revived Western Empire, it [Roman Law] acquired a prevalence and power not derived from the sanction of any distinct human authority. No such authority was for the time being strong enough to compete in men's esteem and reverence with the shadow of majesty that still clung to the relics of Roman dominion. ”