Dictaphone

“ I do not approve of there being two Dictators at the same time, a thing wholly unprecedented, nor of there being a Dictator without a Master of the Horse, nor of the censorial powers being entrusted to one individual and that for the second time, nor of the supreme authority being placed in the hands of a Dictator for six months unless he has been created to wield executive powers. ”

“ Our super-government exists under such extra-legal conditions that it is common to designate it by an energetic and strong word—a Dictatorship.
I can honestly state that at the present time we are law-makers; we are the judges and inflict punishment; we execute and pardon; we, as the chief of all our armies, ride the leader’s horse. We rule by indomitable will because we hold in our hands the fragments of a once strong party now subject to us. We possess boundless ambition, burning greed for merciless revenge, and bitter hatred.
From us emanates an all-embracing terror. ”

“ I have heard in such a way as to believe it, of your recent saying, that both the army and the Government needed a dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain success can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The Government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more or less than it will do for all commanders. ”

“ They find their oppressors so strengthened by success, and themselves so entangled in examples of express authority on the part of their rulers, and of tacit recognition on their own part, that they are quite confounded: For millions entertain no other idea of the legality of power, than that it is founded on the exercise of power. They voluntarily fasten their chains, by adopting a pusillanimous opinion, “that there will be too much danger in attempting a remedy,”-----or another opinion no less fatal,-----“that the government has a right to treat them as it does.” ”

“ Altho it is possible that a case may happen, in which the creation of a Dictator might be the only resort to save life, liberty, property and the State, as it happened in Rome more than once; yet I should dread his power as much as any man, were I not convinced that the same men that appointed him, could, in a moment, strip him of his tremendous authority. A Dictator, with an army superior to the strength of the State, would be a despot ”

“ In your consular authority there was afterwards discerned that salutary dictatorial prerogative, which under the auspices of a genius like yours, accomplished such glorious purposes—yet less glorious, let me add, than the restoration of liberty would prove.
"It is not possible, general, that you, the first among that order of mankind, which surveys every age and every country, can desire that a revolution, marked by an unexampled series of stupendous victories and unheard of sufferings, shall give nothing to the world but a renovated system of arbitrary government. ”

“ In order that I may give different things different names, I call him who usurps the royal authority a tyrant, and him who usurps the sovereign power a despot. The tyrant is he who thrusts himself in contrary to the laws to govern in accordance with the laws; the despot is he who sets himself above the laws themselves. ”

“ Every man the least conversant with Roman history knows, how often that republic was obliged to take refuge in the absolute power of a single man, under the formidable name of a dictator, as well against the intrigues of ambitious individuals, aspiring to tyranny, and the seditions of whole classes of the community, threatening the existence of the government, as against foreign enemies, menacing the destruction and conquest of the state. [10] A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. ”

“ The fundamental distinction between true representative government and dictatorship is that in the former every representative of the people, in whatever office, confines himself strictly within the limits of his defined powers. ”

“ This was the mischief which had sprung from the right of appeal, for the consuls could only threaten without the power to execute their threats as long as a criminal was allowed to appeal to his fellow-criminals. "Come," said he, "let us create a Dictator from whom there is no appeal, then this madness which is setting everything on fire will soon die down. Let me see any one strike a lictor then, when he knows that his back and even his life are in the sole power of the man whose authority he attacks." ”

“ The people at first accepted the dictatorship for the sake of the safety of the city, but they have since fallen away when they found that we could not instantly meet their expectations of material well-being. The people are tired of dictatorship, and now in their credulous despair they lend ear to the mischievous words of their own enemies! ”

“ The Dictator was now deprived of any opportunity of acquiring fame in war, but he was anxious to achieve some work which might be a memorial of his dictatorship and prevent it from appearing an unnecessary appointment, so he made preparations for abridging the censorship, either because he considered its power excessive, or because he objected not so much to the greatness as the length of duration of the office. ”

“ The Dictator of the republic was so offended at this outrage on the symbols of monarchy, that he was on the point of putting the Tribunes to death, when it was suggested to him that exile might do as well, and he accordingly sent them into banishment.
It is one of the numerous penalties of iniquity, that its own example may be followed in opposition to itself; and that he who uses lawlessness and violence to attain his ends, may find them conducing to his own, in a sense he had not expected. ”

“ They greatly regretted the attempt of one part of the people to establish a dictatorship over another, and considered that this showed a lamentable lack of confidence in "unserem Volke"—"our people." "Wir wollen Demokratie und keine Diktatur," they concluded; "we want a democracy and no dictator." ”

“ We must wait, I think, to judge the man. Only it is right to bear in mind one fact, that, admitting the lawfulness of the coup d'état, you must not object to the dictatorship. And, admitting the temporary necessity of the dictatorship, it is absolute folly to expect under it the liberty and ease of a regular government. ”

“ If you choose a hundred partisans of dictatorship, you will discover that each one of the hundred believes himself capable of being, if not sole dictator, at least of assisting very materially in the dictatorial government. The dictators would be those who, by one means or another, succeeded in imposing themselves on society. ”

“ When his friends reported these things to the dictator, persuading him that, to avoid the general obloquy, he should engage the enemy, his answer was, "I should be more fainthearted than they make me, if, through fear of idle reproaches, I should abandon my own convictions. It is no inglorious thing to have fear for the safety of our country, but to be turned from one's course by men's opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation, shows a man unfit to hold an office such as this, which, by such conduct, he makes the slave of those whose errors it is his business to control." ”

“ Citizens, name within the hour a pitiless dictator, who, with the same blow, will sever the heads of the ministers, of their subalterns, of Lafayette, of all the scoundrels of his staff, of all the counter-revolutionists, of all the traitors in the National Assembly. ”

“ It is not a principle of government, it is a terrible but transient dictatorship, exercised by the multitude,—a dictatorship that ceases, and that ought to cease as soon as the multitude has accomplished its work of destruction. ”

“ The dictator was a magistrate invested with royal authority, created in perilous circumstances, in time of pestilence, sedition, or when the commonwealth was attacked by dangerous enemies.
His power was supreme both in peace and war, and was even above the laws; he could raise and disband armies, and determine upon the life and fortune of Roman citizens, without consulting the senate or people; when he was appointed, all other magistrates resigned their offices except the tribunes of the commons. ”

“ But "dictatorship" is a great word. And great words must not be used in vain. A dictatorship is an iron rule, with revolutionary daring and swift and merciless in the suppression of the exploiters as well as of the thugs (hooligans.) ”

“ During the first period of the Republic, recourse was very often had to the dictatorship, because the State had not yet a firm enough basis to be able to maintain itself by the strength of its constitution alone. As the state of morality then made superfluous many of the precautions which would have been necessary at other times, there was no fear that a dictator would abuse his authority, or try to keep it beyond his term of office. ”

“ It is perfectly obvious, likewise, that when, in those days, men spoke thus of a dictatorship, and of dictatorial power, they attached no suggestion of political guilt either to the persons who bestowed such power, or to the persons who severally accepted it,—the tacit understanding being that, in every instance, the public danger required and justified some grant of extraordinary power ”

“ It is true the Romans had a custom of choosing a dictator, during whose administration, the power of other magistrates was suspended; but this was done upon the greatest emergencies; a war near their doors, or some civil dissension: for, armies must be governed by arbitrary power. But when the virtue of that commonwealth gave place to luxury and ambition, this very office of dictator became perpetual in the persons of the Cæsars and their successors, the most infamous tyrants that have any where appeared in story. ”

“ Even so, whenever a ruler makes himself a dictator, all the wicked dregs of the nation — I do not mean the pack of petty thieves and earless ruffians [44] who, in a republic, are unimportant in evil or good — but all those who are corrupted by burning ambition or extraordinary avarice, these gather round him and support him in order to have a share in the booty and to constitute themselves petty chiefs under the big tyrant. ”

“ What kind of power can the democratic opposition mobilize that will be sufficient to destroy the dictatorship and its vast military and police networks? The answers lie in an oft ignored understanding of political power. ”

“ The forms of government of the republic were still retained; but the officers who were once the chosen representatives of a free people were now only the ministerial officers through whom a despot administered the affairs of his empire. Greatest degradation of all, the tribunes, once the embodiment of the rights of manhood, now became the especial tools of tyranical control.
[263] Few people are unaffected by the glamour of success. It is this criterion alone which, as Thomas Moore writes, generally marks the distinction between the patriot and the traitor. ”

“ It is sufficient for me to show that this dictatorship is in contradiction to democracy, that we must choose between dictatorship by a minority on the one hand, and democracy or government by the majority on the other. The Committee on the Constitution has declared in favour of democracy, control by the great majority of the people. ”

“ The reasoning really involved was, in fact, a very simple one. The destruction of an old system of government makes some form of dictatorship the only alternative to chaos. It therefore gives a chance to the one indisputable holder of power in its most unmistakable shape, namely, to the general of a disciplined army. A soldier accordingly assumed power in each of the three first cases, although the differences between the societies ruled by the Roman, the English and the French dictators are so vast that further comparison soon becomes idle. ”

“ Every year of a dictatorship diminishes the autonomous vitality of a community, no dictatorship is proof against the degeneration of the dictator through impunity and presumption, and no dictator has ever provided an efficient successor. ”

“ Democracy, parliaments, elections, freedom of the press, remained—in so far as they did remain—a mere screen; in reality all the countries drawn into the war—the whole world—were governed by the methods of a dictatorship, which utilised, when it happened to be convenient and profitable, elections, parliaments and the press. ”

“ We may, if we please, admit the conclusion that the nation accepted the king's action as that of a divinely constituted dictator; a theory which involves the assumption, which is altogether groundless, that the nation saw, or thought they saw, the existing circumstances to be such as demanded a dictatorship. ”

“ Then the name and the power became odious—the name to all the citizens, no doubt, but the power simply to the nobility, who grudged the supremacy of one man. The kings were abolished, and an oligarchy was established under the name of a Republic, with its annual magistrates—at first its two Consuls, then its Prætors and others, and occasionally a Dictator, as some current event demanded a concentration of temporary power in a single hand for a certain purpose. ”

“ Whenever an irritated mob resorts to violence there is no safety for any one. The protecting power mast then exert its utmost authority to stop mischief. The Senate of ancient Rome, so jealous of its prerogatives, assigned to a Dictator, in times of trouble, the power of life and death, and that magistrate knew no other code than his own will and the axe of his lictors. ”