87 



the idle declamations of those theoretical reformers, who would be the 

 first to shrink from following up the consequences of their speculative 

 remedies; and he deprecates the odium, whicli he would incur by 

 enforcing laws, which, though severe and ruinous to many, would be 

 useless to the community. 



The primary aim and object of all government among men is to 

 afford by the protection of life and property that individual liberty, 

 which is the fundamental and inalienable right of every human being. 

 Among the means to obtaiiji this end there is none in a civilized society 

 equal iu importance to a gOod regulation of the pecuniary resources of 

 a state. Money being the power, which sets all the springs of govern- 

 ment in motion, it is clear, that without a sound system of finance 

 society can obtain none of the blessings, that it justly claims from the 

 government, to which it submits. Abuses of all kinds spring up, when 

 taxation and finance are in a disordered state, and it may be said, that 

 financial defects lie at the bottom of the great majority of political 

 errors. If this truth needed illustrations or proofs, they would be 

 found in abundance on every page of the history of England, of 

 France, and of every European country. There is no excess of extor- 

 tion, tyranny and perversion of justice which a needy government will 

 not have recourse to, in order to fill the coffers of the exchequer. The 

 despotism of Turkish pashas and sultans, the corruption of Eussian 

 ofiScials, the everlasting infamy of German sovereigns, who traded in 

 the flesh and blood of their subjects, the sale of indulgences, the 

 treasonable bribes accepted by a King of England from France for the 

 purpose of extinguishing religious and political liberty, the grinding 

 down of the peasantry in France, which led to such fearful retalia- 

 tion — all these evils, and (thousands more, sprung from that political 

 Pandora's box — an empty treasury. 



It is well to bear this in mind, if we would do justice to the Emperor 

 Tiberius. He was a good financier, not one of those, who love money for 

 its own sake, who think of nothing but accumulating treasures, who 

 deem all means equally justifiable providing they are effective in raising 

 money. He was neither avaricious in his public capacity, like Henry 

 VII. and Frederic William II., nor was he tainted by the more sordid 

 vice of accumulating private wealth for himself or his family, like 

 Louis Philippe, or the first King of Holland, or the infamous Elector 

 of Hesse ; nor did he share the more popular and far more ruinous 

 vices of the lovers of royal state and pomp, luxury and extravagance, 

 wlio have been the curse of Europe from the days of Louis XIV. to 

 within a very late period, and have not altogether disappeared even now. 



Tiberius was economical from taste, choice and principle, and his 



