82 



The scenes which were now enacted in Rome stamp with everlasting 

 infamy that aristocracy and people, once so proud and jealous 

 of their liberty, and they show us how hopelessly and irretrievably 

 the days of i-epublican freedom were gone for ever. Consuls, senators, 

 knights, all vied with one another in showing the most abject servility 

 to the new ruler. With ignoble emulation they eagerly rushed into 

 slavery. Nor were rank, nobility, or wealth able to guarantee an 

 independent position, or to prompt freedom of speech ; they were, on 

 the contrary, additional motives for cowardice. Not actions only and 

 words were studied to conciliate the favour of the new master, but the 

 very features were guarded from offending him by showing either too 

 much joy or too much sadness. The death of Augustus seemed to 

 require the latter ; the accession of Tiberius the former, and between 

 this Scylla and Charybdis of conflicting emotions, the abject hypocrites 

 endeavoured to make their way to the favour of a man they hated and 

 dreaded. 



Before acknowledging that he accepted the fulness of power vacated 

 by the death of Augustus, Tiberius repeated a faice which his prede- 

 cessor had enacted before him. He pretended to desire repose. " Other 

 and better men, he said, might be chosen to share at least with him 

 the burthen of government, to which he felt to be alone unequal." Not 

 one of those who listened to these insincere words could be mistaken as 

 to their real import. One fear pervaded all, lest they might show that 

 they knew the Emperor's true sentiments. They therefore implored him 

 with tears and prayers to take pity on them, and not to forsake the 

 helpless Empire. Such were, at that wretched time, the constitutional 

 forms which accompanied the demise of the crown. 



Befoi'e we condemn Tiberius for proceedings which are so degrading 

 in our eyes, we are bound to consider the circumstances by which he 

 was surrounded. 



The desire to possess power over others is such a general weakness of 

 the human heart, that few have ever withstood the temptation of seizing 

 it, who felt it to he within their grasp. History, therefore, has 

 generally been lenient in her judgment of usurpers, and has reserved 

 her severest censures for those recreants only, who either overthrew 

 free institutions, or sacrificed innocent blood in their struggle to obtain 

 it, without being actuated by any higher motives than selfishness or 

 ambition. In modern Europe, the law of succession is happily so firmly 

 established and so well regulated, that a contested succession* is almost 



•■ Gibbon, c. 7. — The snj-erior prerogative of birlb, when it has obtained the sanction of 

 lime and popular opinion, is the plainest and least invidious of all distinctions among man- 

 kind. The acknowledged right extinguishes the hope of taction, and the conscious security 

 disarms the cruelty of the monarch. 



