83 



beyond the rauge of possibility. The king never dies: hut it took a 

 long time before this law was elaborated into a code, and obtained by 

 the sanction of civilized nations the irrefragable authority which it now 

 possesses. The annals of the feudal ages exhibit an afflicting picture 

 of civil confusion and bloodshed, of national misery and disgrace caused 

 by the reckless ambition of man aspiring to dominion. To be just, we 

 are bound to compare Tiberius, not with the kings of the house of Stuart 

 or Hanover, nor with the Hapsburgs or the Hohenzollern, but with the 

 Plantagenets, the Yorks and Lancasters, and with those Emperors of 

 feudal Germany who had to conquer and maintain the crown with their 

 swords. Compared with such men, aye, and with others less deeply 

 stained with the blood of foul murders, whoffi we rank among great if 

 not good princes, the stern Eoman will appear in no unfavourable light, 

 even if the murder of Postumus Agrippa should lie at his door. And 

 infinitely superior must we pronounce him to his predecessor and model, 

 Augustus, and to the majority of oriental despots, Macedonian kings of 

 Syria and Egypt, and to the despicable tyrants who usurped monarchical 

 power in the small Greek commonwealths. These were the prece- 

 dents and models from which alone his code of morality could be formed, 

 with the aid of a degenerated religion and a powerless philosophy. 

 And if a foil is wanted to throw out into still stronger relief, the com- 

 parative purity of the second Emperor of Rome, it is furnished in 

 gloomy abundance by a long line of wretches who succeeded through 

 blood and civil war to a throne they dishonoured without any redeeming 

 qualities. With such comparisons and analogies as correctives for our 

 judgment on Tiberius, we shall not condemn too severely the force by 

 which he, the inevitable ruler, obtained from the servile senate the shadow 

 of an elective title. There have been in our own days popular elections, 

 the result of which was not less prejudged by military force than the 

 suffrages of the Roman senate ; and ceremonies quite as unmeaning and 

 impotent in every practical point of view have been hallowed in this 

 well governed country by the reverence which wo cheerfully bestow on 

 time-honoured though empty formalities. 



Chapter IT. 



If the spirit of freedom and the very thought of opposition had 

 departed from the Roman people and the Roman senate, it became 

 soon evident that the army, the source and instrument of the Imperial 

 power, felt its importance, and claimed the right of sanctioning, if not 

 the continuance of despotism (for that was established beyond recall), at 

 least tlie selection of the new despot. The pure patriotism of the citizen 



