desire for wealth (people, as
a general thing, do not covet that which they deem it illegitimate to
acquire), but by a natural instinct of the plebeians, which led them to
seek the cause of their adversity in the constitution of the republic.
So we are doing to-day; instead of altering our public economy, we
demand an electoral reform. The Roman people wished to return to the
social compact; they asked for reforms, and demanded a revision of
the laws, and a creation of new magistracies. The patricians, who had
nothing to complain of, opposed every innovation. Wealth always has been
conservative. Nevertheless, the people overcame the resistance of the
Senate; the electoral right was greatly extended; the privileges of
the plebeians were increased,--they had their representatives, their
tribunes, and their consuls; but, notwithstanding these reforms, the
republic could not be saved. When all political expedients had been
exhausted, when civil war had depleted the population, when the Caesars
had thrown their bloody mantle over the cancer which was consuming the
empire,--inasmuch as accumulated property always was respected, and
since the fire never stopped, the nation had to perish in the flames.
The imperial power was a compromise which protected the property of the
rich, and nourished the proletaires with wheat from Africa and Sicily:
a double error, which destroyed the aristocrats by plethora and
the commoners by famine. At last there was but one real proprietor
left,--the emperor,--whose dependent, flatterer, parasite, or slave,
each citizen became; and when this proprietor was ruined, those who
gathered the crumbs from under his table, and laughed when he cracked
his jokes, perished also.

Montesquieu succeeded no better than Bossuet in fathoming the causes of
the Roman decline; indeed, it may be said that the president has only
developed the ideas of the bishop. If the Romans had been more moderate
in their conquests, more just to their allies, more humane to the
vanquished; if the nobles had been less covetous, the emperors less
lawless, the people less violent, and all classes less corrupt; if...
&c.,--perhaps the dignity of the empire might have been preserved, and
Rome might have retained the sceptre of the world! That is all that can
be gathered from the teachings of Montesquieu. But the truth of history
does not lie there; the destinies of the world are not dependent upon
such trivial causes. The passions of m