of an ignorant democracy still more from the intelligence of
the educated classes by combining it with the most selfish and abject of
all the apprehensions that are ascribed to aristocracy and wealth. What
is thus embedded in the depths of your society makes itself shown on the
surface. Napoleon III. has been compared to Augustus; and there are
many startling similitudes between them in character and in fate. Each
succeeds to the heritage of a great name that had contrived to unite
autocracy with the popular cause; each subdued all rival competitors,
and inaugurated despotic rule in the name of freedom; each mingled
enough of sternness with ambitious will to stain with bloodshed the
commencement of his power,--but it would be an absurd injustice to fix
the same degree of condemnation on the coup d'etat as humanity fixes on
the earlier cruelties of Augustus; each, once firm in his seat, became
mild and clement,--Augustus perhaps from policy, Napoleon III. from a
native kindliness of disposition which no fair critic of character
can fail to acknowledge. Enough of similitudes; now for one salient
difference. Observe how earnestly Augustus strove, and how completely he
succeeded in the task, to rally round him all the leading intellects in
every grade and of every party,--the followers of Antony, the friends of
Brutus; every great captain, every great statesman, every great writer,
every mail who could lend a ray of mind to his own Julian constellation,
and make the age of Augustus an era in the annals of human intellect
and genius. But this has not been the good fortune of your Emperor.
The result of his system has been the suppression of intellect in
every department. He has rallied round him not one great statesman; his
praises are hymned by not one great poet. The celebrates of a former day
stand aloof; or, preferring exile to constrained allegiance, assail him
with unremitting missiles from their asylum in foreign shores. His
reign is sterile of new celebrites. The few that arise enlist themselves
against him. Whenever he shall venture to give full freedom to the press
and to the legislature, the intellect thus suppressed or thus hostile
will burst forth in collected volume. His partisans have not been
trained and disciplined to meet such assailants. They will be as weak as
no doubt they will be violent. And the worst is, that the intellect thus
rising in mass against him will be warped and distorted, like captives
who,