with
the origin of Imperial France, but few of resemblance.

Even in the bad elements of the modern Imperial rule there is little
imitation of that of the Caesars. "The ordinary notion of absolute
government, derived from the form it assumes in Europe at the present
day," says Merivale, "is that of a strict system of prevention, which,
by means of a powerful army, an ubiquitous police, and a censorship
of letters, anticipates every manifestation of freedom in thought or
action, from whence inconvenience may arise to it. But this was not the
system of the Caesarean Empire. Faithful to the traditions of the Free
State, Augustus had quartered all his armies on the frontiers, and his
successors were content with concentrating, cohort by cohort, a small,
though trusty force, for their own protection in the capital. The
legions were useful to the Emperor, not as instruments for the
repression of discontent at home, but as faithful auxiliaries among whom
the most dangerous of his nobles might be relegated, in posts which were
really no more than honorable exiles. Nor was the regular police of the
city an engine of tyranny. Volunteers might be found in every rank
to perform the duty of spies; but it was apparently no part of the
functions of the enlisted guardians of the streets to watch the
countenances of the citizens, or beset their privacy. We hear of no
intrusion into private assemblies, no dispersion of crowds in the
streets...... They [the Emperors] made no effort to impose restraints
upon thought. Freedom of thought may be checked in two ways, and modern
despotism resorts in its restless jealousy to both. The one is, to guide
ideas by seizing on the channels of education; the other, to subject
their utterance to the control of a censorship. In neither one way nor
the other did Augustus or Nero interfere at all. From the days of the
Republic the system of education had been perfectly untrammelled. It was
simply a matter of arrangement between the parties directly interested,
the teacher and the learner. Neither State nor Church pretended to take
any concern in it: neither priest nor magistrate regarded it with the
slightest jealousy. Public opinion ranged, under ordinary circumstances,
in perfect freedom, and under its unchecked influence both the aims and
methods of education continued long to be admirably adapted to make
intelligent men and useful citizens...... The same indulgence which
was extended to education smil