acquired renown by his victories, added greatly to the importance
and influence of the army in its political relations. The great
Julius Caesar, in the course of his foreign conquests, and of his
protracted and terrible wars with Pompey, and with his other rivals,
made enormous strides in this direction. Every time that he returned
to Rome at the head of his victorious legions, he overawed the
capitol more and more. Octavius Caesar, the successor of Julius,
known generally in history by the name of Augustus, completed what
his uncle had begun. He made the military authority, though still
nominally and in form subordinate, in reality paramount and supreme.
The Senate, indeed, continued to assemble, and to exercise its usual
functions. Consuls and other civil magistrates were chosen, and
invested with the insignia of supreme command; and the customary
forms and usages of civil administration, in which the subordination
of the military to the civil power was fully recognized, were all
continued. Still, the actual authority of the civil government was
wholly overawed and overpowered; and the haughty _imperator_
dictated to the Senate, and directed the administration, just as he
pleased.

It required great genius in the commanders to bring up the army to
this position of ascendency and power; but once up, it sustained
itself there, without the necessity of ability of any kind, or of
any lofty qualities whatever, in those subsequently placed at the
head. In fact, the reader of history has often occasion to be
perfectly amazed at the lengths to which human endurance will go,
when a governmental power of any kind is once established, in
tolerating imbecility and folly in the individual representatives of
it. It seems to be immaterial whether the dominant power assumes the
form of a dynasty of kings, a class of hereditary nobles, or a line
of military generals. It requires genius and statesmanship to
instate it, but, once instated, no degree of stupidity, folly or
crime in those who wield it, seems sufficient to exhaust the spirit
of submission with which man always bows to established power--a
spirit of submission which is so universal, and so patient and
enduring, and which so transcends all the bounds of expediency and
of reason, as to seem like a blind instinct implanted in the very
soul of man by the Author of his being--a constituent and essential
part of his nature as a gregarious animal. In fact, without some
such in