iew of the subject, a
much greater amount of social organization, industry, and peace is
necessary to raise and maintain an army, than that army can itself
destroy. The deeds of destruction which great conquerors perform attract
more attention and make a greater impression upon mankind than the
quiet, patient, and long-continued labors by which they perfect and
extend the general organization of the social state. But these labors,
though less noticed by men, have really employed the energies of great
sovereigns in a far greater degree than mankind have generally imagined.
Thus we should describe the work of Caesar's life in a single word more
truly by saying that he _organized_ Europe, than that he conquered it.
His bridges, his roads, his systems of jurisprudence, his coinage, his
calendar, and other similar means and instruments of social arrangement,
and facilities for promoting the pursuits of industry and peace, mark,
far more properly, the real work which that great conqueror performed
among mankind, than his battles and his victories. Darius was, in the
same way, the organizer of Asia. William the Conqueror completed, or,
rather, advanced very far toward completing, the social organization of
England; and even in respect to Napoleon, the true and proper memorial
of his career is the successful working of the institutions, the
systems, and the codes which he perfected and introduced into the social
state, and not the brazen column, formed from captured cannon, which
stands in the Place Vendome.

These considerations, obviously true, though not always borne in mind,
are, however, to be considered as making the characters of the great
sovereigns, in a moral point of view, neither the worse nor the better.
In all that they did, whether in arranging and systematizing the
functions of social life, or in ruthless deeds of conquest and
destruction, they were actuated, in a great measure, by selfish
ambition. They arranged and organized the social state in order to form
a more compact and solid pedestal for the foundation of their power.
They maintained peace and order among their people, just as a master
would suppress quarrels among his slaves, because peace among laborers
is essential to productive results. They fixed and defined legal
rights, and established courts to determine and enforce them; they
protected property; they counted and classified men; they opened roads;
they built bridges; they encouraged commerce; t