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and history of man. What! incredulous about the atrocities perpetrated
by those who hold human beings as property, to be used for their
pleasure, when history herself has done little else in recording human
deeds, than to dip her blank chart in the blood shed by arbitrary
power, and unfold to human gaze the great red scroll? That cruelty is
the natural effect of arbitrary power, has been the result of all
experience, and the voice of universal testimony since the world
began. Shall human nature's axioms, six thousand years old, go for
nothing? Are the combined product of human experience, and the
concurrent records of human character, to be set down as 'old wives'
fables?' To disbelieve that arbitrary power naturally and habitually
perpetrates cruelties, where it can do it with impunity, is not only
ignorance of man, but of _things_. It is to be blind to innumerable
proofs which are before every man's eyes; proofs that are stereotyped
in the very words and phrases that are on every one's lips. Take for
example the words _despot_ and _despotic_. Despot, signifies
etymologically, merely one who _possesses_ arbitrary power, and at
first, it was used to designate those alone who _possessed_ unlimited
power over human beings, entirely irrespective of the way in which
they exercised it, whether mercifully or cruelly. But the fact, that
those who possessed such power, made their subjects their _victims_,
has wrought a total change in the popular meaning of the word. It now
signifies, in common parlance, not one who _possesses_ unlimited power
over others, but one who exercises the power that he has, whether
little or much, _cruelly_. So _despotic_, instead of meaning what it
once did, something pertaining to the _possession_ of unlimited power,
signifies something pertaining to the _capricious, unmerciful and
relentless exercise_ of such power.

The word tyrant, is another example--formerly it implied merely a
_possession_ of arbitrary power, but from the invariable abuse of such
power by its possessors, the proper and entire meaning of the word is
lost, and it now signifies merely one who _exercises power to the
injury of others_. The words tyrannical and tyranny follow the same
analogy. So the word arbitrary; which formerly implied that which
pertains to the will of one, independently of others; but from the
fact that those who had no restraint upon their wills, were invariably
capricious, unreasonable and oppressive, the