But
he alone could have restored as much of popular liberty as was consistent
with the responsibilities of such a government as the Empire required. In
Caesar alone were combined the intellect and the power necessary for such
a work; and they had killed him, and in doing so had passed final sentence
on themselves. Not as realities any more, but as harmless phantoms, the
forms of the old Republic were henceforth to persist. In the army only
remained the imperial consciousness of the honor and duty of Roman
citizens, To the army, therefore, the rule was transferred. The Roman
nation had grown as the oak grows, self-developed in severe morality, each
citizen a law to himself, and therefore capable of political freedom in an
unexampled degree. All organizations destined to endure spring from forces
inherent in themselves, and must grow freely, or they will not grow at
all. When the tree reaches maturity, decay sets in; if it be left
standing, the disintegration of the fibre goes swiftly forward; if the
stem is severed from the root, the destroying power is arrested, and the
timber will endure a thousand years. So it was with Rome. The Constitution
under which the Empire had sprung up was poisoned, and was brought to a
violent end before it had affected materially for evil the masses of the
people. The solid structure was preserved--not to grow any longer, not to
produce a new Camillus or a new Regulus, a new Scipio Africanus or a new
Tiberius Gracchus, but to form an endurable shelter for civilized mankind,
until a fresh spiritual life was developed out of Palestine to remodel the
conscience of humanity.
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