"A good ruler certainly employs his great power for the welfare of his people; and does more good as he is less curbed. He watches over his servants, attracts their attention, and does not allow the lowest of his people to live under unjust oppression." Such were the first heads of the imperial races of the Saxons; but those who were generated of them in the purple, who rose to the enjoyment of higher power, without the necessity of performing good actions to merit the throne, soon regarded power as the means of satisfying their desires. They filled their palaces with the fairest women; they lost, by spectacles, the time they owed to their people; and diversion was their only business.78 Their officers, selected by the advice of miserable eunuchs, or by their concubines, studied no other interest than their own greatness, their consequence, wealth, and pleasure; every one successively used his subordinate as the instrument of his desires; and the lowest, the most useful citizen, starved with excessive labour, so that the courtier, the judge, and the officers of the crown, might live in haughtiness and extreme splendour.79 The people sighed and prayed to heaven for relief; they soon murmured, and at last death was preferable to their situation; they gave themselves up to despair; ambition furnished them with leaders; courageous and active rebels drove the degenerate voluptuary

from the throne, and extirpated the race, which had become an insupportable burden upon the people.80

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Nothing is more dangerous than universal power. He, who can murder his servant by a frown, and can, with impunity, reward years of vices with poison,1 himself arouses the annihilating dagger, from which no one can find himself secure; he who can punish without the aid of the law, exile at will, and suspend the functions of his officers of rank, applies his power to the execution of his desires. When he is driven by his corrupted lusts, he attacks the modesty of the noblest women, the property of the poor, the treasures of the church, the honour of the judges, and the property generally of his subjects, to satisfy them. He strives to triumph by unnecessary wars and victories, which his subjects are forced to purchase with their blood, He expends on splendid palaces the substance of the citizen; he dissipates on insignificant solemnities, in spectacles and banquets, the bread and property of his people.82 Alfred knows what monsters were formed in great Rome, by the philter of unlimited power, from those who in their youth promised to become somewhat better. God alone is All-wise; to Him

belongs universal power; but faulty man needs bonds to limit his desires.

"As no one prevents the absolute monarch from the fulfilment of his will, so his first minister, his general, judge, and secretary, become despots; the whole nation will sink under the yoke which the powerful always impose on the weak, and its weight will crush the common man, who is not able in his turn to oppress another.83

"Such a monarch is beloved by no one. Every citizen is regarded by him as a tool destined by Providence to fulfil his will, whose services he can enjoy without being bound to any obligation towards him. The citizen looks with fear and hatred upon the palace in which the dissipator debauches his blood and his property. He takes no interest in the preservation of his prince, and acknowledges no greater misfortunes than that which affects himself. An audacious rebel assaults, with a handful of ruffians, the deserted palace, and no citizen offers to protect the monarch who is the sole cause of his misfortunes.84 I have myself witnessed the tragedy which precipitated the unfortunate Michael from the throne. He had neglected the welfare of the realm, was a squanderer, who forgot, over his wine, his duty as father of the people. A man

of the lowest class of his subjects arose by his good qualities to the highest dignity. He found a murderous rabble at his disposal; before the Waregern could use their weapons, Michael was killed, and our fidelity no longer found any object to protect; thus fell, under the sword of a few robbers, the successor of the Constantines and the Cæsars. The population took so little interest in his fate, that no tears were shed, not a sigh heard, no shop closed, no business disturbed; and after a few hours, the whole of Byzantium shouted long life to the Emperor Basilius, with the same joyful devoutness as though he had been the real heir to the throne. Had Michael bound his crown to the welfare of his people, had the laws been his boundary, or had his fall interfered with the interests of the country, Basilius would never have had the rash thought of rising to the throne over Michael's corpse.85 But the despot is like an inverted pyramid, an immense weight rests on one point on the overturned top. The breeze of a western wind is sufficient to throw down the nonsensical building.

"The oppressed subject does not at all times seize the poignard; he often bends to the yoke with inactive murmurs. Religion may console him in chains, or the fear of a paid army force him to patience;86 but

even then the despotic monarch is unhappy, far more unhappy than the prince who is bound by laws; the latter has around him a particular body of the state, who report the truth to him; he has the nobles of the realm who will not obey unjust orders; he has laws which he cannot go beyond without danger and resistance; all these powers which restrain him, watch at the same time over his security.87 He becomes not unjust, he does not encroach on the property of his subjects, nor the lives of his servants, because he cannot attain his purpose without dishonouring himself, and incuring insurmountable resistance. He learns from experience, that those inhabitants alone willingly obey who love their master, and to acquire that love he must make them happy; and that he cannot make his people happy without being himself industrious, kind, and just.88 The bare thought of many an action, which to the oriental despot is but play and pastime, would trouble the whole soul of a prince, who recollects that his grandeur is based on the general veneration, which is founded on his virtues. What a tyrant of Byzantium calmly projects and executes in cold blood, as the blinding of an officer of the state, or the mutilation of a suspected noble, has never entered the thoughts of a Scandinavian king."