thoughtlessness to
overlook the fact that without Sulla most probably the very site of
the building would have been swept away by the waves; and even the
blame of its want of stability does not fall primarily on Sulla.
The statesman builds only so much as in the sphere assigned to him
he can build. What a man of conservative views could do to save the
old constitution, Sulla did; and he himself had a foreboding that,
while he might doubtless erect a fortress, he would be unable to
create a garrison, and that the utter worthlessness of the oligarchs
would render any attempt to save the oligarchy vain. His constitution
resembled a temporary dike thrown into the raging breakers; it was
no reproach to the builder, if some ten years afterwards the waves
swallowed up a structure at variance with nature and not defended
even by those whom it sheltered. The statesman has no need to be
referred to highly commendable isolated reforms, such as those of
the Asiatic revenue-system and of criminal justice, that he may not
summarily dismiss Sulla's ephemeral restoration: he will admire it
as a reorganization of the Roman commonwealth judiciously planned
and on the whole consistently carried out under infinite difficulties,
and he will place the deliverer of Rome and the accomplisher of Italian
unity below, but yet by the side of, Cromwell.

Immoral and Superficial Nature of the Sullan Restoration

It is not, however, the statesman alone who has a voice in
judging the dead; and with justice outraged human feeling will
never reconcile itself to what Sulla did or suffered others to do.
Sulla not only established his despotic power by unscrupulous violence,
but in doing so called things by their right name with a certain cynical
frankness, through which he has irreparably offended the great mass
of the weakhearted who are more revolted at the name than at the
thing, but through which, from the cool and dispassionate character
of his crimes, he certainly appears to the moral judgment more
revolting than the criminal acting from passion. Outlawries, rewards
to executioners, confiscations of goods, summary procedure with
insubordinate officers had occurred a hundred times, and the obtuse
political morality of ancient civilization had for such things
only lukewarm censure; but it was unexampled that the names of
the outlaws should be publicly posted up and their heads publicly
exposed, that a set sum should be fixed for the bandits who