a single
legion of Romans. But, further, it is certain that the spirit of liberty
is absolutely incompatible with the spirit of conquest. To keep great
conquered nations in subjection and obedience, great standing armies are
necessary. The generals of those armies will not long remain subjects;
and whoever acquires dominion by the sword must rule by the sword. If he
does not destroy liberty, liberty will destroy him.

_Servius Tullius_.--Do you then justify Augustus for the change he made
in the Roman government?

_Marcus Aurelius_.--I do not, for Augustus had no lawful authority to
make that change. His power was usurpation and breach of trust. But the
government which he seized with a violent hand came to me by a lawful and
established rule of succession.

_Servius Tullius_.--Can any length of establishment make despotism
lawful? Is not liberty an inherent, inalienable right of mankind?

_Marcus Aurelius_.--They have an inherent right to be governed by laws,
not by arbitrary will. But forms of government may, and must, be
occasionally changed, with the consent of the people. When I reigned
over them the Romans were governed by laws.

_Servius Tullius_.--Yes, because your moderation and the precepts of that
philosophy in which your youth had been tutored inclined you to make the
laws the rules of your government and the bounds of your power. But if
you had desired to govern otherwise, had they power to restrain you?

_Marcus Aurelius_.--They had not. The imperial authority in my time had
no limitations.

_Servius Tullius_.--Rome therefore was in reality as much enslaved under
you as under your son; and you left him the power of tyrannising over it
by hereditary right?

_Marcus Aurelius_.--I did; and the conclusion of that tyranny was his
murder.

_Servius Tullius_.--Unhappy father! unhappy king! what a detestable thing
is absolute monarchy when even the virtues of Marcus Aurelius could not
hinder it from being destructive to his family and pernicious to his
country any longer than the period of his own life. But how happy is
that kingdom in which a limited monarch presides over a state so justly
poised that it guards itself from such evils, and has no need to take
refuge in arbitrary power against the dangers of anarchy, which is almost
as bad a resource as it would be for a ship to run itself on a rock in
order to escape from the agitation of a tempest.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBO