freedom as they acted." This diminutive
stature of mankind, if we pursue the metaphor, was daily sinking below
the old standard, and the Roman world was indeed peopled by a race of
pygmies; when the fierce giants of the north broke in, and mended the
puny breed. They restored a manly spirit of freedom; and after the
revolution of ten centuries, freedom became the happy parent of taste
and science.

Chapter III: The Constitution In The Age Of The Antonines.--Part I.

Of The Constitution Of The Roman Empire, In The Age Of The
Antonines.

The obvious definition of a monarchy seems to be that of a state, in
which a single person, by whatsoever name he may be distinguished, is
intrusted with the execution of the laws, the management of the revenue,
and the command of the army. But, unless public liberty is protected
by intrepid and vigilant guardians, the authority of so formidable a
magistrate will soon degenerate into despotism. The influence of the
clergy, in an age of superstition, might be usefully employed to assert
the rights of mankind; but so intimate is the connection between the
throne and the altar, that the banner of the church has very seldom
been seen on the side of the people. * A martial nobility and stubborn
commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and collected into
constitutional assemblies, form the only balance capable of preserving a
free constitution against enterprises of an aspiring prince.

Every barrier of the Roman constitution had been levelled by the vast
ambition of the dictator; every fence had been extirpated by the cruel
hand of the triumvir. After the victory of Actium, the fate of the Roman
world depended on the will of Octavianus, surnamed Caesar, by his uncle's
adoption, and afterwards Augustus, by the flattery of the senate. The
conqueror was at the head of forty-four veteran legions, conscious of
their own strength, and of the weakness of the constitution, habituated,
during twenty years' civil war, to every act of blood and violence, and
passionately devoted to the house of Caesar, from whence alone they had
received, and expected the most lavish rewards. The provinces, long
oppressed by the ministers of the republic, sighed for the government of
a single person, who would be the master, not the accomplice, of those
petty tyrants. The people of Rome, viewing, with a secret pleasure, the
humiliation of the aristocracy, demanded only bread and public shows;