tection of all laws and traditions, an absolute tyrant over his
wife, his children, and his servants; and the Roman Senate was a chosen
association of such tyrants. It is astonishing that they should have
held so long to the forms of a republican government, and should never
have completely lost their republican traditions.

In this household tyranny, existing side by side with certain general
ideas of liberty and constitutional government, under the ultimate
domination of the Emperors' despotism as introduced by Augustus, is to
be found the keynote of Rome's subsequent social life. Without those
things, the condition of society in the Middle Age would be
inexplicable, and the feudal system could never have developed. The old
Roman principle that 'order should have precedence over order, not man
over man,' rules most of Europe at the present day, though in Rome and
Italy it is now completely eclipsed by a form of government which can
only be defined as a monarchic democracy.

The mere fact that under Augustus no man was eligible to the Senate who
possessed less than a sum equal to a quarter of a million dollars, shows
plainly enough what one of the most skilful despots who ever ruled
mankind wisely, thought of the institution. It was intended to balance,
by its solidity, the ever-unsettled instincts of the people, to prevent
as far as possible the unwise passage of laws by popular acclamation,
and, so to say, to regulate the pulse of the nation. It has been
imitated, in one way or another, by all the nations we call civilized.

But the father of the family was in his own person the despot, the
senate, the magistrate and the executive of the law; his wife, his
children and his slaves represented the people, constantly and eternally
in real or theoretical opposition, while he was protected by all the
force of the most ferocious laws. A father could behead his son with
impunity; but the son who killed his father was condemned to be all but
beaten to death, and then to be sewn up in a leathern sack and drowned.
The father could take everything from the son; but if the son took the
smallest thing from his father he was a common thief and malefactor, and
liable to be treated as one, at his father's pleasure. The conception of
justice in Rome never rested upon any equality, but always upon the
precedence of one order over another, from the highest to the lowest.
There were orders even among the slaves, and one who had been al