xed. Instead of doing this, he flies backwards and forwards from
the one sense to the other, and brings out conclusions at last which
suit neither.

The state of those two communities to which he has himself referred--the
kingdom of Denmark and the empire of Rome--may serve to illustrate our
meaning. Looking merely at the surface of things, we should call Denmark
a despotic monarchy, and the Roman world, in the first century after
Christ, an aristocratical republic. Caligula was, in theory, nothing
more than a magistrate elected by the senate, and subject to the senate.
That irresponsible dignity which, in the most limited monarchies of our
time, is ascribed to the person of the sovereign never belonged to the
earlier Caesars. The sentence of death which the great council of the
commonwealth passed on Nero was strictly according to the theory of the
constitution. Yet, in fact, the power of the Roman emperors approached
nearer to absolute dominion than that of any prince in modern Europe.
On the other hand, the King of Denmark, in theory the most despotic of
princes, would in practice find it most perilous to indulge in cruelty
and licentiousness. Nor is there, we believe, at the present moment a
single sovereign in our part of the world who has so much real power
over the lives of his subjects as Robespierre, while he lodged at a
chandler's and dined at a restaurateur's, exercised over the lives of
those whom he called his fellow citizens.

Mr Mill and the Westminster Reviewer seem to agree that there cannot
long exist in any society a division of power between a monarch, an
aristocracy, and the people, or between any two of them. However the
power be distributed, one of the three parties will, according to them,
inevitably monopolise the whole. Now, what is here meant by power? If Mr
Mill speaks of the external semblance of power,--of power recognised by
the theory of the constitution,--he is palpably wrong. In England, for
example, we have had for ages the name and form of a mixed government,
if nothing more. Indeed, Mr Mill himself owns that there are appearances
which have given colour to the theory of the balance, though he
maintains that these appearances are delusive. But, if he uses the word
power in a deeper and philosophical sense, he is, if possible, still
more in the wrong than on the former supposition. For, if he had
considered in what the power of one human being over other human beings
must ultimately c