s of knowing.
"We have now," said Romulus, according to this record, "completed the
building of our city, so far as at present we are able to do it; and
it must be confessed that if we were required to depend for protection
against a serious attack from an enemy, on the height of our walls, or
on their strength and solidity, our prospects would not be very
encouraging. But our walls we must remember are not what we rely upon.
No walls can be so high, that an enemy can not scale them. The
dependence must be after all on the men within the city, and not on
the ramparts and entrenchments which surround it, whatever those
ramparts and entrenchments may be. We must therefore rely upon
ourselves, for our safety--upon our valor, our discipline, our union
and harmony. It is courage and energy in the people, not strength in
outward defenses, on which the safety and prosperity of a State must
depend.
"The great work before us therefore is yet to be done. We have to
organize a government under which order and discipline may come in,
to control and direct our energies, and prepare us to meet whatever
future exigencies may arise, whether of peace or war. What form shall
be given to this government is the question that you have now to
consider. I have learned by inquiry that there are various modes of
government adopted among men, and between these we have now to decide.
Shall our commonwealth be governed by one man? Or shall we select a
certain number of the wisest and bravest of the citizens, and commit
the administration of public affairs to them? Or, in the third place,
shall we commit the management of the government to the control of the
people at large? Each of these three forms has its advantages, and
each is attended with its own peculiar dangers. You are to choose
between them. Only when the decision is once made, let us all unite in
maintaining the government which shall be established, whatever its
form may be."
The result of the deliberation which followed, after the delivery of
this address, was that the government of the state should be, like the
government of Alba, under which the followers of Romulus had been
born, a monarchy; and that Romulus himself should be king. He was a
prince by birth, an inheritor of regal rank and power, by regular
succession, from a line of kings. He had shown himself, too, by his
deeds, to be worthy of power. He was courageous, energetic, sagacious,
and universally esteemed. It was
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