his habitual niggardliness, and were fain to eke out their slender
salaries by accepting bribes from every hand rich enough to bestow them.
In truth Charles was more than any thing else a politician,
notwithstanding his signal abilities as a soldier. If to have founded
institutions which could last, be the test of statesmanship, he was even
a statesman; for many of his institutions have resisted the pressure of
three centuries. But those of Charlemagne fell as soon as his hand was
cold, while the works of many ordinary legislators have attained to a
perpetuity denied to the statutes of Solon or Lycurgus. Durability is
not the test of merit in human institutions. Tried by the only
touchstone applicable to governments, their capacity to insure the
highest welfare of the governed, we shall not find his polity deserving
of much admiration. It is not merely that he was a despot by birth and
inclination, nor that he naturally substituted as far as was practicable,
the despotic for the republican element, wherever his hand can be traced.
There may be possible good in despotisms as there is often much tyranny
in democracy. Tried however according to the standard by which all
governments may be measured, those laws of truth and divine justice which
all Christian nations recognize, and which are perpetual, whether
recognized or not, we shall find little to venerate in the life work of
the Emperor. The interests of his family, the security of his dynasty,
these were his end and aim. The happiness or the progress of his people
never furnished even the indirect motives of his conduct, and the result
was a baffled policy and a crippled and bankrupt empire at last.

He knew men, especially he knew their weaknesses, and he knew how to
turn them to account. He knew how much they would bear, and that little
grievances would sometimes inflame more than vast and deliberate
injustice. Therefore he employed natives mainly in the subordinate
offices of his various states, and he repeatedly warned his successor