of Rome as well as _debellare superbos_; and while all conquest is
an evil, the Roman was the most clement and the least destructive of
conquerors. This is true of him on the whole, though he sometimes was
guilty of thoroughly primaeval cruelty. He was the great author of the
laws of war as well as of the laws of peace. That he not seldom, when
his own interest was concerned, put the mere letter of the social law in
place of justice, and that we are justly revolted on these occasions by
his hypocritical observance of forms, is very true: nevertheless, his
scrupulosity and the language of the national critics in these cases
prove the existence of at least a rudimentary conscience. No compunction
for breach of international law or justice we may be sure ever visited
the heart of Tiglath-Pileser. Cicero's letter of advice to his brother
on the government of a province may seem a tissue of truisms now, though
Warren Hastings and Sir Elijah Impey would hardly have found it so, but
it is a landmark in the history of civilization. That the Roman Republic
should die, and that a colossal and heterogeneous empire should fall
under the rule of a military despot, was perhaps a fatal necessity; but
the despotism long continued to be tempered, elevated, and rendered more
beneficent by the lingering spirit of the Republic; the liberalism of
Trajan and the Antonines was distinctly republican nor did Sultanism
finally establish itself before Diocletian. Perhaps we may number among
the proofs of the Roman's superiority the capacity shown so far as we
know first by him of being touched by the ruin of a rival. We may be
sure that no Assyrian conqueror even affected to weep over the fall of a
hostile city however magnificent and historic. On the whole it must be
allowed that physical influences have seldom done better for humanity
than they did in shaping the imperial character and destinies of Rome.