when it is intended to operate for the good of mankind, may frequently end
in the subversion of legal establishments. This fatal revolution, by
whatever means it is accomplished, terminates in military government; and
this, though the simplest of all governments, is rendered complete by
degrees. In the first period of its exercise over men who have acted as
members of a free community, it can have only laid the foundation, not
completed the fabric, of a despotical policy. The usurper who has
possessed, with an army, the centre of a great empire, sees around him,
perhaps, the shattered remains of a former constitution; he may hear the
murmurs of a reluctant and unwilling submission; he may even see danger in
the aspect of many, from whose hands he may have wrested the sword, but
whose minds he has not subdued, nor reconciled to his power.

The sense of personal rights, or the pretension to privilege and honours,
which remain among certain orders of men, are so many bars in the way of a
recent usurpation. If they are not suffered to decay with age, and to wear
away in the progress of a growing corruption, they must be broken with
violence, and the entrance to every new accession of power must be stained
with blood. The effect, even in this case, is frequently tardy. The Roman
spirit, we know, was not entirely extinguished under a succession of
masters, and under a repeated application of bloodshed and poison. The
noble and respectable family still aspired to its original honours; the
history of the republic, the writings of former times, the monuments of
illustrious men, and the lessons of philosophy fraught with heroic
conceptions, continued to nourish the soul in retirement, and formed those
eminent characters, whose elevation, and whose fate, are, perhaps, the most
affecting subjects of human story. Though unable to oppose the general bent
to servility, they became, on account of their supposed inclinations,
objects of distrust and aversion, and were made to pay with their blood,
the price of a sentiment which they fostered in silence, and which glowed