- thing less than he, could have thus achieved a task, which prepared
the way for the advance of a power, that was to outlast his throne and the Eternal city. Under the controlling influence of his genius, the world was so calmed, subjugated and arranged, that the gates of all nations were opened for the peaceful entrance of the preachers of the gospel. So solidly did he lay the foundation of his dominion, that even his own murder, by the objects of his undeserved clemency, made not the slightest change in the fate of Rome; for the paltry intrigues and fights of a few years ended in placing the power, which Caesar had won, in the hands of his heir and namesake, whose most glorious triumphs were but straws on the mighty stream of events, which Julius had set in motion.
Caesar.—Those who are accustomed merely to the common cant of many would-be
philanthropists, about the destruction of the liberties of Rome, and the bloody-minded
atrocity of their destroyer, will doubtless feel shocked at the favorable view taken
of his character, above. The truth is, there was no liberty in Rome for Caesar to
destroy; the question of political freedom having been long before settled in the triumphant
ascendency of faction, the only choice was between one tyrant and ten
thousand. No one can question that Caesar was the fair choice of the great mass
of the people. They were always on his side, in opposition to the aristocracy, who
sought his ruin because they considered him dangerous to their privileges, and their
liberty (to tyrannize;) and their fears were grounded on the very circumstance that
the vast majority of the people were for him. This was the condition of parties until
Caesar's death, and long after, to the time of the final triumph of Octavius. Not one
of Caesar's friends among the people ever became his enemy, or considered him as
having betrayed their affection by his assumptions of power. Those who murdered
him, and plunged the world from a happy, universal peace, into the devastating horrors
of a wide spread and protracted civil war, were not the patriotic avengers of an
oppressed people; they were the jealous supporters of a haughty aristocracy, who
saw their powers and dignity diminished, in being shared with vast numbers of the
lower orders, added to the senate by Caesar, whose steady determination to humble
them they saw in his refusal to pay them homage by rising, when the hereditary
aristocracy of Rome took their seats in senate. It was to redeem the failing powers
of their privileged order, that these aristocratic assassins murdered the man, whose
mercy had triumphed over his prudence, in sparing the forfeited lives of these hereditary,
dangerous foes of popular rights. Nor could they for a moment blind the
people to the nature and object of their action; for as soon as the murder had been
committed, the universal cry for justice, which rose at once from the whole mass
of the people, indignant at the butchery of their friend, drove the gang of conspirators
from Rome and from Italy, which they were never permitted again to enter. Those
who thronged to the standards of the heir and friend of Caesar, were the hosts of democracy,
who never rested till they had crushed and exterminated the miserable faction
of aristocrats, who had hoped to triumph over the mass of the people, by the death
of the people's great friend. Now if the people of Rome chose to give up their whole
power, and the disposal of their political affairs, into the hands of a great, a talented,
a generous and heroic man, like Caesar, who had so effectually vindicated and secured
their freedom against the claims of a domineering aristocracy, and if they afterwards
remained so well satisfied with the use which he made of this power, as never
to make the slightest effort, nor on any occasion to express the least wish, to resume
it, I would like to know who had any business to hinder the sovran people from so
doing, or what blame can in any way be laid to Caesar's charge, for accepting, and
for nobly and generously using the power so freely and heartily given up to him.
The protracted detail of his mental and physical greatness, given in the sketch of his character above, would need for its full defense and illustration, the mention of such numerous particulars, that I must be content with challenging any doubter,
