Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/230

 According to this view, Cato and Cicero, Brutus and Cassius, were the Beaconsfields and Salisbury's, while the Catilines and the Clodii were the DUkes and Chamberlains of the time. The cause of the latter triumphed eventually when Julius Caesar crushed the Senate and became the saviour of society,—the great world-prototype of personal rulers. In a sense the advent of Roman imperialism was a popular gain. It replaced many tyrants by one. But it gave the death-blow to whatever little public spirit remained in Rome, and that calamity was irreparable. I grant the republican oligarchy was largely corrupt and oppressive. Unhappily, it never occurred to any one to renovate the Roman legislative assemblies by the admission of representatives from the provincial communes. Representative government as now understood was the discovery of a later age. As it was, Cato and Cicero, Brutus and Cassius, saw the image of constitutional freedom receding day by day, and they clung desperately to her skirts. In such evil times Radicals became Conservatives, and Conservatives ostensible Radicals. Mr. Beesly seems to me to forget that even a hateful middle class may be crushed at too great a cost. Like all Comtists, he is too partial to able men placed in authority by brute masses. For my part, had I lived in the days of Brutus and Cassius, I am certain that I should have been among the republican legionaries who were cut to pieces at Philippi, just as I should have been at the coup d'état, or as I should be if ever M. Gambetta, for example, were to show symptoms of following in the footprints of Napoleon.