Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/31

 *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,