Page:The rise and fall of the Emperor Maximilian.djvu/323

 only will be able to reconstruct the past, aided by all the truthful materials which every day is adding to the historical records of the second French empire. At all events, from the facts already known, one great lesson is evolved—that the policy of a government cannot with impunity venture to run indefinite risks without giving a shock to its power and damaging the prestige of its dignity, at home as well as abroad. Rulers ought not to forget that human passions play their part in the most elevated regions of the community, just as in its lowest recesses, and that it is their province to submit all their actions to the salutary and restrictive control of those they govern, if they would not lay them open to the stern censures of posterity.