In the time of Tiberius, as
President Troplong beautifully and officially expressed it, "Democracy
at last seated herself on the imperial throne, embodied in the
Caesars,"--those worshipful incarnations of democracy, brought to our
view in the _tableaux_ of Suetonius and by the accounts of Tacitus. We
have at last returned to Caesarism, or Asiatic absolutism, improved by
modern light, and making the emperor a Second Providence, opening and
shutting the mouths of the universal-suffrage people, for words or
bread, as imperial divinity finds best. This is the progress of our age
in Europe, while we, in this hemisphere, have taken, for the first
time in history, a rational view of party strife, and with unclouded
intelligence maintain that judges and presidents are, and ought to be,
party exponents, doing away with those once romantic, but certainly
superannuated ideas of Country, Justice, Truth, and Patriotism. All real
progress tends toward simplification; and how simple are the idea of
party and the associations clustering around this sacred word, compared
with the confusing and embarrassing unreality of those ideas and
juvenile feelings we have mentioned last!
But we have not done yet with the glory of our age.
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