Nothing that we said of Louis Napoleon in 1851 was untrue of that personage," but-this, that, and the other. The man whose doings had once belonged, not to political, but to criminal history was now stirring up company of the Queen and the Lord Mayor. In those warfare throughout Europe, and was admitted to the days I often wrote letters in the Spectator. But one which I wrote then, in much the same spirit as the lan guage of the paper itself in 1851, was refused admittance on the ground that it would most likely lead to an action for libel.

of his bad showed an uneasy feeling that | drawn upon, to set forth the joy of liberthe unperverted moral instinct would ated nations at the fall of their oppressor. naturally seize on the bad. We were Turn from the courtly twaddle of our own told to forget - as if history could forget, time, the talk about "illustrious guests as if the same claim to forgetfulness and "imperial visitors," and see how the might not be equally urged on behalf of fall of a tyrant was looked on by one Nero or Bernabos Visconti. We were whom some deem to have been the very asked to show sympathy and respect. It mouthpiece of his Creator, and who at is doubtless well to show sympathy and least was one who put no restraint on the respect wherever one can; but to show outpourings of a heart which had not sympathy and respect for a criminal, or learned to call evil good or good evil. for the abettors of a criminal, is to be- "De mortuis nil nisi bonum " would have come his abettors ourselves. There are, sounded a strange doctrine indeed either I believe, those who hold the crimes of in the ears of Isaiah or in the ears of Louis Napoleon Buonaparte to be no Dante. crimes. They, of course, were at least consistent in using this kind of language. But the same kind of language was used also by others, who thought-who at least had once spoken of the crimes of 1851 and of Buonaparte's later crimes pretty much as I think myself. This whole kind of thing is thoroughly immoral; it weakens the sense of right and wrong; it teaches those who talk in this way to trifle with truth and falsehood. A great public criminal does not become an object of sympathy or respect, either because he is unlucky or because he is dead. To speak as if he did, to call evil good because the doer of evil can do no more, is so far to quench that light within our souls which is given us to teach us to avoid the evil and choose the good.

What again was the feeling of the citizens of the ancient commonwealths of Greece towards the tyrant? towards the man who had trampled the laws and freedom of his country under foot, who had seized by force or fraud on a power which the law did not give him? It was surely a healthy moral instinct which declared that the man who had not only broken the law, but had overthrown it, had thereby forfeited all right to the protection of law in his own person. Through his own act, the appeal to law was no longer possible; he had enthroned force in the room of law. Those therefore whom he had deprived of the protection of law might rightly use against him the arms which he had used against them. The act of the tyrant destroyed the whole It is plain that the kind of language political and social system; it broke which has lately been used about Louis through all human ties, and left men to Napoleon Buonaparte, just like the lan- defend themselves as they could, just as guage which was used about him in 1855, in the times before human society began. could be possible only in an age in which The tyrant then had forfeited all claim the moral sense had become very dull to appeal to the rights of a system which and dim with regard to public crimes. he had trampled under foot; he had of No one would have in this way claimed his own act put himself in the position of sympathy and respect for a private crimi- a wild beast; to rid the world of him was nal. The feeling of times when the feel- therefore as worthy an act as the exploits ing of public duty came more closely of the heroes who slew lions or dragons home to men was something quite differ- for the common good. That this reasonent. Take the highest effort of the an- ing is sound, from the principle from cient Hebrew poetry. I care not whether which it starts, can hardly be denied ; the hymn of triumph over the fall of that it is inapplicable to our times is Babylon and her despot be prophecy or agreed on all hands. But the causes which history, the work of Isaiah in the days of made it applicable to one state of things Ahaz or of some later poet in the days of and not to the other again depend almost Cyrus; the moral of the song is the same wholly upon the difference between large in either case. There is not a word of and small states. In a commonwealth sympathy or respect for the fallen tyrant, formed of a single city, to drive out or to either because he is fallen or because he slay-and to slay was commonly easier is dead. The indignant triumph of the than to drive out-the personal tyrant man who at last saw the righteous ven- might often really bring back the lawful geance for which he had so long waited government of the city. In a large state knew no such paltering with evil. His experience shows that tyrannicide may whole soul was poured forth, all the stores get rid of the personal tyrant, but that it of the gorgeous imagery of the East were ❘ seldom or never gets rid of the tyranny.

In the old commonwealths again the doc-| with which we started. The commontrine of tyrannicide was much less liable wealth, its interests and the duties which to abuse than it is now. How easily it is are owing to it, do not come home to liable to abuse is shown in the famous men's minds in the large state in the argument of Jean Petit in the fifteenth cen- same way in which they do in the small. tury, where the right to kill a tyrant is car- The tyrant who sins against the commonried so far as to become the right of killing | wealth has, when his power is once esalmost anybody. But in an old Greek tablished, very little temptation to sin commonwealth there could be no ques- against its individual citizens. He is tion who was the tyrant, and who was therefore hardly felt to be a tyrant at all. not. The supporters of any form of law- The abstract right of tyrannicide is ful government agreed in denouncing the hardly worth discussing in any modern man who had seized on the powers of state. It is so universally condemned, it the State without any lawful commission, is so likely to cause worse evils than any and the tyrant had then no way of throw- which it takes away, that, even if abing dust into people's eyes by calling him-stractly right, it is so inexpedient as to self Consul, President, Emperor, or any be practically wrong. Still it is hard to other lawful-sounding title. Then again, it is certain that the practical evils of tyranny become less in proportion to the size of the state over which the tyrant rules. In a single city-commonwealth the tyrant is the personal enemy of every dweller in his city. Every one is personally exposed to his cruelty, avarice, or lust. If we turn from the cities of Greece to the Empire of Rome, we shall find that few, if any, recorded Greek tyrants were quite so bad as some of the worst of the Emperors; but then the personal crimes of the Emperors touched only a very few among their subjects. In the provinces Tiberius and Nero were not unpopular, and in the city the tyrant might safely stain himself with the blood of the Lamiæ, so long as he did not make himself an object of fear to cobblers.t But modern tyrants have gone further than this: they have found out that the stealthy degradation and corruption of a nation better answers their purpose than its open oppression. They have found that it pays to put some check on their own passions, and to let law take its or-mindedness, nothing to make us suspect dinary course whenever their own power that he was in any way seeking his own is not directly threatened. All this does, power or pelf. It must be a wide charity in truth, make tyranny now a greater indeed which can say as much for Louis evil than it was of old; but it disguises Napoleon Buonaparte. Orsini too showed its blackness; it makes it more easy to personal courage in risking his own life: hide it under the mask of lawful govern- Buonaparte simply sat by the fire and ment. That is to say, the modern tyrant said "tirez, tirez." Yet public opinion is the public enemy of the common-condemned Orsini and condoned Buowealth; he is not necessarily, like the ancient tyrant, the personal enemy of every one of its citizens. We are thus again brought round to the distinction

speak of the tyrannicide as if he were a greater sinner than the tyrant himself. Let it be granted that Orsini was a criminal; he was surely not so great a criminal as Buonaparte. Let us look at the rebellion and massacre of 1851, not as we look at it, but as it would have been defended by Buonaparte himself or any of his admirers. It was an act irregular and unlawful in itself, but which was justified by the great objects to which it was to lead. From the point of view of Louis Napoleon Buonaparte, the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent and guilty was needful for the public good, and was therefore justifiable. From the point of view of Orsini, the slaughter of a single guilty man was needful for the public good, and was therefore justifiable. So far the two cases are exactly parallel. And it would be much harder to show that Buonaparte acted for the public good, even according to his own idea of it, than to show that Orsini did. There is nothing to make us suspect that Orsini acted otherwise than with perfect single

naparte. At any rate, it condemned Orsini much more strongly than it condemned Buonaparte. Had Orsini escaped from his prison, as Buonaparte had once escaped from his, he would hardly have made his way into the same social circles into which Buonaparte made his way. The English House of Commons, while protesting against Buonaparte's insolent dictation, could not do so without pro

nouncing a condemnation on Orsini, peror were exactly on a level with the while it never pronounced any condemna- deeds of the wicked Communists, that tion on Buonaparte. Yet, if Orsini had the murder of the Archbishop and the used England as a place in which to lay hostages, though a monstrous crime, was plots against a friendly government, Buo- in no way a greater crime than the masnaparte had done the like. Why these sacres of December. In fact, if personal somewhat unfair distinctions? The whole single-mindedness is to be taken as an thing is another instance of the same law. excuse for crime, there was doubtless far Buonaparte's murders were done on a more of that in the murderers of 1871 large scale, on so large a scale that they than in the murderer of 1851. The Comlooked like lawful war or like the suppres- munists were many, while Buonaparte sion of a rebellion by lawful authority. was but one. The Communists were deOrsini's attempt to murder was done on feated, while Buonaparte was successful. so small a scale that it looked like a mere But if some particular Communist had private crime. The crime of Buonaparte, got to the head and had called himself the murder of many, was so palpably a Emperor, and had got Kings to call him crime against the commonwealth that it brother, and had made wars and annexed might pass for no crime at all. The crime provinces and betrayed nations, and done of Orsini, the attempted murder of one, all the things which an Emperor sprung simply because it was the lesser crime, of a massacre and a plébiscite ought to do, seemed in the eyes of most men to be the the hero of 1871 might by this time be greater. getting as illustrious as the hero of 1851.

Of course, in speaking of the doings of The way in which Louis Napoleon Louis Napoleon Buonaparte by their Buonaparte, living and dead, has been right names, we are at every step met by flattered and glorified in this country and the difficulty that so few people know elsewhere is the greatest case of all of the what his doings really were. I was once way in which so many people seem to be in a roomful of people, one of whom unable to understand the guilt of a pubthought himself a great scholar and an- lic crime, while they are keen enough to other thought himself fit to be a mem- the guilt of a private crime. That is to ber of Parliament, where I was looked on say, the great ideas of Law and Commonas grossly ignorant because I maintained wealth, which were ever present to the that the coup d'état happened, not in mind of a virtuous Greek, are not in the 1848, but in 1851. It is easy to see what like way present to the minds of many such a confusion as this means. These among ourselves against whose conduct were not the only people whom I have and way of thinking in the common affound jumbling together Cavaignac's sup- fairs of life there is nothing to be said. pression of the Reds in June, 1848, with But there are other glaring instances as Buonaparte's rebellion and massacre in well. Take the case of the Alabama and December, 1851. They fancied that Buo- the Geneva Arbitration. The whole nanaparte was a ruler putting down a rebel- tion has been defendant in a suit; the lion against an established government, verdict has gone against us, and we have instead of being himself a rebel overturn- a sum to pay as damages. We have to ing an established government. I have pay for wrong-doing which was in no sort found others who could not understand the wrong-doing of the English nation, what I meant by applying the word "rebellion" to Buonaparte's doings; they did not understand that there could be such a thing as rebellion against a republic. In their eyes, obedience and allegiance were due to a king only. Some people, I believe, fancy that Napoleon the Third succeeded in regular course to Napoleon the Something, whether the First or the Second I will not presume to guess. In all these ways people fail to understand that the doings of Buonaparte in 1851 were as distinctly revolutionary as anything that was done by moderate or by extreme republicans in 1848 or in 1871. Many people would stare if they were told that the deeds of the illustrious Em

but simply the wrong-doing of particular men. It is perfectly right that the Americans should receive compensation for the damage done by the Alabama; but, in all reason, that compensation ought not to be paid by the guiltless English nation, but by those guilty men who, in spite of national and international law, fitted out a pirate ship to prey on the commerce of a friendly nation. Theirs is the guilt, and theirs ought to be the punishment. There have been times when men who had done such a crime against their own country and against mankind would, when they saw what had come of their act, have stepped forward and offered to bear the punishment of their own deeds,

instead of standing silently by and throw-which he was condemned and hanged was ing the punishment on their country. evidence on which no honest magistrate There have been times when the State would fine a man five shillings for a triwould have taken the matter into its own fling assault. There was not even the hands, and would have confiscated the tyrant's plea of necessity; for Gordon lands and goods of the offenders, instead was safe on board a ship, and he might of throwing the burthen on the innocent have been kept there till he could be tried tax-payers of the whole country. I have by a lawful court. To my mind, all this not heard that either of these courses has makes a much blacker story than when a been proposed. It is quite possible that private man kills his private enemy; but neither of them may have come into any it is plain that many people do not think man's head but my own. I have not so. A Middlesex grand jury threw out heard that the men who have done this great crime, the men who have disturbed the relations between two kindred nations, who have brought us to the brink of the most unnatural of wars, have been visited by any kind of penalty,

the bill against Eyre; a bench of Shropshire magistrates refused to commit him for trial. He has received no punishment beyond the mere loss of his governorship; the innocent tax-payers of the United Kingdom have been made to pay for his judicial or social. I have not heard legal expenses; men of some name and that they shrink from showing them- rank welcomed his return with a banquet; selves among honest men, or that hon- he is received into decent society; he est men shrink from their company. appears at Court, and, whenever he apBut, if they had committed a crime of a pears, he is described as "late Governor millionth part the amount, not against of Jamaica." I am told that Mr. Eyre two nations, but against a single man, has all manner of agreeable personal qualthey certainly would have been visited ities; very likely he has; but he none with punishment of some kind, judicial or the less put a man to death unjustly. social. Here again is an instance of the Here again is a case, though not quite of same moral failing of which I have been the same kind as the others, in which a speaking throughout. Crime is no longer public crime is condoned, while a private dealt with as crime when it is done against crime of the same kind would be looked whole commonwealths and nations. The on with horror. There is, of course, immunity which such men have enjoyed mixed up in all this a feeling of admirais the natural consequence of our way of tion for what we call energy. Eyre saved looking at such matters. But it would Jamaica, and so forth. Now energy, like have been hard to make our way of look-other things, is in its own nature indiffering at such matters understood among ent. It may be a virtue or it may be a the countrymen of Spurius Postumius and Marcus Regulus.

crime, according to the way in which it is used. To my mind, the energy of the Another case which illustrates the feel- man whose feet are swift to shed blood is ing of which we have been speaking, that kind of energy which is a crime, and though mixed up with some other feel- not a virtue. There is again another noings, is found to be in the applause with tion mixed up with it, the notion that a which so many people greeted the doings crime is less of a crime because it is a of Governor Eyre and his accomplices in person in authority who does it. This Jamaica. To put the matter in its mild- is the same as one of the confusions with est form, a man who may have been regard to Louis Napoleon Buonaparte. guilty or innocent, but who was not Eyre was Governor of Jamaica, Buonaproved to be guilty, was put to death by parte was President of the French Rean unlawful tribunal at the bidding of a public; therefore people think that either governor who was his political, if not his of them might do whatever he pleased. personal, enemy, and who rejoiced over But, in truth, the magistrate who receives his death in language which one would a limited authority to act according to the' have called brutal, if it had not been so laws of the commonwealth, and who uses grotesquely absurd. Gordon, according that authority to break the laws of the to the man who slew him, was a liar and commonwealth, is far more guilty than an adulterer. I neither know nor care the private man who breaks those laws. whether he was either; but I do know People would easily see this if it were that there is no law to hang men either brought close home to them; they would for lying or for adultery. The tribunal not at all like to be hanged by the arbibefore which Gordon was tried was un-trary will of the Mayor or Sheriff of their lawful in every way; the evidence on own town or county. They might per