It is not
necessary to point out the utter absurdity of this attempt to justify
modern despotism by referring to the action of men who lived and acted
in the greatest of ancient revolutions; and those men who admire Julius
Caesar, but who are not disposed to see in his conduct a justification of
the conduct of living men, object to the French Imperial view of his
career. Mommsen, whose admiration of Caesar is as ardent as his knowledge
of Roman history is great, speaks with well-deserved scorn of the
efforts that are made to defend contemporary usurpation by
misrepresentation of the history of antiquity. One of his remarks is
curious, read in connection with that history which daily appears in our
journals. Writing before our civil war began, he declared, that, if ever
the slaveholding aristocracy of the Southern States of America should
bring matters to such a pass as their counterparts in the Rome of Sulla,
Caesarism would be pronounced legitimate there also by the spirit of
history,--an observation that derived new interest from the report that
General Lee was to be made Dictator of the Confederacy, and Mr. Davis
allowed to go into that retirement which is so much admired and so
little sought by all politicians. Mommsen, after the remark above
quoted, proceeds to say, that, whenever Caesarism "appears under other
social conditions, it is at once a usurpation and a caricature.
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