The great need of the world was public virtue--the spirit of self- sacrifice for the common good. This the empire could not possibly call into being. The public virtue of the ancient world resided in the nationalities which the conquering republic had broken up, and of which the empire only sealed the doom. The empire could never call forth even the lowest form of public virtue, loyalty to the hereditary right of a royal family, because the empire never presented itself as a right, but merely as a personal power. The idea of legitimacy, I apprehend never connected itself with these dynasts who were, in fact, a series of usurpers, veiling their usurpation under republican forms. When the spirit which leads man to sacrifice himself to the good of the community appeared again it appeared in associations and notably in one great association formed not by the empire but independently of it in antagonism to its immorality, and in spite of its persecutions. Accidentally the empire assisted the extension of the great Christian association by completing the overthrow of the national religions, but the main part of this work had been done by the republic and it was the merit neither of the republic nor of the empire. It is said with confidence that the empire vastly improved the government of the provinces, and that on this account it was a great blessing to the world. I do not believe that any nation had then attained, I do not believe that any nation has now attained, and I doubt whether any nation ever will attain, such a point of morality as to be able to govern other nations for the benefit of the governed. I will say nothing about our Christian policy in India, but let those who rate French morality so highly, consider what French tutelage is to the people of Algeria. But supposing the task undertaken, the question which is the best organ of imperial government--an assembly or an autocrat--is a curious one. I am disposed to think that, taking the average of assemblies and the average of autocrats, there is more hope in the assembly, because in the assembly opinion must have some force. The autocrat is in a certain sense, raised above the dominant nation and its interests, but, after all, he is one of that nation, he lives in it, and subsists by its support. Even in the time of Augustus, if we may trust Dion Cassius Licinius the Governor of Gaul, was guilty of corruptions and peculations curiously resembling those of Verres, from whom he seems to have borrowed the device of tampering with the calendar for the purpose of fiscal fraud, and when the provinces complained, the Emperor hushed up the matter, partly to avoid scandal, partly because Licinius was cunning enough to pretend that his peculations had been intended to cut the sinews of revolt, and that his spoils were reserved for the imperial exchequer. The rebellions of Vindex and Civilis seem to prove that even Caesar's favourite province was not happy. Spain was