[51] It is obvious that so long as the vitality of a nation remains unimpaired, misgovernment can be but a temporary ill. The regenerative principle will be at work to remove the evil and heal the wounds it has inflicted; and though the remedy be sometimes violent, and throw the state into fearful convulsions, it will seldom be found ineffectual. So long as the spirit of liberty prevailed among the Romans, the Tarquiniuses and Appiuses were as a straw before the storm of popular indignation; but the death of Cæsar could but substitute a despot in the stead of a mild and generous usurper. The first Brutus might save the nation, because he was the expression of the national sentiment; the second could not, because he was one man opposed to millions. It is a common error to ascribe too much to individual exertions, and whimsical philosophers have amused themselves to trace great events to petty causes; but a deeper inquiry will demonstrate that the great catastrophes which arrest our attention and form the landmarks of history, are but the inevitable result of all the whole chain of antecedent events. Julius Cæsar and Napoleon Bonaparte were, indeed, especially gifted for their great destinies, but the same gifts could not have raised them to their exalted positions at any other epoch than the one in which each lived. Those petty causes are but the drop which causes the measure to overflow, the pretext of the moment; or as the small fissure in the dyke which produces the _crevasse_: the wall of waters stood behind. No man can usurp supreme power, unless the prevailing tendency of the nation favors it; no man can long persist in hurrying a nation along in a course repulsive to it; and in this sense, therefore, not with regard to its abstract justness, it is undoubtedly true, that the voice of the nation is the voice of God. It is the expression of what shall and must be.--H. CHAPTER IV. DEFINITION OF THE WORD DEGENERACY--ITS CAUSE. Skeleton history of a nation--Origin of castes, nobility, etc.--Vitality of nations not necessarily extinguished by conquest--China, Hindostan--Permanency of their peculiar civilizations. If the spirit of the preceding pages has been at all understood, it will be seen that I am far from considering these great national maladies, misgovernment, fanaticism, irreligion, and immorality, as mere trifling accidents, without influence or importance. On the contrary, I sincerely pity the community which is afflicted by such scourges, and think that no efforts can be misdirected which tend to mitigate or remove them. But I repeat, that unless these disorganizing elements are grafted upon another more destructive principle, unless they are the consequences of a greater, though concealed, evil; we may rest assured that their ravages are not fatal, and that society, after a shorter or longer period of suffering, will escape their toils, perhaps with renewed vigor and youth.