These were welcomed because they at least mitigated anarchy. If a Visconti or a Sforza was bad at Milan, he was better than a multitude of tyrants. If the Scala were severe at Verona, they were less severe than the crowd of competitors whom they put down. If Rienzi was harsh at Rome, he was milder than the struggles of the Colonna and Orsini,--if the Duke of Athens was at once contemptible and terrible at Athens, he was neither so contemptible nor so terrible as the feuds of the Cerchi and Donati. And when, at last, Charles the Fifth crushed all these seething polities into a compact despotism, that was better than disunion, disintegration and anarchy. This compression of anarchic elements ended the Vitriolic period of Italian Aristocracy, but it brought on the Narcotic period. It was the most fearful reign of cruelty, debauchery and treachery between the orgies of Vitellius and De Sade. Yet those debaucheries and murders among the Borgias and later Medici, and so many other leading families, were but types of what this second phase of an oppressive aristocracy _must_ be. For the domineering caste-spirit immediately on its repression breaks out in cruelty. This is historical, and a moment's thought will show you that it is logical. The development of the chivalric noble into the cruel schemer is very easily traced. Given such a lordling forced to keep the peace, and you have a character which, if it resigns itself, sinks into debauchery--which, if it resists, flies into plotting. Now both the debauchee and the plotter regard bodies and souls of inferiors as mere counters in their games,--hence they _must_ be cruel.[30] I turn now to another nation where the serf-mastering spirit wrought out its fearful work in yet a different manner, and on a more gigantic scale,--in a manner so brilliant that it has dazzled the world for centuries, and blazoned its faults as virtues;--on a scale so great that it has sunk art, science, literature, education, commerce and manufactures,--brought misery upon its lower caste,--brought death upon its upper caste,--and has utterly removed its nation from modern geography, and its name from modern history. I point you to POLAND. Look at Polish history as painted by its admirers,--it is noble and beautiful. You see political scenes, military scenes, and individual lives which at once win you. Go back three centuries, stand on those old towers of Warsaw,--look forth over the Plains of Volo. The nation is gathered there. Its King it elects. The King thus elected is limited in power so that his main function is to do justice. The whole voting body are _equals_. Each, too, is _free_. No King, no Noble, is allowed to trench upon his freedom. So free is each that no will of the majority is binding upon him, except by his own consent. Here is equality indeed! Equality pushed so far that each man is not only the equal of every other--but of all others together;--the equal of the combined nation.