always dangerous, when there is a low degree of virtue or intelligence among those whom they represent. Certain it is, that their power is nearly absolute when they are sustained by passion or prejudice. The representative of a fanatical constituency has no continued power, unless he perpetually flatters those whom, in his heart, he knows to be lost to the control of reason. And his influence is greater or less, according to the strength of the popular passions which he inflames, or in which, as is often the case, he shares. The honest representative of fanatics is himself a fanatic. Thus Cromwell had so great an ascendency with his party, because he felt more strongly than they in matters where they sympathized. But the liberties of Rome were not overturned by fanatical rulers, but by those who availed themselves of the passions which they themselves did not feel, in order to compass their selfish ends. And that is the greater danger in republics--that bad men rise by the suffrage of foolish people whom they deceive, by affecting to fall in with their wishes, like Napoleon and Caesar, rather than that honest men climb to power by the very excess of their enthusiasm, like Cromwell, or Peter the Hermit. Hence a Mirabeau is more dangerous than a Robespierre. The former would have betrayed the people he led; the latter would have urged them on to consistent courses, even if the way was lined with death. Had Mirabeau lived, and retained his power, he would have compromised the Revolution, of which Napoleon was the product, and the work would have had to be done over. But Robespierre pushed his principles to their utmost logical sequence, and the nation was satisfied with their folly, in a practical point of view. Napoleon arose to rebuke anarchy as well as feudal kings, and though maddened and intoxicated by war, so that his name is a Moloch, he never dreamed of restoring the unequal privileges which the Revolution swept away. [Sidenote: Greatness of the constitution.]