There is scarcely any event which takes place upon this earth which produces unmixed evil or unmixed good. There is some slight element of truth in some of the statements of the last quotation. There was some temporary restraint placed upon the dishonesty and cruelty of the Roman tax collectors; and there was undoubtedly a permanent improvement in the ability of the men holding the minor positions under the Roman government, through the introduction of what may be called a civil-service system. But the contention that the establishment of the empire was for the benefit either of the Roman citizens or of the Roman subjects is too ridiculous to merit even a denial. To show the ridiculousness of such a statement it is only necessary to point to the history of the Roman empire during the half century following the death of Octavius Cæsar. Corrupt as the administration of the government often was under the republic, and cruel as were the successful factional leaders on a few occasions, such conditions as existed in Rome under the emperors Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero could never have existed under the republic. The character of the Roman empire was a most anomalous one. In the history of the empire we find the unparalleled situation of an absolute despotism without any hereditary nobility and even without any well-established principle as to the descent of the royal power to the children of the deceased emperor. Under the most despotic days of the empire any Roman citizen might rise to any position of power or dignity under the emperor; nay, more than this, any subject of the Roman empire, no matter how low his origin or condition in society, might be thrust, by a lucky turn of the wheel of fortune, into the imperial purple itself. The Roman emperors came from every strata of society, and from every portion of the Roman empire. At different times we see the son of a slave, a Syrian sun priest, a Dacian peasant, seated in the chair of the Cæsars; but this state of affairs in no way alleviated or excused the evils which the empire brought upon its subjects. The exploitation of the millions at the hands of a favored few is not rendered more defensible by the fact that any individual has the chance, by extraordinary ability, extraordinary dishonesty, or extraordinary good fortune, to raise himself out of the ranks of the exploited into those of the exploiters.