Are the public finances publicly administered? No.
Does the nation vote the taxes, or are they taken from the nation? The
old system still exists.
Are municipal liberties at all extended? They were greater in 1816
than they are at present.
At the present day, as in the days of the most extreme pontifical
despotism, the Pope is all in all; he has all; he can do all; he
exercises a perpetual dictatorship, without control or limit.
I own no systematic aversion to the exceptional exercise of a
dictatorship. The ancient Romans knew its value, often had recourse to
it, and derived benefit from it. When the enemy was at the gates, and
the Republic in danger, the Senate and the people, usually so
suspicious, placed all their rights in the hands of one man, and
cried, "Save us!" Some grand dictatorships are to be found in the
history of all times and all peoples. If we examine the different
stages of humanity, we shall find almost at every one a dictator. One
dictatorship created the unity of France, another its military
greatness, and a third its prosperity in peace. Benefits so important
as these, which nations cannot acquire alone, are well worth the
temporary sacrifice of every liberty. A man of genius, who is at the
same time an honest man, and who becomes invested with a boundless
authority, is almost a God upon earth.
But the duties of the dictator are in exact proportion to the extent
of his powers. A parliamentary sovereign, who walks in a narrow path
traced out by two Chambers, and who hears discussed in the morning
what he is to do in the evening, is almost innocent of the faults of
his reign.
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