The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus

by American Anti-Slavery Society

Constantine the Great has been the admiration of Christendom for his virtues. The early Christian writers adorn his justice, benevolence and piety with the most exalted eulogy. He was baptized, and admitted to the Christian church. He abrogated Paganism, and made Christianity the religion of his empire; he attended the councils of the early fathers of the church, consulted with the bishops, and devoted himself with the most untiring zeal to the propagation of Christianity, and to the promotion of peace and love among its professors; he convened the Council of Nice, to settle disputes which had long distracted the church, appeared in the assembly with admirable modesty and temper, moderated the heats of the contending parties, implored them to exercise mutual forbearance, and exhorted them to love unfeigned, to forgive one another, as they hoped to be forgiven by Christ. Who would not think it uncharitable to accuse such a man of barbarity in the exercise of power?—and yet he drove Arius and his associates into banishment, for opinion's sake, denounced death against all with whom his books should afterwards be found, and prohibited, on pain of death, the exercise, however peaceably, of the functions of any other religion than Christianity. In a fit of jealousy and rage, he ordered his innocent son, Crispus, to execution, without granting him a hearing; and upon finding him innocent, killed his own wife, who had falsely accused him.

To the preceding maybe added Theodosius the Great, the last Roman emperor before the division of the empire. He was a member of the Christian church, and in his zeal against paganism, and what he deemed heresy, surpassed all who were before him. The Christian writers of his time speak of him as a most illustrious model of justice, generosity, magnanimity, benevolence, and every virtue. And yet Theodosius denounced capital punishments against those who held 'heretical' opinions, and commanded inter-marriage between cousins to be punished by burning the parties alive. On hearing that the people of Antioch had demolished the statues set up in that city, in honor of himself, and had threatened the governor, he flew into a transport of fury, ordered the city to be laid in ashes, and all the inhabitants to be slaughtered; and upon hearing of a resistance to his authority in Thessalonica, in which one of his lieutenants was killed, he instantly ordered a general massacre of the inhabitants; and in obedience to his command, seven thousand men, women and children were butchered in the space of three hours.

The foregoing are a few of many instances in the history of Rome, and of a countless multitude in the history of the world, illustrating the truth, that the lodgement of arbitrary power, in the best human hands, is always a fearfully perilous experiment; that the mildest tempers, the most humane and benevolent dispositions, the most blameless and conscientious previous life, with the most rigorous habits of justice, are no security, that, in a moment of temptation, the possessors of such power will not make their subjects their victims; illustrating also the truth, that, while men may exhibit nothing but honor, honesty, mildness, justice, and generosity, in their intercourse with those of their own grade, or language, or nation, or hue, they may practice towards others, for whom they have contempt and aversion, the most revolting meanness, perpetrate robbery unceasingly, and inflict the severest privations, and the most barbarous cruelties. But this is not all: history is full of examples, showing not only the effects of arbitrary power on its victims, but its terrible reaction on those who exercise it; blunting their sympathies, and hardening to adamant their hearts toward them, at least, if not toward the human race generally. This is shown in the fact, that almost every tyrant in the history of the world, has entered upon the exercise of absolute power with comparative moderation; multitudes of them with marked forbearance and mildness, and not a few with the most signal condescension, magnanimity, gentleness and compassion. Among these last are included those who afterwards became the bloodiest monsters that ever cursed the earth. Of the Roman Emperors, almost every one of whom perpetrated the most barbarous atrocities, Vitellius seems to have been the only one who cruelly exercised his power from the outset. Most of the other emperors, sprung up into fiends in the hot-bed of arbitrary power. If they had not been plied with its fiery stimulants, but had lived under the legal restraints of other men, instead of going to the grave under the curses of their generation, multitudes might have called them blessed.

The moderation which has generally distinguished absolute monarchs at the commencement of their reigns, was doubtless in some cases assumed from policy; in the greater number, however, as is manifest from their history, it has been the natural workings of minds held in check by previous associations, and not yet hardened into habits of cruelty, by being accustomed to the exercise of power without restraint. But as those associations have weakened, and the wielding of uncontrolled sway has become a habit, like other evil doers, they have, in the expressive language of Scripture, 'waxed worse and worse.'

For eighteen hundred years an involuntary shudder has run over the human race, at the mention of the name of Nero; yet, at the commencement of his reign, he burst into tears when called upon to sign the death-warrant of a criminal, and exclaimed, 'Oh, that I had never learned to write!' His mildness and magnanimity won the affections of his subjects; and it was not till the poison of absolute power had worked within his nature for years, that it swelled him into a monster.

Tiberius, Claudius, and Caligula, began the exercise of their power with singular forbearance, and each grew into a prodigy of cruelty. So averse was Caligula to bloodshed, that he refused to look at a list of conspirators against his own life, which was handed to him; yet afterwards, a more cruel wretch never wielded a sceptre. In his thirst for slaughter, he wished all the necks in Rome one, that he might cut them off at a blow.

Domitian, at the commencement of his reign, carried his abhorrence of cruelty to such lengths, that he forbad the sacrificing of oxen, and would sit whole days on the judgment-seat, reversing the unjust decisions of corrupt judges; yet afterwards, he surpassed even Nero in cruelty. The latter was content to torture and kill by proxy, and without being a spectator; but Domitian could not be denied the luxury of seeing his victims writhe, and hearing them shriek; and often with his own hand directed the instrument of torture, especially when some illustrious senator or patrician was to be killed by piece-meal. Commodus began with gentleness and condescension, but soon became a terror and a scourge, outstripping in his atrocities most of his predecessors. Maximin too, was just and generous when first invested with power, but afterwards rioted in slaughter with the relish of a fiend. History has well said of this monarch, 'the change in his disposition may readily serve to show how dangerous a thing is power, that could transform a person of such rigid virtues into such a monster.'

Instances almost innumerable might be furnished in the history of every age, illustrating the blunting of sympathies, and the total transformation of character wrought in individuals by the exercise of arbitrary power. Not to detain the reader with long details, let a single instance suffice.

Perhaps no man has lived in modern times, whose name excites such horror as that of Robespierre. Yet it is notorious that he was naturally of a benevolent disposition, and tender sympathies.

"Before the revolution, when as a judge in his native city of Arras he had to pronounce judgment on an assassin, he took no food for two days afterwards, but was heard frequently exclaiming, 'I am sure he was guilty; he is a villain; but yet, to put a human being to death!!' He could not support the idea; and that the same necessity might not recur, he relinquished his judicial office.—(See Laponneray's Life of Robespierre, p. 8.) Afterwards, in the Convention of 1791, he urged strongly the abolition of the punishment of death; and yet, for sixteen months, in 1793 and 1794, till he perished himself by the same guillotine which he had so mercilessly used on others, no one at Paris consigned and caused so many fellow-creatures to be put to death by it, with more ruthless insensibility."—Turner's Sacred history of the World, vol. 2 p. 119.