Any pretension to the contrary, by placing
profession in opposition to practice, is only adding hypocrisy to
usurpation.
It appears to be an unavoidable general consequence that abuses should
follow, when power is exercised by a permanent and irresponsible body,
from whom there is no appeal. When this power is secretly exercised, the
abuses become still more grave. It is also worthy of remark, that in the
nations which submit, or have submitted, to these undue and dangerous
influences, the pretensions to justice and generosity are of the most
exaggerated character; for while the fearless democrat vents his
personal complaints aloud, and the voice of the subject of professed
despotism is smothered entirely, necessity itself dictates to the
oligarchist the policy of seemliness, as one of the conditions of his
own safety. Thus Venice prided herself on the justice of St. Mark, and
few states maintained a greater show or put forth a more lofty claim to
the possession of the sacred quality, than that whose real maxims of
government were veiled in a mystery that even the loose morality of the
age exacted.
CHAPTER XII.
"A power that if but named
In casual converse, be it where it might,
The speaker lowered at once his voice, his eyes,
And pointed upward as at God in heaven."
ROGERS.
The reader has probably anticipated, that Antonio was now standing in an
antechamber of the secret and stern tribunal described in the preceding
chapter.
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