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.

But it is time we had done with the objection, “such cruelties are INCREDIBLE.”  If the objector still reiterates it, he shall have the last word without farther molestation.