or to her apparitions talking patois, as that of La Valette, and to a hundred things in the Church, cautiously passed over sub silentio in the last century, but now joyously proclaimed and sustained with defiant erudition by English and German doctores graces, and by the Parisian “Univers,” which, openly rejoicing in the English blood spilt by the Sepoys,—­for it is but Protestant blood, and that of hateful freemen,—­heralds the second or third advent of universal love and Papacy.  It is in our age that representative, and indeed all institutional government, for the first time, is called effete parliamentarism, a theatrical delusion, for which, according to the requirements of advanced civilization, the beneficent, harmonious, and ever-glorious Caesarism, pur et simple, must be substituted, as it was once sublimely exhibited in the attractive Caesars of Rome, those favorites of History and very pets of Clio.  In the time of Tiberius, as President Troplong beautifully and officially expressed it, “Democracy at last seated herself on the imperial throne, embodied in the Caesars,”—­those worshipful incarnations of democracy, brought to our view in the tableaux of Suetonius and by the accounts of Tacitus.  We have at last returned to Caesarism, or Asiatic absolutism, improved by modern light, and making the emperor a Second Providence, opening and shutting the mouths of the universal-suffrage people, for words or bread, as imperial divinity finds best.  This is the progress of our age in Europe, while we, in this hemisphere, have taken, for the first time in history, a rational view of party strife, and with unclouded intelligence maintain that judges and presidents are, and ought to be, party exponents, doing away with those once romantic, but certainly superannuated ideas of Country, Justice, Truth, and Patriotism.  All real progress tends toward simplification; and how simple are the idea of party and the associations clustering around this sacred word, compared with the confusing and embarrassing unreality of those ideas and juvenile feelings we have mentioned last!

But we have not done yet with the glory of our age.  It is this, the decennium we are soon going to close, that has risen to that enviable eminence whence slavery is declared a precious good of itself, a hallowed agent of civilization, an indispensable element of conservatism, and a foundation of true socialism.  From this lofty eminence the seer-statesman—­rising far above the philosophical sagacity displayed by Aristotle and Varro, when they discussed the sacred topic—­proclaims that Capital ought to own, and has a divine right to own, and always more or less does own, Labor; and that, since Labor constitutes the whole humanity of the laboring man, it clearly follows that he himself must be owned, if his labor be owned.  Would you own the bird without its cage?  Generous gospel of the rich!  Blessed are the wealthy!