New Iberia enterprise. (New Iberia, La.) 1885-1902, 1900-09-22
is THE EMPIRE IMPOSSIBLE g?

IL Is HdTu W iIldke AIHeTlCduS Dc-
lieve that their institutions can
really be in serious danger. 1t
seems to them as if republicanism
were the natural and Interchangeable
condition of this continent. They
think of monarchy as something so
utterly foreign to our conditions
that it is folly to regard it rs pos
sible danger
A survey of history does not lend
much encouragement to this cheer
full view. Ours is not the first re-
public that has existed in the world,
nor the oldest. 1t has lasted now
for a hundred and twenty four
years. There was republic in
Athens, with some intermissions,
for nine hundred years, in Carthage
for seven hundred, in Rome for five
hundred, in Florence for three
hundred, in the Netherlands for
two hundred, and in Venice for
eleven hundred. Where are those
republics now?
1t is not flattering to our vanity,
but the truth is that we are an up
start, parvenue nation, whose en-
durance has yet to be tested. If our
government should 60 to pieces,
after lasting even another century,
it would go into history as one of
the shortest-lived of the innumera-
bic wrecks with which the annals of
mankind are strewn.
We may think that our brand Of
human nature is so different from
human nature in general as to make
us immune against ills that other
nations have not been able to resist.
But that is another delusion. The
Roman of the fourth century before
Christ was of sterner, more un-
yielding republican fiber than the
American of to-day. lie was more
jealous Of. the slightest infringe
ment on his rights. He did not
treat betrayals of trust on the part
of his servants as jokes-his sense
Of humor was rudimentary. When
his resentment was aroused it was
relentless.
And yet this Romans descend
ants became the abject slaves Of the
most degrading despotism that ever
ground down a civilized people.
"There was Brutus once that
would have brook'd the eternal
devil to keep his state in Rome.
AS easily as a king"
Within two years from the time
when descendant of that Brutus
struck the last blow for republican
libefsy Antony was laying a third
of the Roman world at the feet of a
harlot queen, and before some of
the children then living were dead
Caligula was making his horse a
consul.
There was never a more turbu-
lent, independent democracy than
that of Athens. The people there
were not dependent upon trust
owned senates. They got together
in their own popular assemblies
and made their own laws. They
did not hesitate to try and execute
victorious generals for slight brea-
ches Of customary requirements.
But the time came when Athenian
philosophers were the humble flat
terers of Macedonian and Roman
rulers, and when Athens degraded
even her primacy in taste to the
point of giving her highest honors
in music and poetry to the imperial
mountebank Nero.
Who would have thought, to look
at the raving democracy of the
French Terror, when it was as much
as mans life was worth to call a
lady "madame" instead of "citi-
zeness," that in five years France
would be walking with bowed head
under the rule Of military despoti
Nor are we without hints nearer
home of the possibility of radical
changes in the government Of
people. Americans were not always
republicans. Two years before the
adoption of the Declaration Of In
dependence they were protesting
their enthusiastic loyalty to the
crown Of Great Britain. After the
thousands Of the fore