MOMMSEN ON ROMAN IMPERIALISM AND MODERN AUTOCRACY.
[To eas EDITOR or THE " SPF.CTATOR."] SIR,—There may be many readers interested in the recalling or passage in Mommsen which touches upon the question of the validity of the historical example of Rome as a warning to modern autocracy. Dr. W. Jethro Brown (formerly Professor of Comparative Law at the University College of Wales. Aberyst- wyth, now President of the Supreme Court, Adelaide, South Australia) discussed the subject of the study of history in its relation to politics, in a valuable chapter of his Nete Democracy (1899), which I happen to have just read, and most appositely quoted the following pronouncement from Mommeen:- [This study of historic-al precedents in the guidance of Om present] " is instructive only so far as the observation of earlier forms of culture reveals its organic conditions of civilization generally—the fundamental forme everywhere alike, and the manner of their combination everywhere different—and leads and encourages men, not to unreflecting imitation, but to independent reproduction. In this sense 'the history of Caesar and of Roman imperialism, with all time unsurpassed greatness of the master- worker, with all the historical necessity of the work. is in truth a more bitter censure of modern autocracy than could be written by the hand of man. According to the same law of nature in virtue of which the smallest organism infinitely surpasses the most artistic machine, every constitution, however defective. which gives play to the free self-determination of a majority of citizens infinitely surpasses the most brilliant and humane Eliseo- lnlism."—Mommeen, History of Rome, Vol. IV., p. 166.
Could the historical bearing of the relation of Absolutism (ancient and modern) to the Democracy-have been more lucidly and trench-
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