The principle of monarchy is corrupted when the first dignities are
marks of the first servitude, when the great men are deprived of public
respect, and rendered the low tools of arbitrary power.
It is still more corrupted when honour is set up in contradiction to
honours, and when men are capable of being loaded at the very same time
with infamy
[10]
and with dignities.
It is corrupted when the prince changes his justice into severity;
when he puts, like the Roman emperors, a Medusa's head on his
breast;
[11]
and when he assumes that menacing and terrible air which
Commodus ordered to be given to his statues.
[12]
Again, it is corrupted when mean and abject souls grow vain of the
pomp attending their servitude, and imagine that the motive which
induces them to be entirely devoted to their prince exempts them from
all duty to their country.
But if it be true (and indeed the experience of all ages has shown
it) that in proportion as the power of the monarch becomes boundless and
immense, his security diminishes, is the corrupting of this power, and
the altering of its very nature, a less crime than that of high treason
against the prince?
