in themselves low and contemptible? It is incredible what an accumulation of atrocities is necessary to pervert a people, and nobody knows the amount of close observation and sagacity employed by Don Manuel Rosas in order to subject the city to that magical influence which destroyed in six years all knowledge of the just and the good; which broke the bravest spirits and put them under the yoke.
Terror in France in 1793 was an effect and not a means. Robespierre did not guillotine nobles and priests to create a reputation, nor to elevate himself upon the heaps of the slain. He was a stern man, who believed that he must remove from France all her aristocratic members to insure the object of the rebellion. "Our names," said Danton, "will be execrated by posterity, but we shall have saved the Republic." With us, terror is a method of government invented to crush out knowledge, and force men to recognize as a thinking head, the feet which are upon their necks; it is the compensation an ignorant man in power takes for the contempt which he knows his insignificance inspires in a people infinitely superior to him. This is why we have in our times a repetition of the extravagances of Caligula, who caused himself to be worshipped as a god, and associated his horse with him in the government. Caligula knew that he was the very lowest of those Romans whom he nevertheless held under his foot. Rosas caused his sacred likeness to be placed in the churches, and borne through the streets on a car, to which were harnessed officers and even ladies, for the purpose of giving celebrity to his name. But Facundo was only cruel when in a passion. His
