Good does not necessarily succeed evil; another evil may succeed, and a worse, as it happened with Caesar's killers, who brought the republic to such a pass that they had reason to repent their meddling with it.... It must be examined in what condition THE ASSAILANT is.--_Michael de Montaigne_.

_Citizen_. I fear there will a worse one come in his place.
_Cassius_. He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.

CHAPTER I.

THE DEATH OF TYRANNY; OR, THE QUESTION OF THE PREROGATIVE.

_Casca_. 'Tis Caesar that you mean: Is it _not_, Cassius?
_Cassius_. Let it be WHO IT is, for Romans _now_
Have thewes and limbs like to _their_ ancestors.We all stand up against the _spirit_ of Caesar.
_Julius Caesar_.

Yes, when that Royal Injunction, which rested alike upon the Play-house, the Press, the Pulpit, and _Parliament_ itself, was still throttling everywhere the free voice of the nation--when a single individual could still assume to himself, or to herself, the exclusive privilege of deliberating on all those questions which men are most concerned in--questions which involve all their welfare, for this life and the life to come, certainly '_the Play, the Play was the thing_.' It was a vehicle of expression which offered incalculable facilities for evading these restrictions. It was the only one then invented which offered then any facilities whatever for the discussion of that question in particular--which was already for that age the question. And to the genius of that age, with its new _historical, experimental_, practical, determination--with its transcendant poetic power, nothing could be easier than to get possession of this instrument, and to exhaust its capabilities.

For instance, if a Roman Play were to be brought out at all,--and with that mania for classical subjects which then prevailed, what could be more natural?--how could one object to that which, by the supposition, was involved in it? And what but the most boundless freedoms and audacities, on this very question, could one look for here? What, by the supposition, could it be but one mine of poetic treason? If Brutus and Cassius were to be allowed to come upon the stage, and discuss their views of government, deliberately and confidentially, in the presence of an English audience, certainly no one could ask to hear from their lips the political doctrine then predominant in England. It would have been a flat anachronism, to request them to keep an eye upon the Tower in their remarks, inasmuch as all the world knew that the corner-stone of that ancient and venerable institution had only then just been laid by the same distinguished individual whom these patriots were about to call to an account for his military usurpation of a constitutional government at home.