The Peril of the Republic of the United States of America - Percy T. Magan

Popular forms of government are possible only
when individual men can govern their own lives on
moral principles, and when duty is of more
importance than pleasure, and justice than material
expediency.”[4]
Then it was that there came upon the Romans
that extraordinary spirit of expansion, which led
them to believe that theirs was a manifest destiny
to rule the entire world; and in a few short years,
from being a snug little country, locked in the arms
of twin seas, Rome was transformed into an
imperialism, set for the despoliation of every
conquerable nation. On this point Froude has said:-
-
“Italy had fallen to them by natural and
wholesome expansion; but from being sovereigns
of Italy, they became a race of imperial conquerors.
Suddenly and in comparatively a few years after
the one power was gone which could resist them,
they became the actual or virtual rulers of the entire
circuit of the Mediterranean. The southeast of
Spain, the coast of France from the Pyrenees to
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