Chapter 114
Tyranny and despotism; the abuse of power and oppression by rulers.
792 passages · 254 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
Tyranny is the name these books give to power that has broken loose from the purposes and limits that make rule legitimate. It covers the usurper who seizes a throne by murder and the lawful king who governs by caprice. It also covers the triumvir dividing a state like property, and the captain flogging a sailor because he likes to. It reaches further still, to the father who terrorizes his household, the majority that crushes eccentricity, and the god whom a rebel accuses of ruling by force alone. Few ideas run so continuously through the Harvard Classics. It appears in Aeschylus and the Psalms, in Plutarch and Pliny, in Machiavelli and Luther, in Shakespeare, Schiller and Shelley, and in Burke, Adam Smith and Mill. Each age has its tyrants. What changes is where the danger is thought to lie. For the ancients it lay in the single ruler. For the moderns it lies increasingly in parties, assemblies, society and opinion.
The most common definition sets the king against the tyrant by their relation to law. Penn puts it in a sentence: the king rules by laws to which the people consent, the tyrant by absolute will1. Winthrop holds that absolute sovereignty belongs to God alone, so that a man who usurps it commits both tyranny and impiety2. Cicero, living under Caesar, felt what the formula means in practice. Once law is abandoned, everything hangs on another man’s will or caprice3. Ruskin calls false kingships tyrannies that put their own will in place of the law of justice and love4,5. In Goethe’s Egmont the provincial charter forbids the sovereign arbitrary power6. In Sophocles the quarrel is staged as argument. Haemon insists that no state hangs on one man’s will, and Creon answers that the state belongs to its ruler7. Rousseau carries the definition to its end. Under despotism subjects hold even life and goods as the master’s favors, and blind obedience becomes the only virtue left to slaves8,9.
Pascal goes beneath the constitutional question to the soul. Tyranny, he says, is the desire for universal power beyond its own scope, the wish to obtain by one means what can be had only by another10. Every self would enslave others and be tyrant of all11. The Thousand and One Nights agrees in a proverb: tyranny lurks in every soul, and power reveals it while weakness hides it12. Marcus Aurelius finds the tyrannical temper in anyone who would wrong others and still expect immunity13. On this view tyranny is a possibility in human nature, not a type of regime, and Milton gives it its excuse. Satan pleads necessity, “the tyrant’s plea”14.
Usurpation is the oldest form. Aeschylus’s chorus would sooner die than submit to the murderers of Agamemnon15, and Orestes calls the slain pair his country’s twofold tyranny16. Machiavelli records Agathocles massacring the senators17 and Oliverotto murdering his uncle at a banquet18, and he judges such men coldly by their success. Milton’s Nimrod usurps dominion over his brethren and banishes the equality of nature19. Yet Michael tells Adam that tyranny must be, as a consequence of lost inner liberty, though that is no excuse for the tyrant20. The illegitimate title shows even in the image Shakespeare’s thanes find for Macbeth, a giant’s robe hanging on a dwarfish thief21.
How does one man come to such power? The ancient answer, preserved by Plutarch, is through faction and popular favor. Athenian jealousy named its fear “tyranny”22. The common people longed for Alcibiades to make himself tyrant and abolish the laws23, and Clodius besieged the senate with armed bands24. The American founders inherited the lesson. The Federalist warns that demagogues who flatter the people commonly end as tyrants25. Washington holds that party domination is itself a despotism and prepares the absolute power of one man26. Vane traces how a part seizing power by the sword produces anarchy and then the bondage of the whole27. Darwin watched the pattern repeat in Rosas’s popular despotism28. Lowell, however, questions the accepted chain from democracy to anarchy to despotism. He thinks it a lesson drawn from small cities whose assemblies became mobs29.
Once in power, the tyrant holds it by terror and plunder. Aegisthus threatens dissenters with hunger and chains30. The Thirty tried to implicate Socrates in their crimes but could not frighten him into wrongdoing31. Machiavelli distinguishes cruelty well used, done once from necessity, from cruelty persisted in, which ruins32. Rousseau shows oppression growing until complaint is treated as sedition33. The economic side is just as old. The triumvirs plundered estates and seized the vestals’ deposits34, and Antony doubled Asia’s tribute35. More’s councillors argue that all belongs to the king and subjects should be kept poor36. Adam Smith adds the economist’s evidence. Princes debase the coin and ruin creditors37. Arbitrary taxes deliver contributors to insolent collectors38. Where men fear their superiors, they bury their stock rather than invest it39.
The tyrant’s own condition is a constant theme. Cicero declares that tyrants live in fear and suspicion and can neither love nor be loved40. Malcolm sees Macbeth served only by constrained men whose hearts are absent41. Aeschylus’s Prometheus calls sovereignty a disease of never trusting friends42. Sidney observes that tyrants fear those who fear them43, and Bacon that suspicion disposes kings to tyranny44. Plutarch’s verdict on the proscriptions is that no beast is more savage than man with power to serve his rage45. The most searching modern testimony comes from Dana. Unchecked power on distant voyages dulls the sense of responsibility, so that even kind men grow cruel, and captains feared at sea keep good names at home46,47. Hume makes the same point from Tiberius and Nero48, and Washington finds the love of power and the proneness to abuse it lodged in the human heart49.
History supplies the portraits. Plutarch calls Caesar’s dictatorship for life an avowed tyranny50. Yet he elsewhere grants that Caesar’s government had the appearance of anything rather than a tyranny51, and so the question of Caesar stays open. Pliny records what life was like afterward. Under Domitian a Vestal was condemned unheard by a pontiff guilty of the very crime52, and the senate was speechless, since speech was dangerous53. When Liberty returned, it found men ignorant of how to use it54. Raleigh sets out Richard III’s murders55, Henry VIII as the pattern of a merciless prince56, and Philip II and Alva crushing the Netherlands57. Burke draws the moral that Henry’s despotism provoked rebellion58. Dante finds Italy thronged with tyrants59. Macaulay pictures Cesare Borgia tolerating no plunderer but himself60. Older and stranger tyrants fill out the gallery. Herodotus’s Cheops closed the temples and drove a hundred thousand men to labor on his pyramid61. The Koran’s Pharaoh threatens to crucify believers62, and Shahriyar kills a virgin each night63. Aesop’s lion gives the moral that partnership with the powerful yields no share of the spoils64.
Tragedy gives tyranny its shape as a fall. Sophocles’s chorus sings that pride begets the tyrant, who then plunges into the abyss65. Pentheus, a giant set against God, is trodden down66,67. Marlowe’s Mortimer boasts that he is feared more than loved68. Shakespeare’s Macduff mourns Scotland bleeding daily under a bloody-sceptred tyrant69. The charge reaches heaven itself. In Aeschylus Zeus’s new power tramples Right and gives account to none70,71, and Prometheus foretells that he will fall as Cronos fell72. Milton puts the same charge in the mouths of the damned. Satan calls God’s reign the tyranny of Heaven73, and Moloch calls God the Torturer74. Here the accusation discredits the accuser. Rousseau, by contrast, uses it in earnest: a God who acted as some theologies describe would be the cruelest of tyrants75. Goethe and Schiller dramatize foreign governors against free peoples. Alva means to force salvation on the Netherlands and crush their spirit76. Gessler sets up a cap on a pole to bend proud necks77 and forces Tell to shoot at his son78, until Armgart shows her children how a tyrant dies79.
The moderns carry the idea into private life. Shelley’s Cenci rules his household by terror, protected by his holy name as a father80,81. Orsino dismisses such cruelty as tyranny only to wives and daughters82. Webster’s Duchess refuses to count suffering under tyranny a virtue83. Mill condemns the near-despotic power of husbands84. Masters over the weak form a large category of their own. Dana describes a captain who flogs a man for asking a question85 and compares his absolute discretion to a star chamber86. Manzoni draws the lawless lord with his bravoes, against whom edicts are hollow proclamations87,88. He adds that oppressors’ power rests partly on their victims’ fear89, and that servants come to regard unbridled power as a justice appointed by fate90. Burns and Goldsmith turn the charge against landlords, and against judges who grind the poor91,92.
The last and most original extension is the tyranny of opinion. Bacon already speaks of custom reigning as a tyranny93. Sydney Smith attacks the tyranny of the dead over the living, crueler than a despot, who at least might relent94. Emerson warns that the revered book becomes a tyrant over minds95. Mill makes the theme central. Once rulers were made responsible to the people96, the danger shifted to the majority oppressing a part of itself97. Social tyranny, he argues, is more formidable than political, because it penetrates the details of life and enslaves the soul98. Whatever crushes individuality is despotism99. Mill even finds in Comte a system of spiritual despotism100. But Mill also allows that despotism is legitimate toward barbarians if it truly improves them101. Here the old condemnation of rule over others is qualified, and the qualification is left standing.
Religious tyranny joins church and state. Luther calls the Roman seizure of benefices tyranny and the papal laws tyrannous impositions102,103. He describes the Pope as seeking lordship over Germany body and soul104. Pascal concedes that papal headship easily degenerates into tyranny105. Milton traces licensing to papal encroachment over men’s judgments106 and calls it the invention of the most tyrannous inquisition107. He warns that if Parliament renewed it, it would become a second tyranny over learning108. Defoe’s irony exposes the persecutor’s logic by advocating it109.
Foreign domination was the tyranny Machiavelli most hated. Barbarian rule over Italy “stinks in all nostrils”110, and Macaulay makes the expulsion of foreign tyrants the dream of Italy’s master spirits111. Raleigh casts Elizabeth as the enemy of Spanish tyranny over the Indians112,113. Bacon is warier. He notes that wars are waged under the pretence of delivering others from tyranny114. Burke turns the whole vocabulary against the French Revolution. The Assembly deliberates under armed terror115. Its confiscations of unheard men’s property are what only a tyrant would do116. Its “sophistic tyrants” are worse than the old regal ones117, colder even than the Roman proscribers118. The French monarchy, he denies, was ever true despotism like Turkey’s119, and he holds that persecution by multitudes leaves its victims without consolation120. Burke predicts that a general will become master121. Mill confirms that the Revolution ended in Bonaparte’s despotism122.
How should the oppressed respond? The Stoic answer is inward freedom. Tyrants have power only over the body123. Cicero recalls wise men who stayed free while their countries were enslaved124, and Long notes that Stoicism consoled noble minds under Nero and Domitian125. Luther gives a Christian version: tyrants may compel obedience but cannot harm the believer, so long as nothing is done against God126. Against this stands the right of resistance. More’s Utopians may depose a prince on suspicion of tyranny and make war to free oppressed peoples127,128. The Declaration of Independence lists the king’s usurpations as aiming at absolute despotism129,130. Schiller’s Stauffacher sets a limit to the despot’s power, beyond which lie the appeal to Heaven and finally the sword131. Mill observes that striking down a criminal ruler has been held an exalted virtue132. The Hebrew scriptures are bleaker. Ecclesiastes sees power on the side of the oppressors and no comforter for the oppressed133, though Job trusts that God removes the godless ruler134. Shelley’s Ozymandias lies shattered in the sand135.
Some questions remain open at the end of the conversation. Can great power be used well, as Plutarch claimed for Pericles136 and Carlyle for Cromwell137? Does a revolution against tyranny breed a worse one, as Vane feared138 and Burke insisted? Woolman’s answer is that reformers must not only govern well but deny their successors the power to oppress139. That points to the lesson the moderns draw most firmly. Tyranny is not overcome by removing one tyrant. It is restrained only by limiting power wherever it gathers.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
See also: Government 3d · Liberty 9b
See also: Punishment 10b
See also: Law 4a · God 10d · Religion 5d · Madness 2a
See also: Courage 7c · Prophecy 7a
See also: Liberty 9a · Revolution 5c · Patriotism 4a
See also: Family 10a · Revenge 8d
See also: Justice 8a
See also: Opinion 8b · Liberty 6c
See also: Law 4b · Religion 12b · Government 9a · National Character 5c
See also: Punishment 9c · Liberty 5a
See also: National Character 7c · Patriotism 4a
See also: Liberty 7d · Revolution 7a · Monarchy 2d · Law 6c
See also: Liberty 9d
See also: Liberty, Justice, Monarchy, Government, Revolution, Law