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The Socialist and Communist literature of France, a literature that originated under the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power, and that was the expression of the struggle against this power, was introduced into Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie, in that country, had just begun its contest with feudal absolutism.
The aim of this work prescribes a survey of those events alone which have made modern States what they are to-day; but the victory of absolutism in Russia has had so enormous an influence on the modern world not least in the warping of democracy in France that it will be well to examine the operation of other forces which contributed to the set back of reform in that Empire, especially as they involved a change in the relations of the central power to alien races in general, and to the Grand Duchy of Finland in particular.
It lacks prestige in consequence; whereas absolutism has a certain prestige due to the more radical style of it. These two systems are what you have to choose between if you turn to the tender-minded school. And if you are the lovers of facts I have supposed you to be, you find the trail of the serpent of rationalism, of intellectualism, over everything that lies on that side of the line.
Therefore, also, have men said that Richelieu built up absolutism. The charge is true and welcome. For, evidently, absolutism was the only force, in that age, which could destroy the serf-mastering caste.
His successors were disgraced by every crime which degrades humanity; and the whole population remained in rudeness and barbarism, superstition and ignorance. The clergy wielded enormous power; which, however, was rendered subservient to the interests of absolutism. Such was Russia, when Peter, the son of Alexis Michaelovitz, ascended the throne, in 1682 a boy, ten years of age.
He had more sense, however, and more of the spirit of Christian fraternity in him than, for the sake of absolutism, to become a Turk or a Russian; nay, from some passages in the Concordia a political journal, published by him and his friend Adam Müller, in 1820, and quoted by Mr Robertson it would almost appear that he would have preferred a monarchy limited by states, conceived in the spirit of the middle ages, to the almost absolute form of monarchical government, under whose protection he lived and lectured at Vienna.
As Richter remarks "The best rule in politics is said to be 'pas trop gouverner: it is also true in education." And in spontaneous conformity with this maxim, parents whose lust of dominion is restrained by a true sense of duty, will aim to make their children control themselves as much as possible, and will fall back upon absolutism only as a last resort.
He saw, what he had not at first comprehended, and what few bigoted supporters of absolutism in any age have ever comprehended, that national enthusiasm, when profound and general, makes a rebellion more expensive to the despot than to the insurgents.
Instead, another family had the power to select the next ruler from among a large number of potential candidates within the ruling family. If the ruler who was selected ruled unwisely and unfairly, he could also be deposed. Here was a distinct limitation on royal absolutism. In a similar way, there were limitations on the centralization of economic power.
The son of William the Silent, the grandson of Maurice of Saxony, whom he resembled in visage and character, he was summoned by every drop of blood in his veins to do life-long battle with the spirit of Spanish absolutism, and he was already girding himself for his life's work. He assumed at once for his device a fallen oak, with a young sapling springing from its root.
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