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Democracy exhibits the vanity of Louis XIV, the savagery of Peter of Russia, the nepotism and provinciality of Napoleon, the fickleness of Catherine II: in short, all the childishnesses of all the despots without any of the qualities that enabled the greatest of them to fascinate and dominate their contemporaries.
He has had no respect for ermine, lawn, or epaulets, in his assaults upon the monopolies and sinecures of Church and State, circumlocution offices, nepotism, patronage, purchase, and routine, in army or navy.
Bismarck could justly boast that there was no nepotism in the Prussian Government when his two sons were serving as privates. It was not till the war had gone on some weeks and they had taken part in many engagements, that they received their commissions. This would have happened in no other country or army.
From an anecdote preserved in William of Newbridge, Adrian IV. would seem to have pushed integrity in money matters to a harsh extreme; and so to have proved himself the antipodes of those popes who afterwards practised nepotism. Notwithstanding the incessant conflicts of his short career, he yet found time to do something towards the improvement and decoration of Rome.
"At first, when there was insufficient even of the basics such as food, clothing and shelter, Party members soon learned to take care of their own, explaining this deviation from the original Party austerity, by various means. Nepotism reared its head, as always, almost from the very beginning.
Wishing, however, to give this advance an air which allowed an honest issue to his own self-love, he entered la Peyrade's room with an easy manner, and said, cheerfully: "Well, my dear fellow, it turns out that we were both right: 'nepotism' means the authority that the nephews of popes take in public affairs.
Among these was one Lieutenant Ben Tappan. Secretary Stanton being his uncle, no difficulty offered but this autocrat ought to remove, but unfortunately Stanton was a stickler for forms, and the relationship looked like nepotism to the world. Tappan particularly wished to stay on the staff on account of the privileges.
"Westy Gaines has a better head than his father; but he hates Hanaford and the mills, and his chief object in life is to be taken for a New Yorker. So far he hasn't been here much, except for the quarterly meetings, and his routine work is done by another cousin you perceive that Westmore is a nest of nepotism."
So his proposal to Louis XII was that the Church should abandon its claim upon the territories, whilst the king, raising Valentinois to the dignity of a duchy, should so confer it upon Cesare Borgia. Although the proposal was politically sound, it constituted at the same time an act of flagrant nepotism. But let us bear in mind that Alexander did not lack a precedent for this particular act.
It is because there is after all, at the back of all that barbarism, a sort of a negative belief in the brotherhood of men, a dark democratic sense that men are really men and nothing more, that the coarse and even corrupt bureaucracy is not resented exactly as oligarchic bureaucracies are resented. There is a sense in which corruption is not so narrow as nepotism.
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