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Updated: May 16, 2025
In Bohemia, you find the flower doomed to wither and come to nothing; the flower of the wonderful young manhood of France, so sought after by Napoleon and Louis XIV., so neglected for the last thirty years by the modern Gerontocracy that is blighting everything else that splendid young manhood of whom a witness so little prejudiced as Professor Tissot wrote, 'On all sides the Emperor employed a younger generation in every way worthy of him; in his councils, in the general administration, in negotiations bristling with difficulties or full of danger, in the government of conquered countries; and in all places Youth responded to his demands upon it.
Gerontocracy, that is, government by the aged, is the most ancient form of government. It is easy to understand why this should be. In primitive ages, all knowledge was experience and the old men possessed all the historical, social and political experience of the State.
And yet I dare neither hope for, nor ask of Europe the immediate application of this grand panacea. Gerontocracy is still too powerful, even in the youngest governments Besides, we are now at peace, and radical reforms are only to be effected by war. The sword alone enjoys the privilege of deciding great questions by a single stroke.
Their deliberative assembly answers to the senate of later times: if we had to coin a word for such a government of elders we might call it a gerontocracy. The elders who in aboriginal Australia thus meet and direct the affairs of their tribe appear to be for the most part the headmen of their respective totem clans.
Democracy has no love for the old; and it is interesting to note that the word gerontocracy to which the ancients attached the most honourable meaning is now only a term of ridicule, and is applied only to a government which, because it is in the hands of old men, is therefore grotesque.
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