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But it is clear to me that a man in the water has a right to cry out, although he may not distinctly state how he proposes to avoid drowning. Your reasoning is that of those excellent Americans who declare that foreign nations ought not to strike for a republic until they are fit for a republic as if empires and monarchies founded colleges to propagate democracy.
'Tis probable that Solyman, whom we have seen make a gift of Hungary and other principalities, had therein more respect to this consideration than to that he was wont to allege, viz., that he was glutted and overcharged with so many monarchies and so much dominion, as his own valour and that of his ancestors had acquired.
The embassy had filled the country with German poison gas, and backed the German campaign of wholesale arson. Germans living here, many of them American born, were busily counteracting public opinion as the evidences accumulated. Democracies are always at a disadvantage in dealing with monarchies; in the initial stages of war at least.
What has been now said, it seems proper to change our subject and to inquire into the nature of monarchies; for we have already admitted them to be one of those species of government which are properly founded. And here let us consider whether a kingly government is proper for a city or a country whose principal object is the happiness of the inhabitants, or rather some other.
The great-grandson of Urraca, Alfonso III. of Castile, received as his heritage the usual complement of strife and warfare which belonged to almost all of the little Spanish monarchies throughout the greater part of the twelfth century; but in the year 1170, arriving at his majority, he entered into a friendly treaty of peace with Aragon, and in that same fortunate year he married the Princess Eleanor, daughter of the English king, Henry II. Apropos of this marriage and its general effect upon the fortunes of Castile, Burke has written the following interesting sentences: "Up to the time of this happy union, the reign of Alfonso III. in Spain had been nothing but a succession of intrigues and civil wars of the accustomed character; but from the day of his marriage in 1170 to the day of his death in 1214, after a reign of no less than fifty-six years, he exercised the sovereign power without hindrance, if not entirely without opposition, within his dominions.
The idea that early kingdoms are despotisms in which the people exist only for the sovereign, is wholly inapplicable to the monarchies we are considering. On the contrary, the sovereign in them exists only for his subjects; his life is only valuable so long as he discharges the duties of his position by ordering the course of nature for his people's benefit.
The kingdom of Numidia suffered from a weakness common to monarchies where the strong spirits of subjects and local chiefs can be controlled only by the still stronger hand of the central potentate, and where the practice of polygamy and concubinage in the royal house sometimes gave rise to many pretenders but to no heir with an indefeasible claim to rule.
So everywhere, with the Roman domination, the practical spirit won above the philosophical and scientific, commerce over arts and letters, the middle classes over historic aristocracies. Already weakened by the overthrow of the most powerful Asiatic monarchies, these élites received the final blow on the disappearance of their last protection, the dynasty of the Ptolemies in Egypt.
Where any degree of freedom remains, the powers of the prince are, as they were in most of the rude monarchies of Europe, extremely precarious, and depend chiefly on his personal character: where, on the contrary, the powers of the prince are above the control of his people, they are likewise above the restrictions of justice.
Liberty is certainly necessary to the full play of predominant humours; but such liberty is to be found alike under the government of the many or the few, in monarchies or commonwealths. Every reflecting man must arise from its perusal with feelings of the deepest melancholy, with the most tender commiseration for the weakness and lot of humanity.
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