Note 75 — TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

This was the ideal of Dante. Cf. De Monarchia, Bk. I. 54:—“We shall not find at any time except under the divine monarch Augustus, when a perfect monarchy existed, that the world was everywhere quiet.”

Bluntschli (Theory of the State, I. Ch. ii., p. 26 seq.) gives an admirable account of the different attempts made to realise a universal empire in the past—the Empire of Alexander the Great, based upon a plan of uniting the races of east and west; the Roman Empire which sought vainly to stamp its national character upon mankind; the Frankish Monarchy; the Holy Roman Empire which fell to pieces through the want of a central power strong enough to overcome the tendency to separation and nationalisation; and finally the attempt of Napoleon I., whose mistake was the same as that which wrecked the Roman Empire—a neglect of the strength of foreign national sentiment.