Note RETURN — FOOTNOTES.

The element in that loose triad of social forces that was first formulated into a more distinct type, and endowed with more imperative efficiency, was the kingship. The power of the king was increased, which of course implies that the power of the people, and specially of the aristocracy, was diminished. And here let it be observed generally that the progress of civilisation in its natural and healthy career is the progress of limitation and the curtailment in various ways of that freedom which originally belonged to every member of the community. The tanned savage of the backwoods is the freest man in existence; next to him, the nomad or the wandering gipsy, such as may still be seen in their glory at St. James’ fair in Kelso, whose house is at once his dwelling-place, his manufactory or place of business, and his travelling car; least free is the civilised citizen hemmed in on all sides by police-officers, soldiers, sentinels, door-keepers, and game-keepers, and the whole fraternity of dignified but unpopular officials of various kinds whose business it is to the general public to say No! This accretion of strength to the king proceeded first from his mere personal influence and the general deference paid to him during the continuance of a prolonged and easily-exercised sovereignty; all classes, even the aristocracy, whose ambition is thus kept in check and their perilous enmities softened, feel the benefit of a wise head and a firm hand; but the party specially benefited by the kingship is the demos; for this body, from its position peculiarly liable to be trampled on by an insolent aristocracy, naturally looks up to the king as the father of the whole family, who, on his part, feels his position strengthened and his respect increased by performing with tact and firmness the delicate functions of a mediator. But the great social force which operates in giving prominence and predominance to the monarchy is War; and, though war is unquestionably an evil, it is an evil only as death is, and a form of dying accompanied not seldom with an exhibition of more manhood than the experience of many a peaceful deathbed can show. In fact, as stout old Balmerino said on the scaffold in 1746, “The man who is not ready to die is not fit to live;” that is, we hold our life under the condition that we may at any time be called on to sacrifice it, whether for the preservation of our own self-respect, or for the integrity of the community of which we are a member. All great nations, in fact, have been cradled in war, the Hebrews no less than the Greeks and Romans; and it is only an amiable sentimentalism, pardonable in women, but inexcusable in men, that, in contemplation of the hard blows, red wounds, and gashed bodies with which war is accompanied, will allow itself to forget the hardihood, endurance, courage, self-sacrifice, and devotion to public duty, of which, under Providence, it has always been the great training school.7 There is no profession that I know more favourable to the growth of noble sentiment and manly action than that of the soldier; and to its beneficial action in the formation of States every page of history bears flaming testimony. War, in fact, is the principal agent in producing that unification so absolutely necessary to social existence, but which is lost so soon as the headship of the common father of the expanded clan ceases to be recognised. Thus it was under the compulsion of war from their Lombardian neighbours on the west and Sclavonians on the east that the petty democratic communities, which after the disruption of the Roman Empire occupied the Venetian isles, found themselves, in the year 697, obliged to elect a king for life, wisely masking his absolute authority under the name of Doge or Duke. And in a similar fashion the situation of the Piedmontese, constantly forced to defend themselves against Gallican and Teutonic ambition, begot in them a stoutness of self-assertion and a general manhood of character which up to the present hour has placed them in favourable contrast to the inhabitants of the southern half of the peninsula; and the manhood displayed by the Counts of Savoy in asserting their independence against great odds was no doubt the cause why, in the Peace of Utrecht in 1713, their lords were allowed to assume and maintain the title of kings—a circumstance which gave rise to the saying of Frederick the Great of Prussia, that the lords of Savoy were kings by virtue of their locality.8 This is certainly true, not only of Sardinia, but of all States that ever rose above the loose aggregation of the original townships. It was the necessity of adjusting matters with troublesome neighbours that caused a perpetual succession of petty wars; and these could not be conducted without a prolongation of the power of the successful general, which acted practically as a kingship. The successful general in such times did not require to usurp a title which the people were forward to force upon him; and only a few, we may imagine, like Gideon (Judges viii. 22), had virtue enough to remain contented with the distinction belonging to a private station when the grace of the crown and the authority of the sceptre were formally pressed upon them by a grateful people. So in Greece we find an early kingship signalised by the names of Ægeus, Theseus, and Codrus; so in Rome a succession of seven kings, more or less distinctly outlined, the last of whom, Tarquin the Proud, stands forward as the head of the great Latin league, and entering in this capacity into a formal treaty with Carthage, the great commercial State of the Mediterranean. Closely connected with war, or, more properly, as the natural development of it in its more advanced stages, we must mention Conquest; that is, the violent imposition of the results of a foreign civilisation on the native social foundations of any country. Here, no doubt, there may often be on the conquering side something very different from a manly self-assertion—viz. self-aggrandisement at the expense of an innocent neighbour, greed of territory, lust of power, and the vanity of mere military glory, which our brilliant neighbours the French were so fond to have in their mouth. The virtue of war as a training school of civic manhood does by no means exclude the operation of many forces far from admirable in their motive; and it is the presence of these unholy influences, no doubt piously brooded over, that has generated in the breasts of our mild friends the Quakers that anti-bellicose gospel which they preach with such lovable persistency. But whatever the motives of famous conquerors have been, the results of their achievements in the great history of society have been most important. The imposition of a foreign type on the peoples of Western Asia by the brilliant conquests of Alexander the Great, gave to the whole of that valuable part of the world, along with the rich coast of Northern Africa, a common medium of culture of the utmost importance to the future civilisation of the race. The imposition of the Norman yoke 900 years ago on this island gave to the contentious Saxon kingdoms, by a single vigorous stroke from without, that social consistency which the bloody strife of five centuries of petty kings and kinglets among themselves had failed to produce; while in India the imposition of the most highly advanced mercantile and Christian civilisation of the West on crude masses of an altogether diverse type of Asiatic society, presents to the thoughtful student of history a problem of assimilation of an altogether unique character, the final solution of which, under the action of many complex forces, no most sagacious human intellect at the present moment can divine. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the blessings which conquest brings with it, when vigorously managed and wisely used, are lightly turned into a bane whenever the power which has the force to conquer has not the wisdom to administer; of which unblissful lack of administrative capacity and assimilating genius the conquests of the Turks in Europe, and of the English in Ireland, present a most instructive example.