Note RETURN — FOOTNOTES.

I have enlarged on the development and decay of the Roman republic, not only because in point of political achievement Rome is by far the most notable of the great States of the world, but because in the struggle between aristocracy and democracy which was the salient feature of its history from the expulsion of the kings to the battle of Actium, it presents a very close and instructive parallel to what has been going on amongst ourselves from the revolution settlement of 1688 to the present hour. If for annual kings with large power we put hereditary kings with small power, the parallel is complete.12 Let us now cast a glance, for time and space allow us no more, over some modern developments. The modern States of Europe have good reason, upon the whole, to think themselves fortunate in their having retained the kingship, which the Greeks and Romans rejected, either as their original type, or elevated and glorified from the dukedoms, margravates, and electorates with which they started. There cannot be much doubt, I imagine, that, if the Romans had retained their king in a hereditary or nearly hereditary form, he might have exercised a mediatorial function between the contending parties that would have prevented those bloody strifes and those ugly civic wounds with which the record of their political career stands now so sorrowfully defaced. In the experience of their own earliest story, Servius Tullius had already shown them how a king in the strife of classes might step in by a peaceful new model to open the ranks of a close aristocracy with dignity and safety to a rising democracy; and in modern times the case of Leopold II. of Tuscany does not stand alone as an example of what good service a wise king may do in the adjustment of contending claims and smoothing the march of necessary social transitions. In fact, the most democratic people amongst the ancients, in order to effect such an adjustment in a peaceful way, had been obliged to make Solon a king for the nonce; and the Romans, urged by a like social pressure, named their dictator, or re-elected their consuls and their tribunes, in order to secure for the need of the moment that unity of counsel, energy of conduct, and moral authority which is the grand recommendation of the kingship. No doubt kings in modern as in ancient times have erred; they have not been able always to keep themselves sober under the intoxicating influence of absolute power, and they have paid dearly for their errors; but we were wise in this country, while beheading one despot and banishing another, to punish the offender without abolishing the office. True, a thorough-going and sternly-consistent republican may ask, with an indignant sneer, What is the use of a king, when we have shorn him of all honours save the grace of a crown and the bauble of a sceptre—reduced him, in fact, to a mere machine to register the decrees of a democratic assembly? But such persons require to be reminded that there is nothing more dangerous, not only in political, but in all practical matters, than logical consistency; that the most narrow-minded people are always the most consistent, and this for the very obvious reason that they have only room for one idea in their small brain chambers, whereas God’s world contains many ideas, stiff ideas too, and given to battle, which must be brought into some friendly balance or compromise, or set about throat-cutting on a large scale—a process to which consistent republicans have never shown a less bloody inclination than consistent monarchists. They must be reminded also that the person of the monarch is an incarnated, visible, and tangible symbol of the unity of the nation, of which parties and factions are so apt to be forgetful; and if our logically-consistent republican may look on this as a matter of association and sentiment which he will not acknowledge, he must simply be told that the man who does not acknowledge the important place played by associations and sentiments in all matters of Church and State knows nothing of human nature, and is altogether unfit for meddling with the difficult and dangerous art of politics. He may write books, and lecture to coteries, and harangue electoral meetings, and delight himself largely in the reverberation of his own wisdom, but by all means let him not be a prime minister. To what ends logical consistency can lead a politician in high places Charles I. and Archbishop Laud learned when it was too late; and the fate of these two high-perched worthies stands as a speaking lesson to all politicians, whether of the democratic or the monarchical type, how easy a thing it is for a man to be a good Christian and a consistent thinker, and yet on all political matters a perfect fool.