Median Kingdom

“ In the second half of the 7th century the Medians gained their independence and were united by a dynasty, which, if we may trust Herodotus, derived its origin from Deioces (q.v.) , a Median chieftain in the Zagros, who was, with his kinsmen, transported by Sargon to Hamath (Hamah) in Syria in 715 B.C. The kings, who created the Median Empire, were Phraortes and his son Cyaxares. ”

“ In short, the Revolution proclaimed equality of rights. A citizen might attain any public employment, according to his talent and the chances of fortune. The kingdom was composed of provinces which had been united to the Crown at various periods: they had no natural limits, and were differently divided, unequal in extent and in population. ”

“ And that work was surely an expansion, an expansion of England. We come once more to our paradox; may it not be that England herself may be expanded by the very cutting short of her dominion? Again, what is England? Do we mean by it simply the dominions of the Crown of England—or rather the dominion of a Crown of whose kingdom the British England is but a part? Or do we mean by it the land of the English folk, wherever they may dwell? ”

“ At the Expence of their Blood, at the Hazard of their Fortunes, without the least Charge to the Country from which they removed, by unceasing Labour and an unconquerable Spirit, they effected Settlements in the distant and inhospitable Wilds of America, then filled with numerous and warlike Nations of Barbarians. — Societies or Governments, vested with perfect Legislatures, were formed under Charters from the Crown, and an harmonious Intercourse was established between the Colonies and the Kingdom from which they derived their Origin. ”

“ Standing at the beginning of a century and in the first year of Edward VII, thinking of the wide lands which call him king, thinking of our complex and loosely-knit British Commonwealth, we cannot look into the future without serious misgivings. If unity of law—such unity as there has been—disappears, much else that we treasure will disappear also, and (to speak frankly) unity of law is precarious. The power of the parliament of the United Kingdom to legislate for the colonies is fast receding into the ghostly company of legal fictions. ”

“ What I mean here is just to point out the difference of situation between communities forming an Empire; and particular bodies or classes of men forming different parts of a Kingdom. Different communities forming an Empire have no connexions, which produce a necessary reciprocation of interests between them. ”

“ A new kingdom, with a greater superficies than that of the Great Republic, would be firmly consolidated,, while a number of individuals equal to one third of our actual home population would be rescued from wretchedness or ruin. ”

“ Whatever have been the changes of government in that great country—and many they have been, to be sure—we have seen a Convention, a Directorate, Consuls, and one Consul, and an Emperor, and the Restoration, and the Citizen King, and the Republic; Through all these different experiments centralization was the keynote of the institutions of France—power always centralized; omnipotence always vested somewhere. And, remarkable indeed, France has never yet raised one single man to the seat of power, who has not sacrificed his country's freedom to his personal ambition! ”

“ The Empire has yielded to the Monarchy, the Monarchy to the Republic, the Republic to the Empire again, and that once more to the Republic, but the Code which embodies the principle of equality before the law has remained. Fundamentally the social equilibrium has been stable. ”

“ Now, the most notable fact in this enumeration is the presence, in addition to the parent nation at the centre of the Empire, of daughter nations at the circumference; and it is this fact above all others that gives a unique interest and character to the strange political organism we are considering. For everything else in the relations between the parts of the Empire we may find perhaps a parallel elsewhere; the existence of a number of national centres and national governments within one political system is an entirely new phenomenon. ”

“ An immense hierarchy of transferable functionaries was kept at work from above on one hundred and eighty square leagues of territory; thirty populations of different race and language-Syrians, Egyptians, Numidians, Spaniards, Gauls, Britons, Germans, Greeks, Italians—subject to the same uniform Régime. The territory was divided like a checker-board, on arithmetical and geometrical principles, into one hundred or one hundred and twenty small provinces; old nations or States dismembered and purposely cut up so as to put an end forever to natural, spontaneous, and viable groups. ”

“ But it is only in the social regulations that the unity was really perceivable. Only as long as the Empire was an actual reality, could the supreme power of the Electors, each with his own special rights, be maintained; only so long could dukes and princes, bishops and abbots hold their neighbours in due respect, and through court offices or hereditary services, through fiefs and the dignity of their independent position give their vassals a peculiar position to the whole. ”

“ The progress of the people in science and art, in politics and military strength, was only seen in the larger secular territories, which, after 1648, enjoyed their own sovereignty; and even these were checked in their movements at every step by the remnants of the Imperial Constitution. The Members of the Empire alone, in whom the decaying remains of Mediæval existence still lingered on--the Ecclesiastical Princes--the small Counts--the Imperial Knights and the Imperial Towns,--clung to the Emperor and the Imperial Diet. ”

“ The new system, if it involved the peril of strife among the regents, led to a more vigilant and efficient government in the different provinces, and provided for a peaceful succession to the throne. But the government came to resemble, in the omnipotence of the emperor, in the obsequious homage paid to him, and in the cringing manners of the court, an Oriental despotism. The old heathen religion was considered by conservative Romans to be an essential part of the imperial system, and indispensable to the unity of the empire. ”

“ Popular contests are for victory, not for delimitation of territory. And its weakness was apparent in this, that while the thorough-going partisans of the Church allowed to the Emperor practically no power except such as he obtained by concession of or delegation from the Church, the imperial theory granted to the ecclesiastical representative at least an authority and independence equal to those claimed for itself, and readily admitted that of the two powers the Church could claim the greater respect as being entrusted with the conduct of matters that were of more permanent importance. ”

“ The more powerful Electors and Princes,Condition of States of the Empire. who wished to establish a strong government, met with the same opposition from their vassals, their cities, and even their peasants, which they themselves offered to the Emperor; their provincial Diets were torn with the same dissensions as those which disturbed the Imperial Diet. Yet here, more surely than in the Empire, the authority of the ruler was asserting itself, based upon that principle of independent territorialism which was eventually to triumph. ”

“ Will the Empire, however, last? Does it rest on permanent foundations, or is it only a political organism in a certain stage of decomposition? Will the younger nations as they grow to maturity be content to remain within it, or will they ultimately go the way of the American Colonies before them, as was thought to be inevitable a generation ago? Obviously the Empire is in a state of transition, and if it is to endure, its constitution must undergo great modifications. ”

“ When this is the case, when kings give a law to society, history is not unphilosophical which recognizes chiefly their enterprises and ideas.
The Rise of Absolute Monarchy. rise of absolute monarchy on the ruins of feudal states is one of the chief features of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. There was every where a strong tendency to centralization. Provinces, before independent, were controlled by a central government. Standing armies took the place of feudal armies. Kings took away from nobles the right to coin money, administer justice, and impose taxes. ”

“ To-day the words 'Empire' and 'Imperialism' fill the place in everyday speech that was once filled by 'Nation' and 'Nationality.' In the never-ending struggle of political principles authority rather than liberty seems for the moment to have the upper hand; power and dominion rather than freedom and independence are the ideas that appeal to the imagination of the masses; men's thoughts are turned outward rather than inward; the national ideal has given place to the Imperial. ”

“ The form of government was monarchical and almost absolute;Pg 280 below were the nobles, the priests, the people, and the slaves. Such a partition, amounting to almost castes, presupposes an anterior conquest. The lands were divided between the crown, the nobility, the temples, and the people. The division was by no means equal, by far the greater proportion being appropriated by the king, the aristocracy, and the temples. The lands of the people were the common property of the community and not of individuals. ”

“ In my judgment, the importance of the Crown in our Constitution is not a diminishing, but an increasing, factor. It is increasing, and must increase, with the growth and development of those free, self-governing communities, those new commonwealths beyond the sea, who are bound to us by the person of the Sovereign, who is the living symbol of the unity of the Empire. ”

“ Had it not been for this, we should surely have had some franc alleu to oppose to the fief, some Eigen to oppose to the Lehn. But if England was not to be for ever a prey to rebellions and civil wars, the power of the lords over their men must have been—not indeed increased, but—territorialized; the liberty of ‘going with one’s land to whatever lord one chose’ must have been curtailed. As yet the central force embodied in the kingship was too feeble to deal directly with every one of its subjects, to govern them and protect them. ”

“ Year after year, the assemblies that represented the self-government of provinces and of privileged classes, all over the Continent, met for the last time and passed away, to the satisfaction of the people, who had learned to venerate the throne as the constructor of their unity, the promoter of prosperity and power, the defender of orthodoxy, and the employer of talent. ”

“ And this capital and this empire seemed to be the domain of one man, so vast his power, so august his dignity, absolute master of the lives and property of one hundred and twenty millions, for the people were now deprived of the election of magistrates and the creation of laws. How could the greatest nobles otherwise than cringe to the supreme captain of the armies, the prince of the Senate, and the high-priest of the national divinities—himself, the recipient of honors only paid to gods! ”

“ Two more conditions of society throughout the whole empire we have yet to consider in their bearing on the maintenance of polytheism: first, the concentration of the vast power of the state—in itself an acknowledged omnipotence, without the restriction or reservation of individual rights—in one hand, the hand of the emperor, the sole representative of the people. ”

“ But now, when the power of the emperors began to decline, when the clergy was driven into taking a decidedly anti-national position, when the unity of the empire was well-nigh destroyed, and princes and prelates were asserting their independence by plunder and by warfare, a new element of society rose to the surface,—the middle classes,—the burghers of the free towns of Germany. ”

“ Such a liberty must have its wings clipt; free contract must be taught to know its place; the lord’s hold over the man’s land must become permanent. This change, if it makes at first for a more definite feudalism, or (to use words more strictly) if it substitutes feudalism for vassalism, makes also for the stability of the state, for the increase of the state’s power over the individual, and in the end for the disappearance of feudalism. ”

“ There are some who seem to be sensible, that the authority of one country over another, cannot be distinguished from the servitude of one country to another; and that unless different communities, as well as different parts of the same community, are united by an equal representation, all such authority is inconsistent with the principles of Civil Liberty.—But they except the case of the Colonies and Great Britain; because the Colonies are communities which have branched forth from, and which, therefore, as they think, belong to Britain. ”

“ The last phase of the cycle, as we have just seen, is that of the imperial and feudal aristocracy, that is, that of governors and sub-governors who have declared themselves independent from the imperial nucleus. These personalities conserve a certain vassalage with respect to their immediate superior, and he, at the same time, considers himself the vassal of the one above him. Under this type of aristocracy, the nation is subject to a regime of servants or slaves, without any material or spiritual power.
From the cultural point of view, we find ourselves without any spiritual activity. ”

“ For I have before observed, that if a people are to be subject to an external power over which they have no command, it is better that power should be lodged in the hands of one man than of a multitude. But many persons think otherwise; and such ought to consider that, if this would be a calamity, the condition of the Colonies must be deplorable.—“A government by King, Lords, and Commons, (it has been said) is the perfection of government;” and so it is, when the Commons are a just representation of the people ”