Three Kingdoms

“ The Ease and Advantage which wou'd be gain'd by uniting our own Three Kingdoms upon equal Terms (for upon unequal it wou'd be no Union) is so visible, that if we had not the Example of those Masters of the World, the Romans, before our Eyes, one wou'd wonder that our own Experience (in the Instance of uniting Wales to England) shou'd not convince us, that altho both Sides wou'd incredibly gain by it, yet the rich and opulent Country, to which such an Addition is made, wou'd be the greater Gainer. 'Tis so much more desirable and secure to govern by Love and common Interest, than by Force ”

“ The affairs of the three associated kingdoms, with their great diversities of law, interest, and circumstance, make the government of them, even if they stood alone, a business more voluminous, so to speak, than that of any other thirty-three millions of civilized men. ”

“ Thus the Empire of the Greeks, which at first brake into four kingdoms, became now reduced into two notable ones, henceforward called by Daniel the kings of the South and North. For Ptolemy now reigned over Egypt, Lybia, Ethiopia, Arabia, Phœnicia, Cœlosyria, and Cyprus; and Seleucus, having united three of the four kingdoms, had a dominion scarce inferior to that of the Persian Empire, conquered by Alexander the great. All which is thus represented by Daniel: [2] And the king of the South [Ptolemy] shall be strong, and one of his Princes [Seleucus, one of Alexander's Princes] ”

“ Gleefully the Indians will count the number of Kings that are on the side of the Allies in the cause of right—the King-Emperor, the King of France, the King of Russia, the King of Belgium, the King of Serbia, and, more lately, the King of Italy. Triumphantly they ask: “Shall but three Kings—those of Germany, Austria, and Turkey—prevail against six?” The position of Austria-Hungary is rather a puzzle to them. ”

“ The three Emperors love the three Empires, and hate one another; the Government and the Lieges are blinded by jealousy; each wishes to be the first in the race, and to see the other two distanced. All are mounted upon a war footing au piéd de guerre; which means that they intend fighting, and Germany especially must fight or she is lost ”

“ Among the foreign potentates who have been invested with the Order are eight emperors of Germany, two of Russia, five kings of France, three of Spain, one of Arragon, seven of Portugal, one of Poland, two of Sweden, six of Denmark, two of Naples, one of Sicily and Jerusalem, one of Bohemia, two of Scotland, seven princes of Orange, and many of the most illustrious personages of different ages in Europe. ”

“ They have now portioned out the whole world of savagery, barbarism, and semicivilization among themselves, so that, as the result of discoveries, wars, and treaties, six great and three smaller powers107 have now appropriated all the extra-European world, except three or four ancient Asiatic states. ”

“ That is excellent: I cannot conceive, but that if a Kingdome may be improved to maintaine twice as many people as it did before, it is as good as the conquest of another Kingdome, as great, if not better. ”

“ The Kings were rough, warlike, and quarrelsome with their neighbours beyond any others, and were very rarely at entire peace with any of them. And while in some of these wars the kingdom had narrowly escaped annihilation, yet because a balance of power among these kingdoms was necessary for mutual existence, no one of them could be annexed by another, and for more than a hundred years they had existed in pretty much the same condition as that in which they had commenced in 1489. ”

“ It is in Egypt, on the one hand, and in the succession of West-Asiatic kingdoms, on the other, that the first stages of this development of a world kingdom out of the dominance of one powerful State over a number of vassal States are clearly exhibited. The struggle for supremacy, in which vassal might elevate himself to the position of ruler and lord be reduced to vassal, and in which newly immigrant peoples often took a decisive part, immeasurably enhanced the striving to extend the sphere of dominion. ”

“ The conqueror, his friend, and his friend's friend are the three primary kings constituting a circle of states. As each of these three kings possesses the five elements of sovereignty, such as the minister, the country, the fort, the treasury, and the army, a circle of states consists of eighteen elements. ”

“ We see a world practically divided between a few great States—the six so-called great Powers of Europe, the American Republic, and Japan, the Asiatic Power which has sprung like Pallas Athene in the full panoply of war, and in the foil vigour of mature nationality, into the circle of the European nations. We see these eight great Powers endeavouring to group themselves by alliances into a smaller number of systems, so that at the present moment they may be reckoned as four, and not as eight—the United States, England and Japan, the Dual Alliance, and the Triple Alliance. ”

“ The assumption of universal sovereignty, of being the geographical center of the world, and also the center of light and civilization that have been so injurious to the nation, appear in several of the most ancient names. In the oldest classical writings the country is called the Flowery Kingdom, flowery presenting the idea of beautiful, cultivated, and refined. The terms Heavenly Flowery Kingdom, and Heavenly Dynasty are sometimes used, the word heavenly presenting the Chinese idea that the empire is established by the authority of heaven, and that the emperor rules by divine right. ”

“ After the breaking up of the vast empire of Charles the Great, the continent of Europe had come to be parcelled out into a large number of kingdoms, duchies, counties, principalities, and republics, few of them possessing any exceptional importance, whilst the majority were quite insignificant. ”

“ The foundation of the new dynasty was a relatively easy matter, and the new state was much more solid than the southern kingdoms of 800 years earlier, for the south had already been economically supreme, and the great families that had ruled the state were virtually all from the south. ”

“ The jurist finds with the princes of Southern Asia, despotic as they otherwise are, more consistency, for they take not the game, or salt, or amber, or pearls, but the whole land and the whole trade, and merely farm both yearly. The German princes have greater advantages in this direction than any others, for all European kingdoms have Indian possessions--have a New England, New France, New Holland ”

“ It is composed of a union of different states, some of them at one time forming independent kingdoms, inhabited by races of people differing from each other in descent, language, customs, laws, and religion, held together as one empire by being united under one sovereign and one central government. This territory, which was comprised in Noricum and part of Pannonia, was annexed to the Roman empire in 33, was overrun by Huns, Avars, etc., in the 5th and 6th centuries, and taken from them by Charlemagne, who united it to Germany as the “eastern kingdom,” 791-96. ”

“ Then, with our ruler a youth and affairs generally in an unsettled state, sedition within and war without, although their Majesties the Empresses-Dowager directed the administration of government from behind the bamboo screen, the task of wielding the rod of empire must have been arduous indeed. Since that time, ten years and more, the Eighteen Provinces have been tranquillised; without, western nations have yielded obedience and returned to a state of peace; within, the empire has been fixed on a firm basis and has recovered its former vitality. ”

“ The idea of territorial sovereignty, of kingship over a land instead of over a people, grew up under the feudal system. In Britain it was unknown until long after the Norman Conquest. William the Conqueror, like Harold or Edward, was king of the English, and it was only from the reign of Henry II. that his successors were transformed into kings of England. The Eastern titles of sultan and shah are accepted as equivalent to those of emperor and king in the West. The sovereigns of China and Japan are called emperors both in common and in diplomatic parlance. ”

“ Let us take, for instance, the great Assyrian empire. One powerful ruler, endowed with unlimited authority, at whose commands great and small, high-born and slave, bend the knee, to whose arbitrary will almost the whole of Western Asia is subject, guides the destinies of his colossal empire, independent of men. ”

“ Nor could a European, in the beginning of the fifth century before our era, look upon this huge accumulation of power beneath the sceptre of a single Asiatic ruler, with the indifference with which we now observe on the map the extensive dominions of modern Oriental sovereigns. ”

“ Our imperial ancestors and imperial parent, like gods, like sages, accumulated happiness and amassed glory. Many years elapsed from the date when our heavenly ancestor descended until now it is over 1,792,470 years. But the remote regions do not yet enjoy the blessings of imperial rule. Every town has always been allowed to have its lord, and every village its chief, who, each one for himself, makes division of territory and practises mutual aggression and conflict. ”

“ The provinces, brought at length under a regular system of government, protected against external dangers and internal discord, by a well-disciplined soldiery, and enjoying a peace and security they had rarely known in the days of their independence, gradually became accustomed to live in concord under the rule of a common sovereign, and to feel themselves portions of a single empire. ”

“ Thus the whole record of dynastic succession in the New Kingdom has been typically Oriental, anticipating, at every change of monarch, the history of Islamic Empires. There is no trace of unanimous national sentiment for the Great King. One occupant of the throne after another gains power by grace of a party and holds it by mercenary swords. ”

“ We shall find, when we come to consider the history of the Empire, that, for eighty years, under four sovereigns, the course indicated by these two writers was in fact pursued—that war followed on war, expedition on expedition—the active energy of sovereign and people carrying them on, without rest or pause, in a career of conquest that has few parallels in the history of Oriental nations. ”

“ It is probable, therefore, that while the ten kingdoms will occupy a well defined area, their dependencies and the countries which are allied with them will embrace practically the remainder of the world. ”

“ But there can be no homogeneous internal government, no compact nation, so long as twenty or more dynasties, coequal in dignity though not in power, flourish simultaneously. Historically speaking, Germany has never passed through that stage of development in which one dynasty swallows up its rivals,—the experience of England, France, and Spain, and even of polyglot Austria. ”

“ A more heterogeneous conglomeration of States never existed, consisting of kingdoms, archduchies, duchies, principalities, counties, margraves, landgraves and imperial cities, nearly all with their hereditary rulers subordinate to the emperor, and with their local customs and laws. ”

“ Among the Allies, the two chief Imperial Powers, measured by the extent of territory they control, are Britain and France, and each of these is more completely prepared to-day than ever it has been before to consider its imperial possessions as a trust for their inhabitants and for mankind, and its position in the more fertile and less settled regions of the world as that of a mandatory and trustee. These admissions involve a plain prospect and promise of the ultimate release and liberation of all the peoples in these great and variegated Empires to complete world-citizenship. ”

“ It is well known that the Chinese designate their empire as the “Middle Kingdom.” Another native name for China is “Chung-ho-a,” which I find translated as “the Flower of the Middle.” The empire is likewise designated as “the Four Seas”=ssu-hai and “the Four Mountains,” and it was actually divided by the emperor Yaou or Yāo (B.C. 2357) into four provinces converging at the capital, the central enclosure of which was considered as the centre of heaven and earth. ”

“ The Seven Provinces, when the truce of twelve years had been signed, were neither exhausted nor impoverished. Yet they had just emerged from a forty years' conflict such as no people in human history had ever waged against a foreign tyranny. They had need to repose and recruit, but they stood among the foremost great powers of the day. It is not easy in imagination to thrust back the present leading empires of the earth into the contracted spheres of their not remote past. ”

“ China and Japan were wholly outside the modern community of nations. A hundred years have passed, and what a new order has arisen! Great Britain has lost an empire, has gained other empires in Asia and Australia, and extends her dominion around the globe. France, so great in arts and arms, has seen an empire rise and fall and another empire arise, in which a wise and skillful ruler is seeking to reconcile personal supremacy with democratic ideas. ”

“ Their King is called Lord of the World, and they supposed accordingly that their Kingdome contayned the principall part thereof; not deeming the Neighbour Kingdomes worthy to bee called Kingdomes, which yet before their Commerce with Europeans were all they knew. And not unworthily is the name Great prefixed to their Kingdomes appellation, Largenesse of the Kingdome of China. beeing the greatest Kingdome in the World, which at this day carrieth One Name, or hath done in former times. ”