Autocrat

“ Hampered at every turn by my colleagues, fettered by the democratic system of which I should be the mere figurehead! No—the power I dreamed of was absolute! An autocrat! A dictator! And such power could only be obtained by working outside the law. To play on the weaknesses of human nature, then on the weaknesses of nations—to get together and control a vast organization, and finally to overthrow the existing order, and rule! ”

“ It needs a very powerful autocrat, seconded by a man of genius, to succeed, even partially, in such a task. More often than not the reformer finds that the whole people rises up against him. Then, to the contrary of what befalls in an ordinary revolution, the autocrat is revolutionary and the people is conservative. ”

“ Today our legal rulers are selected for us by the few through the subterfuge of the masses casting their ballots according to the directions of the few. In other forms of unpopular government the central figure has been the monarch, the autocrat, the oligarch, or the aristocrat. In ours it is the politocrat. We have avoided monarchy, autocracy, oligarchy, and aristocracy, only to find ourselves tightly in the grasp of a politocracy. ”

“ And from now on you owe it to yourselves, and your king, to those who have done the best they could for you, to make, by continued industry and integrity, the kingdom of Marken great. The king has made no mistake. You were not fit to conduct yourselves a year ago. Many of you were idle, lazy and indifferent. It required the inflexibility of an autocrat to arouse you. An autocrat is, after all, but a nurse. Once the necessity for a nurse passes, it passes for all time. You are a nation now, known and respected by the whole world. ”

“ A natural autocrat, he was dictatorial and domineering, bearing himself arrogantly towards all underlings, unyielding in opposition to whoever crossed his will. And in consequence he gathered about his head such fierce antagonism that in the end he failed of his ambitions, and shorn of power he sat down in old age to eat the bread of bitterness. ”

“ The atmosphere is a fearful one in the vicinity of every autocrat. The Czar is pathetically well-meaning, and is modesty itself, but he is not the autocrat for an autocracy, who must be equal to his task."
"And what, in your excellency's opinion, should be done to help the country?"
"No more than the rest of the world has already accomplished. Abolition of the police system, security of personal freedom, abolition of the censorship, discontinuance of the persecution of sectarians, who are our best subjects, and—I say the word quietly—a constitution." ”

“ After many unhappy experiments in the direction of an ideal Republic, it was found that what may be described as a Despotism tempered by Dynamite provides, on the whole, the most satisfactory description of ruler—an autocrat who dares not abuse his autocratic power. ”

“ And there is the further fact that habitually, in societies where an offending autocrat is from time to time removed, another autocrat is set up; the implication being that the average sentiment is of a kind which not only tolerates but desires autocracy. ”

“ To an autocrat, untrammelled rule over a whole kingdom may mean an exercise of his individual faculties, and a development of his individual personality, such as no other situation in life would afford. ”

“ And were not these men of greater calibre than those who hold the reins under our constitutional régime? So strong is the motive of an autocrat to make use of ability wherever it exists, that he will, like Louis XI., take even his barber into council if he finds him a clever fellow. ”

“ For forty years I have filled high positions in the State, and my long experience has shown me that when the ruling power is weak the people are oppressed. Those, therefore, who—like the great majority of rhetoricians—try to weaken the government, commit an abominable crime. An autocrat, who governs by his single will, may sometimes cause most deplorable results; but if he governs by popular consent there is no remedy possible. Before the majesty of the Roman arms had bestowed peace upon all the world, the only nations which were happy were those which were ruled over by intelligent despots. ”

“ Here was no throne-proud autocrat, governing by means of secret orders, but a sovereign, publishing to his people his notion of that highest law which bound him and them alike. Never did monarch live who so called his subjects into his councils. ”

“ The character of autocratic rule manifestly depends very much on the character of the autocrat. It is true that in these modern days even the autocrat is largely the creature of conditions. Imperial will is molded and circumscribed by historic tendencies, by overmastering public opinion, and by the spirit of the age. ”

“ In the earlier case, the autocrat, showing more perspicacity and energy than were expected of him, guides and controls the popular enthusiasm, and postpones the threatened political crisis by effecting a series of far reaching and beneficent reforms. ”

“ The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown and proclaim his subjects free republicans, sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves. ”

“ The spirit of democracy exists already, no doubt of it. If we could suppress it in time, we should also suppress the aspirations of encouraged plebianism,—a dangerous factor in any republic. It means the mixing of ignoble blood with good, a gradual lowering of ideals until a general level of sordidness, individualism in its most selfish and self-seeking form, and political corruption, are the inevitable results. You, your Excellency, are an autocrat. It is odd that your principles should coincide so closely with the despotism of democracy. ”

“ A number of facts must be remembered if we are rightly to estimate the power of the aggregate will in comparison with the power of the autocrat's will. There is the fact that the autocrat is obliged to respect and maintain the great mass of institutions and laws produced by past sentiments and ideas, which have acquired a religious sanction ”

“ It was, however, the golden age of autocracy, when men surrendered their judgment to some great leader, content to follow where he led, to endorse his policy at the cost of their lives.
It is the autocrat who is made by the circumstances of his life who ultimately becomes supreme. The leaders among the corsairs were tried by every test of prosperity and of adverse fortune ”

“ In other lands there have been other autocrats, but always alike in this : each has fallen or stood according to his ultimate military failure or success. Had the mass of the people on whom his power rested really desired equal rights and personal liberty and self-government, the autocrat would not have been tolerated for an hour. The fore- most autocrat of all time is the great Na- poleon, child of the French Revolution. ”

“ The Form of the State is therefore either autocratic, or aristocratic, or democratic.—The expression monarchic is not so suitable as 'autocratic' for the conception here intended; for a 'Monarch' is one who has the highest power, an 'Autocrat' is one who has all power, so that this latter is the Sovereign, whereas the former merely represents the Sovereignty. ”

“ The power of the autocrat, while it existed, could alone have solved it. The autocratic power exists no longer now in fact, although its place has not yet been taken by a definite new régime. He said that among the mass of conflicting conjectures and rumours with regard to the future, two important things were clear: (1) that the Government was determined to retain in its hands the power to give a Constitution; (2) that it was determined to grant a Constitution and to proceed to the elections. ”

“ Fate set him up for an autocrat, and whatever may have been true in some simpler age of the world, if there ever was any, it is clear now that a man cannot be brought up as an autocrat without such damage to judgment and character as makes him unfit to exercise any determining infuence on public affairs. ”

“ Not by any kind of government, established after any method, can the thing be done. A good and wise autocrat cannot be chosen or otherwise obtained by a people not good and wise. Goodness and wisdom will not characterize the successive families of an oligarchy, arising out of a bad and foolish people, any more than they will characterize a line of kings. Nor will any system of representation, limited or universal, direct or indirect, do more than represent the average nature of citizens. ”

“ The despot chosen by the people, on the contrary, though absolute while their favour lasts, is in constant fear that such favour may prove fickle. He uses his portentous powers, with one eye fixed on the national welfare, and the other roving hither and thither in the search for votes. There is little room for dubiety as to which type of autocrat is the more dangerous. ”

“ The system upon which this legislature has bound itself to act is in its very nature incompatible with individual power and individual ambition: its acts may be absolute—and high time is it that they should be so,—but the absolutism will not be that of an autocrat. ”

“ Either the czars who so clearly recognized the evil must have been unscrupulous cynics, who only laughed at corruption and had no feeling for the sufferings of their people, or else their power was not sufficient to break that of their servants. The omnipotence of autocracy must have found its limits in the omnipotence of the oligarchy of functionaries. The first of the possible explanations may be set aside without further consideration. [Pg 145] The autocrats, without exception, have desired the good of their people, and have been personally upright men and lovers of justice. ”

“ The autocratic sway of the West Wind, whether forty north or forty south of the Equator, is characterized by an open, generous, frank, barbarous recklessness. For he is a great autocrat, and to be a great autocrat you must be a great barbarian. ”

“ Worst of all, for an autocrat, he had not in his nature one particle of those qualities that go to make up the man of action, decision, energy, courage, whole-heartedness. In this he represented the decay of his race, surfeited with power, victim of the system it {36} had struggled so long and so hard to establish. ”

“ Under the “one-man power” (a name, by the way, that our good forefathers singularly chose to give to the rule of the British ministry and parliament) it is at least known who is to blame for sins of administration, and to whom is due the credit for what is creditable. The autocrat can not hide behind his own back. ”

“ Indeed, by his mere presence an autocratic ruler is an aggressor on citizens; actually or potentially exercising power not given by them, he in so far restrains their wills more than they would be restrained by mutual limitation merely. ”

“ At the moment when the autocrat yields to the demands of that popular intelligence and assents to constitutional limitations of his power, or to anything that will give an authoritative, official voice to the people, the real revolutionary crisis will begin. The popular discontent will not be appeased, but it will be sharpened by the concession. ”

“ The existence or non-existence of arbitrary government does not depend upon the title or denomination bestowed on the chief of the state, but upon the quantum of power which he possesses and wields. Autocrat, sultan, emperor, dictator, king, doge, president, are all mere names, in which the power respectively possessed by them is not to be found, but is to be looked for in the constitution, or the established usages and practices, of the several states which they govern and control. ”

“ The one who is spelled with a capital letter is the Autocrat, who makes us do what we ought to do. “A nation that has not been governed by so-called tyrants never came to much in the world.”
Our Great Tyrant sets us all hard at work. ”

“ Even if a strong man, enjoying fully the Imperial confidence, could be found, the problem would not be thereby completely and satisfactorily solved, because an autocrat, who is the Lord's Anointed, cannot delegate his authority to a simple mortal without losing something of the semi-religious halo and the prestige on which his authority rests. ”

“ The responsibilities of office are irksome to his imperious temperament. There is something almost tragic in a figure, equipped with the qualities of an hereditary autocrat, endeavouring to accommodate himself to the needs of a democracy. ”

“ His career as ruler vindicates the wisdom of that wise but unwritten provision of the American Constitution by which there is a limit to the tenure of this office. Continued rule for half a generation must turn a man into an autocrat. ”

“ In the opening paragraph of this document, the Autocrat declares, that, on ascending the throne, he took a vow in his innermost heart so to respond to the mission which was intrusted to him as to surround with his affection and his Imperial solicitude all his faithful subjects of every rank and of every condition, from the warrior who nobly bears arms for the defence of the country to the humble artisan devoted to the works of industry,—from the official in the career of the high offices of the State to the laborer whose plough furrows the soil ”

“ This was partly due to the clever management of those in authority, but chiefly to the policy of the Emperor, an old autocrat, who considered that all means were justifiable if all real power could be kept in his hands. Much of the blame, however, was due to the people themselves, who held aloof from politics. Some of the most highly educated men in the country said that the Constitution was a farce, and that they refused to have anything to do with it. ”