he statesmen and politicians who lie under the thrall of
this compelling necessity.

This systematic corruption of the best threatens to assume the
proportions of a national disaster. It is the system, not the actors in
it, which M. Faguet analyses and invites us to deplore.

T. MACKAY.

CHAPTER I.

THE PRINCIPLES OF FORMS OF GOVERNMENT.

The question has often been asked, what is the animating principle of
different forms of government, for each, it is assumed, has its own
principle. In other words, what is the general idea which inspires each
political system?

Montesquieu, for instance, proved that the _principle_ of monarchy is
_honour_, the principle of despotism _fear_, the principle of a republic
_virtue_ or patriotism, and he added with much justice that governments
decline and fall as often by carrying their principle to excess, as by
neglecting it altogether.

And this, though a paradox, is true. At first sight it may not be
obvious how a despotism can fall by inspiring too much fear, or a
constitutional monarchy by developing too highly the sentiment of
honour, or a republic by having too much virtue. It is nevertheless
true.

To make too common a use of fear is to destroy its efficacy. As Edgar
Quinet happily puts it: "If we want to make use of fear we must be
certain that we can use it always." We cannot have too much honour, but
when we can appeal to this sentiment only and when distinctions,
decorations, orders, ribbons--in a word _honours_--are multiplied,
inasmuch as we cannot increase such things indefinitely, those who have
none become as discontented as those who, having some, want more.

Finally we cannot, of course, have too much virtue, and naturally here
governments will fall not by exaggerating but by abandoning their
guiding principle. Yet is it not sometimes true that by demanding from
citizens too great a devotion to their country, we end by exhausting
human powers of endurance and sacrifice? This is what happened in the
case of Napoleon, who, perhaps unwittingly, required too much from
France, for the building up of a 'Greater France.'

But that, some one will object, was not a republic!

From the point of view of the sacrifices required from the citizen, it
was a republic, similar to the Roman Republic and to the French Republic
of 1792. All the talk was 'for the glory of our country,' 'heroism,
heroism, noth