ays,
"Instances are on record where individuals attained to supreme power
in a single state, without benevolence, but never have I heard of a
whole empire falling into the hands of one who lacked this virtue."
Also,--"It is impossible that any one should become ruler of the
people to whom they have not yielded the subjection of their hearts."
Both defined this indispensable requirement in a ruler by saying,
"Benevolence--Benevolence is Man." Under the regime of feudalism, which
could easily be perverted into militarism, it was to Benevolence that
we owed our deliverance from despotism of the worst kind. An utter
surrender of "life and limb" on the part of the governed would have left
nothing for the governing but self-will, and this has for its natural
consequence the growth of that absolutism so often called "oriental
despotism,"--as though there were no despots of occidental history!

Let it be far from me to uphold despotism of any sort; but it is a
mistake to identify feudalism with it. When Frederick the Great wrote
that "Kings are the first servants of the State," jurists thought
rightly that a new era was reached in the development of freedom.
Strangely coinciding in time, in the backwoods of North-western Japan,
Yozan of Yonezawa made exactly the same declaration, showing that
feudalism was not all tyranny and oppression. A feudal prince, although
unmindful of owing reciprocal obligations to his vassals, felt a higher
sense of responsibility to his ancestors and to Heaven. He was a father
to his subjects, whom Heaven entrusted to his care. In a sense not
usually assigned to the term, Bushido accepted and corroborated paternal
government--paternal also as opposed to the less interested avuncular
government (Uncle Sam's, to wit!). The difference between a despotic and
a paternal government lies in this, that in the one the people obey
reluctantly, while in the other they do so with "that proud submission,
that dignified obedience, that subordination of heart which kept alive,
even in servitude itself, the spirit of exalted freedom."[8] The old
saying is not entirely false which called the king of England the "king
of devils, because of his subjects' often insurrections against, and
depositions of, their princes," and which made the French monarch the
"king of asses, because of their infinite taxes and Impositions," but
which gave the title of "the king of men" to the sovereign of Spain
"because of his subjects' wi