old idea of kingship developed with time and progress into quite a different idea, and put the other one in the background, where it may still be seen, now and then, flitting about like a spectre.  Its place has been taken by the idea of the king as father of his people, as the firm and unshakable pillar which alone supports and maintains the whole organisation of law and order, and consequently the rights of every man.[1] But a king can accomplish this only by inborn prerogative which reserves authority to him and to him alone—­an authority which is supreme, indubitable, and beyond all attack, nay, to which every one renders instinctive obedience.  Hence the king is rightly said to rule “by the grace of God.”  He is always the most useful person in the State, and his services are never too dearly repaid by any Civil List, however heavy.

[Footnote 1:  We read in Stobaeus, Florilegium, ch. xliv., 41, of a Persian custom, by which, whenever a king died, there was a five days’ anarchy, in order that people might perceive the advantage of having kings and laws.]

But even as late a writer as Macchiavelli was so decidedly imbued with the earlier or mediaeval conception of the position of a prince that he treats it as a matter which is self-evident:  he never discusses it, but tacitly takes it as the presupposition and basis of his advice.  It may be said generally that his book is merely the theoretical statement and consistent and systematic exposition of the practice prevailing in his time.  It is the novel statement of it in a complete theoretical form that lends it such a poignant interest.  The same thing, I may remark in passing, applies to the immortal little work of La Rochefaucauld, who, however, takes private and not public life for his theme, and offers, not advice, but observations.  The title of this fine little book is open, perhaps, to some objection:  the contents are not, as a rule, either maxims or reflections, but apercus; and that is what they should be called.  There is much, too, in Macchiavelli that will be found also to apply to private life.

Right in itself is powerless; in nature it is Might that rules.  To enlist might on the side of right, so that by means of it right may rule, is the problem of statesmanship.  And it is indeed a hard problem, as will be obvious if we remember that almost every human breast is the seat of an egoism which has no limits, and is usually associated with an accumulated store of hatred and malice; so that at the very start feelings of enmity largely prevail over those of friendship.  We have also to bear in mind that it is many millions of individuals so constituted who have to be kept in the bonds of law and order, peace and tranquillity; whereas originally every one had a right to say to every one else:  I am just as good as you are!  A consideration of all this must fill us with surprise that on the whole the world pursues its way so peacefully and quietly, and with so much law and order as we see to exist.  It is the machinery of State which alone accomplishes it.  For it is physical power alone which has any direct action on men; constituted as they generally are, it is for physical power alone that they have any feeling or respect.