The important fact about a government lies quite as much in the qualifying epithet which is to be affixed to any one of the three names, as in the name itself.  We know nothing about a monarchy, until we have been told whether it is absolute or constitutional; if absolute, whether it is administered in the interests of the realm, like that of Prussia under Frederick the Great, or in the interests of the ruler, like that of an Indian principality under a native prince; if constitutional, whether the real power is aristocratic, as in Great Britain a hundred years ago, or plutocratic, as in Great Britain to-day, or popular, as it may be here fifty years hence.  And so with reference to each of the other two forms; neither name gives us any instruction, except of a merely negative kind, until it has been made precise by one or more explanatory epithets.  What is the common quality of the old Roman republic, the republics of the Swiss confederation, the republic of Venice, the American republic, the republic of Mexico?  Plainly the word republic has no further effect beyond that of excluding the idea of a recognised dynasty.

Rousseau is perhaps less open to this kind of criticism than other writers on political theory, for the reason that he distinguishes the constitution of the state from the constitution of the government.  The first he settles definitely.  The whole body of the people is to be sovereign, and to be endowed alone with what he conceived as the only genuinely legislative power.  The only question which he considers open is as to the form in which the delegated executive authority shall be organised.  Democracy, the immediate government of all by all, he rejects as too perfect for men; it requires a state so small that each citizen knows all the others, manners so simple that the business may be small and the mode of discussion easy, equality of rank and fortune so general as not to allow of the overriding of political equality by material superiority, and so forth.[248] Monarchy labours under a number of disadvantages which are tolerably obvious.  “One essential and inevitable defect, which must always place monarchic below republican government, is that in the latter the public voice hardly ever promotes to the first places any but capable and enlightened men who fill them with honour; whereas those who get on in monarchies, are for the most part small busybodies, small knaves, small intriguers, in whom the puny talents which are the secret of reaching substantial posts in courts, only serve to show their stupidity to the public as soon as they have made their way to the front.  The people is far less likely to make a blunder in a choice of this sort, than the prince, and a man of true merit is nearly as rare in the ministry, as a fool at the head of the government of a republic."[249] There remains aristocracy.  Of this there are three sorts:  natural, elective, and hereditary.  The first can only thrive among primitive folk, while