Part 14

This, it may be said, does not prove that this change is a good thing. It may, however, be proved that some change at any rate is necessary to a permanently perfect administration. If we look at the Prussian bureaucracy, whatever success it may recently have achieved, it certainly does not please the most intelligent persons at home. Obstinate officials set at defiance the liberal initiations of the government. In conflicts with simple citizens guilty officials are like men armed cap-a-pie fighting with the defenceless. The bureaucrat inevitably cares more for routine than for results. The machinery is regarded as an achieved result instead of as a working instrument. It tends to be the most unimproving and shallow of governments in quality, and to over-government in point of quantity.

In fact, experience has proved in the case of joint-stock banks and of railways that they are best conducted by an admixture of experts with men of what may be, called business culture. So in a government office the intrusion of an exterior head of the office is really essential to its perfection. As Sir George Lewis said: "It is not the business of a cabinet minister to work his department; his business is to see that it is properly worked."

In short, a presidential government, or a hereditary government are inferior to parliamentary government as administrative selectors. The revolutionary despot may indeed prove better, since his existence depends on his skill in doing so. If the English government is not celebrated for efficiency, that is largely because it attempts to do so much; but it is defective also from our ignorance. Another reason is that in the English constitution the dignified parts, which have an importance of their own, at the same time tend to diminish simple efficiency.

V.--Checks, Balances, and History

In every state there must be somewhere a supreme authority on every point. In some states, however, that ultimate power is different upon different points. The Americans, under the mistaken impression that they were imitating the English, made their constitution upon this principle. The sovereignty rested with the separate states, which have delegated certain powers to the central government. But the division of the sovereignty does not end here. Congress rules the law, but the president rules the administration. Even his legislative veto can be overruled when two-thirds of both houses are unanimous. The administrative power is divided, since on international policy the supreme authority is the senate. Finally, the constitution itself can only be altered by authorities which are outside the constitution. The result is that now, after the civil war, there is no sovereign authority to settle immediate problems.

In England, on the other hand, we have the typical constitution, in which the ultimate power upon all questions is in the hands of the same person. The ultimate authority in the English constitution is a newly-elected House of Commons. Whatever the question on which it decides, a new House of Commons can despotically and finally resolve. No one can doubt the importance of singleness and unity. The excellence in the British constitution is that it has achieved this unity. This is primarily due to the provision which places the choice of the executive in "the people's house." But it could not have been effected without what I may call the "safety valve" and "the regulator." The "safety valve" is the power of creating peers, the "regulator" is the cabinet's power of dissolving. The defects of a popular legislature are: caprice in selection, the sectarianism born of party organisation, which is the necessary check on caprice, and the peculiar prejudices and interests of the particular parliament. Now the caprice of parliament in the choice of a premier is best checked by the premier himself having the power of dissolution. But as a check on sectarianism such an extrinsic power as that of a capable constitutional king is more efficient. For checking the peculiar interests our colonial governors seem almost perfectly qualified. But the intervention of a constitutional monarch is only beneficial if he happens to be an exceptionally wise man. The peculiar interests of a specific parliament are seldom in danger of overriding national interests; hence, on the whole, the advantage of the premier being the real dissolving authority.

The power of creating peers, vested in the premier, serves constantly to modify the character of the second chamber. What we may call the catastrophe creation of peers is different. That the power should reside in the king would again be beneficial only in the case of the exceptional monarch. Taken altogether, we find that hereditary royalty is not essential to parliamentary government. Our conclusion is that though a king with high courage and fine discretion, a king with a genius for the place, is always useful, and at rare moments priceless, yet a common king is of no use at a crisis, while, in the common course of things, he will do nothing, and he need do nothing.

All the rude nations that have attained civilisation seem to begin in a consultative and tentative absolutism. The king has a council of elders whom he consults while he tests popular support in the assembly of freemen. In England a very strong executive was an imperative necessity. The assemblies summoned by the English sovereign told him, in effect, how far he might go. Legislation as a positive power was very secondary in those old parliaments; but their negative action was essential. The king could not venture to alter the law until the people had expressed their consent. The Wars of the Roses killed out the old councils. The second period of the constitution continues to the revolution of 1688. The rule of parliament was then established by the concurrence of the usual supporters of royalty with the usual opponents of it. Yet the mode of exercising that rule has since changed. Even as late as 1810 it was supposed that when the Prince of Wales became Prince Regent he would be able to turn out the ministry.

It is one of our peculiarities that the English people is always antagonistic to the executive. It is their natural impulse to resist authority as something imposed from outside. Hence our tolerance of local authorities as instruments of resistance to tyranny of the central authority.

Our constitution is full of anomalies. Some of them are, no doubt, impeding and mischievous. Half the world believes that the Englishman is born illogical. As a matter of fact, I am inclined to believe that the English care more even than the French for simplicity; but the constitution is not logical. The complexity we tolerate is that which has grown up. Any new complexity, as such, is detestable to the English mind. Let anyone try to advocate a plan of suffrage reform at all out of the way, and see how many adherents he can collect.

This great political question of the day, the suffrage question, is made exceedingly difficult by this history of ours. We shall find on investigation that so far from an ultra-democratic suffrage giving us a more homogeneous and decided House of Commons it would give us a less homogeneous and more timid house. With us democracy would mean the rule of money and mainly and increasingly of new money working for its own ends.

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VOLTAIRE

The Age of Louis XIV

Voltaire's "History of the Age of Louis XIV.," was published when its author (see p. 259), long famous, was the companion of Frederick the Great in Prussia--from 1750 to 1753. Voltaire was in his twentieth year when the Grand Monarque died. Louis XIV. had succeeded his father at the age of five years, in 1643; his nominal reign covered seventy-one years, and throughout the fifty-three years which followed Mazarin's death his declaration "L'État c'est moi" had been politically and socially a truth. He controlled France with an absolute sway; under him she achieved a European ascendency without parallel save in the days of Napoleon. He sought to make her the dictator of Europe. But for William of Orange, Marlborough, and Eugene, he would have succeeded. Politically he did not achieve his aim; but under him France became the unchallenged leader of literary and artistic culture and taste, the universal criterion.

I.--France Under Mazarin

We do not propose to write merely a life of Louis XIV.; our aim is a far wider one. It is to give posterity a picture, not of the actions of a single man, but of the spirit of the men of an age the most enlightened on record. Every period has produced its heroes and its politicians, every people has experienced revolutions; the histories of all are of nearly equal value to those who desire merely to store their memory with facts. But the thinker, and that still rarer person the man of taste, recognises only four epochs in the history of the world--those four fortunate ages in which the arts have been perfected: the great age of the Greeks, the age of Cæsar and of Augustus, the age which followed the fall of Constantinople, and the age of Louis XIV.; which last approached perfection more nearly than any of the others.

On the death of Louis XIII., his queen, Anne of Austria, owed her acquisition of the regency to the Parlement of Paris. Anne was obliged to continue the war with Spain, in which the brilliant victories of the young Duc d'Enghein, known to fame as the Great Condé, brought him sudden glory and unprecedented prestige to the arms of France.

But internally the national finances were in a terribly unsatisfactory state. The measures for raising funds adopted by the minister Mazarin were the more unpopular because he was himself an Italian. The Paris Parlement set itself in opposition to the minister; the populace supported it; the resistance was organised by Paul de Gondi, afterwards known as the Cardinal de Retz. The court had to flee from Paris to St. Germain. Condé was won over by the queen regent; but the nobles, hoping to recover the power which Richelieu had wrenched from them, took the popular side. And their wives and daughters surpassed them in energy. A very striking contrast to the irresponsible frivolity with which the whole affair was conducted is presented by the grim orderliness with which England had at that very moment carried through the last act in the tragedy of Charles I. In France the factions of the Fronde were controlled by love intrigues.

Condé was victorious. But he was at feud with Mazarin, made himself personally unpopular, and found himself arrested when he might have made himself master of the government. A year later the tables were turned; Mazarin had to fly, and the Fronde released Condé. The civil war was renewed; a war in which no principles were at stake, in which the popular party of yesterday was the unpopular party of to-day; in which there were remarkable military achievements, much bloodshed, and much suffering, and which finally wore itself out in 1653, when Mazarin returned to undisputed power. Louis XIV. was then a boy of fifteen.

Mazarin had achieved a great diplomatic triumph by the peace of Westphalia in 1648; but Spain had remained outside that group of treaties; and, owing to the civil war of the Fronde, Condé's successes against her had been to a great extent made nugatory--and now Condé was a rebel and in command of Spanish troops. But Condé, with a Spanish army, met his match in Turenne with a French army.

At this moment, Christina of Sweden was the only European sovereign who had any personal prestige. But Cromwell's achievements in England now made each of the European statesmen anxious for the English alliance; and Cromwell chose France. The combined arms of France and England were triumphant in Flanders, when Cromwell died; and his death changed the position of England. France was financially exhausted, and Mazarin now desired a satisfactory peace with Spain. The result, was the Treaty of the Pyrenees, by which the young King Louis took a Spanish princess in marriage, an alliance which ultimately led to the succession of a grandson of Louis to the Spanish throne. Immediately afterwards, Louis' cousin, Charles II., was recalled to the throne of England. This closing achievement of Mazarin had a triumphant aspect; his position in France remained undisputed till his death in the next year (1661). He was a successful minister; whether he was a great statesman is another question. His one real legacy to France was the acquisition of Alsace.

II.---The French Supremacy in Europe

On Mazarin's death Louis at once assumed personal rule. Since the death of Henry the Great, France had been governed by ministers; now she was to be governed by the king--the power exercised by ministers was precisely circumscribed. Order and vigour were introduced on all sides; the finances were regulated by Colbert, discipline was restored in the army, the creation of a fleet, was begun. In all foreign courts Louis asserted the dignity of France; it was very soon evident that there was no foreign power of whom he need stand in fear. New connections were established with Holland and Portugal. England under Charles II. was of little account.

To the king on the watch for an opportunity, an opportunity soon presents itself. Louis found his when Philip IV. of Spain was succeeded by the feeble Charles II. He at once announced that Flanders reverted to his own wife, the new king's elder sister. He had already made his bargain with the Emperor Leopold, who had married the other infanta.

Louis' armies were overrunning Flanders in 1667, and Franche-Comté next year. Holland, a republic with John de Witt at its head, took alarm; and Sir William Temple succeeded in effecting the Triple Alliance between Holland, England, and Sweden. Louis found it advisable to make peace, even at the price of surrendering Franche-Comté for the present.

Determined now, however, on the conquest of Holland, Louis had no difficulty in secretly detaching the voluptuary Charles II. from the Dutch alliance. Holland itself was torn between the faction of the De Witts and the partisans of the young William of Orange. Overwhelming preparations were made for the utterly unwarrantable enterprise.

As the French armies poured into Holland, practically no resistance was offered. The government began to sue for peace. But the populace rose and massacred the De Witts; young William was made stadtholder. Ruyter defeated the combined French and English fleets at Sole Bay. William opened the dykes and laid the country under water, and negotiated secretly with the emperor and with Spain. Half Europe was being drawn into a league against Louis, who made the fatal mistake of following the advice of his war minister Louvois, instead of Condé and Turenne.