MONARCHY
So far, we have considered the prince as a moral and collective person,
unified by the force of the laws, and the depositary in the State of
the executive power. We have now to consider this power when it is
gathered together into the hands of a natural person, a real man, who
alone has the right to dispose of it in accordance with the laws. Such
a person is called a monarch or king.
In contrast with other forms of administration, in which a collective
being stands for an individual, in this form an individual stands for a
collective being; so that the moral unity that constituted the prince
is at the same time a physical unity, and all the qualities, which in
the other case are only with difficulty brought together by the law,
are found naturally united.
Thus the will of the people, the will of the prince, the public force
of the State, and the particular force of the government, all answer to
a single motive power; all the springs of the machine are in the same
hands, the whole moves towards the same end; there are no conflicting
movements to cancel one another, and no kind of constitution can be
imagined in which a less amount of effort produces a more considerable
amount of action. Archimedes, seated quietly on the bank and easily
drawing a great vessel afloat, stands to my mind for a skilful monarch,
governing vast states from his study, and moving everything while he
seems himself unmoved.
But if no government is more vigorous than this, there is also none
in which the particular will holds more sway and rules the rest more
easily. Everything moves towards the same end indeed, but this end is
by no means that of the public happiness, and even the force of the
administration constantly shows itself prejudicial to the State.
Kings desire to be absolute, and men are always crying out to them
from afar that the best means of being so is to get themselves loved
by their people. This precept is all very well, and even in some
respects very true. Unfortunately, it will always be derided at court.
The power which comes of a people's love is no doubt the greatest; but
it is precarious and conditional, and princes will never rest content
with it. The best kings desire to be in a position to be wicked, if
they please, without forfeiting their mastery: political sermonisers
may tell them to their hearts' content that, the people's strength
being their own, their first interest is that the people should be
prosperous, numerous and formidable; they are well aware that this
is Untrue. Their first personal interest is that the people should
be weak, wretched, and unable to resist them. I admit that, provided
the subjects remained always in submission, the prince's interest
would indeed be that it should be powerful, in order that its power,
being his own, might make him formidable to his neighbours; but, this
interest being merely secondary and subordinate, and strength being
incompatible with submission, princes naturally give the preference
always to the principle that is more to their immediate advantage. This
is what Samuel put strongly before the Hebrews, and what Macchiavelli
has clearly shown. He professed to teach kings; but it was the people
he really taught. His _Prince_ is the book of Republicans.[1]
We found, on general grounds, that monarchy is suitable only for
great States, and this is confirmed when we examine it in itself.
The more numerous the public administration, the smaller becomes the
relation between the prince and the subjects, and the nearer it comes
to equality, so that in democracy the ratio is unity, or absolute
equality. Again, as the government is restricted in numbers the ratio
increases and reaches its _maximum_ when the government is in the hands
of a single person. There is then too great a distance between prince
and people and the State lacks a bond of union. To form such a bond,
there must be intermediate orders, and princes, personages and nobility
to compose them. But no such things suit a small State, to which all
class differences mean ruin.
If, however, it is hard for a great State to be well governed, it is
much harder for it to be so by a single man; and every one knows what
happens when kings substitute others for themselves.
An essential and inevitable defect, which will always rank monarchical
below republican government, is that in a republic the public voice
hardly ever raises to the highest positions men who are not enlightened
and capable, and such as to fill them with honour; while in monarchies
these who rise to the top are most often merely petty blunderers petty
swindlers, and petty intriguers, whose petty talents cause them to
get into the highest positions at Court, but, as soon as they have
got there, serve only to make their ineptitude clear to the public.
The people is far less often mistaken in its choice than the prince;
and a man of real worth among the king's ministers is almost as rare
as a fool at the head of a republican government. Thus, when, by
some fortunate chance, one of these born governors takes the helm of
State in some monarchy that has been nearly overwhelmed by swarms of
'gentlemanly' administrators, there is nothing but amazement at the
resources he discovers, and his coming marks an era in his country's
history.
For a monarchical State to have a chance of being well governed, its
population and extent must be proportionate to the abilities of its
governor. If is easier to conquer than to rule. With a long enough
lever, the world could be moved with a single finger; to sustain it
needs the shoulders of Hercules. However small a State may be, the
prince is hardly ever big enough for it. When, on the other hand,
it happens that the State is too small for its ruler, in these rare
cases too it is ill governed, because the ruler, constantly pursuing
his great designs, forgets the interests of the people, and makes
it no less wretched by misusing the talents he has, than a ruler of
less capacity would make it for want of those he had not. A kingdom
should, so to speak, expand or contract with each reign, according to
the prince's capabilities; but, the abilities of a senate being more
constant in quantity, the State can then have permanent frontiers
without the administration suffering.
The disadvantage that is most felt in monarchical government is the
want of the continuous succession which, in both the other forms,
provides an unbroken bond of union. When one king dies, another is
needed; elections leave dangerous intervals and are full of storms; and
unless the citizens are disinterested and upright to a degree which
very seldom goes with this kind of government, intrigue and corruption
abound. He to whom the State has sold itself can hardly help selling
it in his turn and repaying himself, at the expense of the weak, the
money the powerful have wrung from him. Under such an administration,
venality sooner or later spreads through every part, and peace so
enjoyed under a king is worse than the disorders of an interregnum.
What has been done to prevent these evils? Crowns have been made
hereditary in certain families, and an order of succession has been
set up, to prevent disputes from arising on the death of kings. That
is to say, the disadvantages of regency have been put in place of
those of election, apparent tranquillity has been preferred to wise
administration, and men have chosen rather to risk having children,
monstrosities, or imbeciles as rulers to having disputes over the
choice of good kings. It has not been taken into account that, in
so exposing ourselves to the risks this possibility entails, we are
setting almost all the chances against us. There was sound sense in
what the younger Dionysius said to his father, who reproached him for
doing some shameful deed by asking, "Did I set you the example?" "No,"
answered his son, "but your father was not king."
Everything conspires to take away from a man who is set in authority
over others the sense of justice and reason. Much trouble, we are
told, is taken to teach young princes the art of reigning; but their
education seems to do them no good. It would be better to begin by
teaching them the art of obeying. The greatest kings whose praises
history tells were not brought up to reign: reigning is a science we
are never so far from possessing as when we have learnt too much of
it, and one we acquire better by obeying than by commanding. "Nam
utilissimus idem ac brevissimus bonarum malarumque rerum delectus
cogitare quid aut nolueris sub alio principe, aut volueris."[2]
One result of this lack of coherence is the inconstancy of royal
government, which, regulated now on one scheme and now on another,
according to the character of the reigning prince or those who
reign for him, cannot for long have a fixed object or a consistent
policy--and this variability, not found in the other forms of
government, where the prince is always the same, causes the State to
be always shifting from principle to principle and from project to
project. Thus we may say that generally, if a court is more subtle
in intrigue, there is more wisdom in a senate, and Republics advance
towards their ends by more consistent and better considered policies;
while every revolution in a royal ministry creates a revolution in
the State; for the principle common to all ministers and nearly all
kings is to do in every respect the reverse of what was done by their
predecessors.
This incoherence further clears up a sophism that is very familiar to
royalist political writers; not only is civil government likened to
domestic government, and the prince to the father of a family--this
error has already been refuted--but the prince is also freely credited
with all the virtues he ought to possess, and is supposed to be always
what he should be. This supposition once made, royal government is
clearly preferable to all others, because it is incontestably the
strongest, and, to be the best also, wants only a corporate will more
in conformity with the general will.
But if, according to Plato,[3] the "king by nature" is such a rarity,
how often will nature and fortune conspire to give him a crown? And, if
royal education necessarily corrupts those who receive it, what is to
be hoped from a series of men brought up to reign? It is, then, wanton
self-deception to confuse royal government with government by a good
king. To see such government as it is in itself, we must consider it as
it is under princes who are incompetent or wicked: for either they will
come to the throne wicked or incompetent, or the throne will make them
so.
These difficulties have not escaped our writers, who, all the same,
are not troubled by them. The remedy, they say, is to obey without a
murmur: God sends bad kings in His wrath, and they must be borne as
the scourges of Heaven. Such talk is doubtless edifying; but it would
be more in place in a pulpit than in a political book. What are we to
think of a doctor who promises miracles, and whose whole art is to
exhort the sufferer to patience? We know for ourselves that we must put
up with a bad government when it is there; the question is how to find
a good one.
[1] Macchiavelli was a proper man and a good citizen; but, being
attached to the court of the Medici, he could not help veiling his love
of liberty in the midst of his country's oppression. The choice of his
detestable hero, Cæsar Borgia, clearly enough shows his hidden aim;
and the contradiction between the teaching of the _Prince_ and that of
the _Discourses on Livy_ and the _History of Florence_ shows that this
profound political thinker has so far been studied only by superficial
or corrupt readers. The Court of Rome sternly prohibited his book. I
can well believe it; for it is that Court it most clearly portrays.
[2] Tacitus, _Histories_, i. 16. "For the best, and also the shortest
way of finding out what is good and what is bad is to consider what you
would have wished to happen or not to happen, had another than you been
Emperor."
[3] In the _Politicus_.