Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/109

Rh etc., are reigning by the grace of God, then it is proved that the grace of God is as prompt now, as during the Middle Ages, to confirm might by right, and the royalists must consent to recognize as a legitimate sovereign any socialistic democrat who might by some revolution rise to the summit of power in the German Empire for instance; and pay the same respect to his person and his authority, as they now pay to the German Kaiser. Or, if the reverse is the case, if the grace of God is exhausted like an over-cropped field, then those monarchs of recently created dynasties, are nothing more than swindlers who, by false pretences, deceive the public to their own advantage, a proceeding fully described and provided for in the criminal courts. Then they are impertinent in requiring allegiance from their subjects, and the ancient dynasties become accomplices in the fraud, when they recognize and accept the validity of their claim and admit them to their inner circle.

I hear a protest from the royalists against my arguments. But this protest does not take the shape which a logical mind would expect: viz. that these new dynasties ere invited by the people to assume the reins of government, who thus established their rights and prerogatives voluntarily. The royalists will not acknowledge that the will of the people can make a king, for in that case, the reverse would also be possible, that it could unmake a king and proclaim a republic and that no royalist will admit. No, the protest I hear is different; it says: the men who have founded new dynasties in recent years are off-shoots of ancient royal families who have reigned for centuries; they were born with a certain latent, hereditary, legitimate royal authority, which only waited for favorable opportunity to blossom into a visible crown and its appendages. This can not be asserted with truth