Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/129

Rh form such a solidarity, and never before were their natural supporters, the aristocracy and the clergy, so devoted to their authority as today. The cowardliness of men who accept the conventional lie of a monarchical form of government, against their convictions, reason and comprehension of the universe, is revenged upon them, or rather upon human progress. The sly pseudo Liberalists who think they are deceiving the king by awarding him external honors and privileges, when according to their opinion, the actual power does hot go with them, are in reality, the dupes of the king who skillfully adapts himself to their views, but manages to get control of the real authority, so that the sham is after all not the monarchy, but the legislative representation of the people.

The relation between the monarchy and the aristocracy is similar to that between Religion and the monarchy. As Religion can exist without a monarchy, but the monarchy not without Religion, an aristocracy without a monarchy is possible, but a monarchy without an aristocracy could not last at all. There are some kingdoms without an hereditary nobility — such as Greece, Roumania, and Servia — others, like Norway and Brazil, have abolished it. But these are artificial formations, without a future. Either these monarchical states will depose the royal family to the ranks of the nobility and change the form of the government to a republic, or else the next or at least the second generation, will produce an hereditary aristocracy which may not have any legal position or titles, but will have privileges all the more substantial on this account. An hereditary monarchy has a natural impulse to surround itself with hereditary attachments. We