Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 09.djvu/110

* GOVERNMENT. 88 GOVERNMENT. versality of its occurrence testifies to its necessity;, and probably to its permanence as an institu- tion of liuman society. Of all human institu- tions, it has proved to be the most cndurinf;, and, with the exception of the family, probably the most important and influential in shapini; the destiny of mankind. Men have found it possible — as in China to-daj' — to live without an organ- ization of religion, and, as in Sparta and among many barbarous tribes, without the institution of the family as we understand it; but wherever men and women live in society, some form of gov- ernment arises to regulate their relations to one anotlier and to other commimities. But, although government is the oldest, tho mo.st persistent, and the most widespread of hu- man institutions, there is no normal or absolute type of political organization. We may trace its origin to the institution of the patriarchal fam- ily, but the patriarchal type of government is limited to society in its primitive stages, and in small aggregations. Jlen have sought for an ideal or absolute type in their conception of the divine government, and for centuries the glamor of the later Roman Empire cast its spell over Europe, and successive generations of statesmen and political philosophers endeavored to recast the governments of Europe into a Holy Roman Empire : the seventeenth century brought to its culmination the mediaeval theoiy of the divine right of kings, and the eighteenth resolved all political authority into a social compact {contrat social) among the members of the State. But no one iypo of government has emerged, either in fact or in theory, out of all this speculation. Governments are as diverse a,s ever, and we have come to recognize this diversity as a proof of their excellence and not as a defect. It is a part of the accepted philosophy of our time that a government should in its spirit and its form ex- press the political consciousness and aims of the community, and that that government is best which most accurately reflects the character, the interests, and the purposes of the State. See Society ; Sociology ; St.te. FoRJis OF Government. In respect of its na- ture a go-ernment may be either autocratic, as wherever the essential power of the Stat^ is, under whatever form, directed by an individ- vial or by a select class of persons constitut- ing a minority of the St.ate; or it may be popu- lar, as where the substantial power is vested in the entire body of persons constituting the State. The old classification of governments into mon- archies or tyrannies, aristocracies or oligarchies, and democracies, which we owe to Aristotle, is defective in that it confuses the external form with the essential character of the government. It presupposes a simplicity of organization, and a correspondence betAveen the form of the gov- ernment and the actual seat of power, which are not always realized outside of the ideal common- wealth. There is, it is true, a form of political organization whi^h is peculiarly appropriate to every kind of government. Under such an ideal arrangement, a tyrant would always be a king or emperor: an oligarchy would dispense with the trappings of royalty, and with the fiction of republican forms; and popular government would always appear in the proper guise of a re- public. But in practice the matter is by no means so simple. Old forms of government re- main long after the balance of power and the actual seat of authority have been shifted and transferred, or a popular form may be deliber- ately adopted to veil an luipopular exercise of aii- tl'.ority. The republican form of government survived in Rome for centuries after the assump- tion of power by the emperors had become com- plete. The government of iMexieo, like that of most of the Spanish-American republics, is a scarcely disguised autocracy. The same was true of the consulate of the first Napoleon, while the government which bears the name of King l<^d- ward VII. of England is perhaps the best existing exaniple of a government of the popular or democratic type. The monarchical form of government is still the pi'cvalent form, covering as it does substantially the whole of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and half of Nortli America. These royal governments may be divided into two gi-oups, those in which the royal power has been wholly or partially trans- ferred to tlie body of the people, known as lim- ited monarchies; and those in which the auto- cratic principle remains substantially unim- paired. The more usual type of autocracy is an oligarchy, more or less thinly disguised under the forms of monarchy. In such States it i.s not an individual, but a caste, a ruling class, which actually directs the energies of the State. This caste may be hereditary, as in Japan, in which case we call it an aristocracy : or it may be tribal, or racial, like the JIanehu oligarchy which sways the destinies of the vast Chinese Empire, and the castas which formerly dominated the native .States of India; or it may be merely bureau- cratic, a compact guild of ofTiceholders, such as that which, under the infltience of Russian tra- ditions, directs the policy of the Czar. Tliis con- tinued prevalence of the monarchical form of government is one of the surprises of recent po- litical history. To the obsen'crs of half a cen- tury ago it seemed a.s though the democratic movement which swept over Europe at that time was destined to destroy all the ancient thrones, and set up self-governing republics in their stead. But such observers forgot that royalty might con- tinue, though shorn of much of its power, and that the people might rule through the forms of monarchy. Accordingly evei-y government in Europe, with the exception of Russia and Tur- key, lias become largely popular in substance, if not in form, and. of these two, Turkey is the only remaining example of a pure monarchy of the' feudal type. See Aristoce.cy : Constitu- tion ; DeMOCR.'VCY ; JMON.^RCHY ; Ol-IGARCHY. Complex Varieties of Government. Thus far the goveniment of States has been dealt with as though each were a unit, animated by a single po- litical principle. But the matter of civil gov- ernment is far too complex to be covered by a .single foi-mula. Each State is the theatre of diflTerent, and often conflicting, political experi- ments. There is always a central government, sometimes strong, and sometimes so weak that it can scarcely hold together; and in either case there is usually a considerable organization of local governments — of towns, parishes, boroughs, comuumes. and the like — largely independent of the central government, and often organized on diametrically diflferent principles. We are not surprised to find a considerable development of local self-government in the towns and parishes of England and the Ihiited States; but that a democratic system of local self-government should