Page:The Royal Family of France (Henry).djvu/37

 from the Danish Princess Ingelburga. M. Enfantin, the Pope of the Saint Simoniens, appropriated this maxim in 1830, and built up his whole system of government on it.

To-day, M. Vacherot handles the same thesis in the Republican daily Newspaper, the Dix-Neuvième Siecle. In his turn he studies the vices of the present situation, the dangers of which he acknowledges; and, so as not to attribute these vices to Republican institutions, which form his ideal, he imputes them to individuals in an article headed The Policy of the last-born (nouvelles couches), which personages he declares "unfit for government through lack of education and proper training."

Yes; both education and training are wanting to these new heirs whose advent M. Léon Gambetta predicted and prepared the way for, and who to-day hold every path to power, from the functions of village mayors to those of Senators and Deputies. But are not institutions and individuals both alike answerable for this? The Constitution of a country has inevitably and irresistibly a powerful influence over the composition of its personal and legislative government, and consequently over the direction of public business.

Under the old system, at the dawn of Royalty, when the feudal Nobility were honest but mostly ignorant, clerics, priests, and bishops especially, ruled, not by might or right,—neither of which they owned,—but by their influence; and that influence they owed to their mental superiority, to the culture of their minds, in a word, to their education. Their power was a legitimate one; and though it had drawbacks, it remained for ages a medium of civilization.

Under the Houses of Valois and Bourbon, the Nobility of the sword, who were the Nobility by birth, the true, and one might say, the only secular and traditional Nobility, wielded a sort of power over the government. But their influence was far from being exclusive. If the great Conde held high military command, it was not only because he was of royal blood, it was also and principally because he possessed in a high degree a genius for war.

The ancestors of Abraham de Fabert, Catinat, Vauban, of Richelieu, Mazarin, de Lyonne, Colbert, and Louvois, who stood so high in the councils of Royalty or in the ranks of the Army,