Page:The Science of History and the Hope of Mankind.djvu/17



. While sometimes patriots have confined their ambition solely to the mere establishment of a constitutional form of government by limiting the rights of the sovereign and extending the privileges of the subjects, they have been startled by more momentous results than were within their ken, viz., the declaration of an absolute autonomy and national independence. In one state the sovereign commits a political or a strategic blunder, but in another kingdom a political revolution is effected and a limited monarchy takes the place of the old regime of royal absolutism. Two states are measuring their strength against each other, but a third and an altogether independent state comes into the whirlpool of their politics and undergoes the fate of