Page:The Science of History and the Hope of Mankind.djvu/63



boundaries of Great Britain and the United States of America preserve them from foreign aggressions, and this explains why the principle of protection of the people from the Government operates in these countries more powerfully than that of protection by the Government. And the centralised despotism of Louis XIV., which has been formulated into the memorable dictum, "I am the state," is due to quite contrary physical and social conditions of France in the seventeenth century, viz., the danger of the safety of the state owing to weak barriers. The strong military rule and Cæsarism of the founders of the Prussian monarchy was an absolute necessity when the small nucleus of political life was surrounded by enemies on all sides.