, 1874-10-17
THE SPECTATOR ON THE Flu.
TURE OF ROYALTY.

hardly have been described in such detail, or
bv telegraph, but for the dullness of the season,
but still it has an interest of a kind for all
speculative politicians. The lad is the future
heir of the greatest throne now existing in the
world, but it may be forty years before ne as
cends it, and it is difficult to avoid a moments
speculation whether, when his turn has arrived,
the throne will be there to receive him. In
other words, will the extraordinary arrange
ment under which the control, or leadership, or
presidency of most European States is entrust-
ed to q minute hereditary caste, comprising at
most only three families-the Catholic House.
the Protestant House, and the House OF 9th
man-endure through the active lives OF two
more generations ? It is the custom OF the
hour to think that it will not, as it is the Gus
tom Of the hour TO fancy that Christianity is
diving; but we are by no means confident that
the belief is founded upon anything better than
an d priori assumption that the age, ae, the
general temper of Western mankind, is hostile
10 hereditary claims. No one knows or can
know very much of the general temper OF Eu-
ropean peoples, for they have only to-day begun
to have a chance of displaying a political tenn
per at all. The masses have only just begun
TO will about politics, and nobody can pretend
10 state accurately what their will is to as
sert that it is not conservative, or to maintain
that the new depositaries of power will not
come to much the same conclusions as the old
depositaries did. We are always hearing of
socialism, and communism, and the like but
Jacoueries have occurred before without much
political result, and after all, outside England
a heavy majority Of the European peoples are
In some form or other possessed of landed pro-
pertv. They have not shown as yet anything
like a strong inclination to be rid of individual
rulers, or except in France, to eject the families
which historic events have placed in the posi-
ton of hereditary leaders. Even in France, il
the eldest Bourbon had been a person of modern
ideas-a man, for example, like the head of the
American branch of the Braganzas, the sort of
King Mr.. Huxley would make,-he would be
at this moment on q throne, with the acquieS-
cence of a large majority OF the effective males
of France and that he is not, is, after all, very
much an accident. His cousin of Aumale in
his place would have been Sovereign almost
to O. certainty. The peoples may show an
active dislike to Royalty one day, possibly
will show it, but they have hitherto been at
most undecided, and a very little change might
reawaken everywhere the loyalty which mill
tary success has reawakened in Prussia. 1t is
hardly twenty-six years yet since belief in the
HOhenzollern seemed extinct in Prussia, and
now universal suffrage returns a nearly UNI
broken majority Of l~oyalists. The disposition
to make new d~ynasties is no doubt extinct,
but then that indisposition tends to protect
rather than to assaiI the caste which actually
possesses sovereign power, the peoples when
they elect turning to the old race with an inn
pulse which is, we confess, to US almost un-
Ineligible. Only one new family now occu-
pies q throne, and that-the family of Berna-
dotte-has been, so to speak, adopted and
absorbed by the european family )" and
in ali Europe, with its roomful of Pretenders,
there Is not a new man who can be fairly said
to be, even secretly, a pretender to a throne;
not a General, not statesman, not a dema-
gogue. Bismarck for King is as impossible as
CASTELAR,, Gambetta more impossible than the
Comte de Chambord, RicasoIi as completely
out of the running for that prize as Marshal
Won Moltke. For all that appears, the caste
may endure, if it does not perish by decay,
and we do not remember a time when the
signs of decay were less visible to ordinary
eyes. By all the laws of the psychologists,
the Royal caste, which intermarries much,
which is bred unavoidably in luxury, and which
is at least as dissolute as any aristocratio
group, ought to be losing its physical vitality,
but it is not losing it at all. The Sovereigns,
actual or potential, of Europe would make a
formidable squadron of dragons. The Empe-
ror of Germany is perhaps the finest man
physically who has reigned since Oharlemagne.