The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-07-29

a sovereign who regarded his majesty
 as his most sacred possession, and
 while these were punished by death,
 simple hanging, beheading or other
 form of speedy execution was altogeth-
 CT too good for the man guilty of viola
 tion of majesty, and the ingenuity of
 executioners was taxed to provide
 lengthy and eXquisitely painful tor
 lures for the criminal who was ad-
 judged guilty of this offence.
 | Not much has been heard of lese ma-
 jesty by the men of this century, for oldtime ideas of royalty and the divin- | ity that doth hedge king were so upv set by the revolutions in America and In France that respect for kings has greatly diminished in volume and sus- l tained considerable deterioration in quality. So many kings have been chased out of their dominions by their enraged subjects that royalty is not putting on so much style as 1t former 1 ly did, while the spectacle of twenty 1 five or thirty ex-sovereigns wandering around Europe has accustomed people to take rather low view of the insti- tuition in general Injuring the majes- ty of an exiled Stuart or Bourbon is an easy matter. It has often been injured by vulgar trades people to whom they
 owed bills which they forgot to pay, and the sight of a deposed monarch haled before magistrate and ques- tioned as to his reasons for not paying
 his butcher or baker or tailor or land
 lord was calculated to bring majesty into contempt So it did, and royalties | ta At fo LA lr;a by their people wisely abstained from a good deal of the style assumed by their grandfathers, and, very often, when subjects of rank, wealth and influence really did injure the kings majesty by | word or deed, the king concluded that | it was better to say nothing about the | matter rather than run the risk of a
 great row, merely for the sake of pre- serving his majesty intact So it is that the majesty of these days is a good deal dented in places and cracked | here and there, and altogether quite a | different article from the brand that 1 was in common use at the beginning of the last century.
 | The predecessors of the Kaiser, in the days when the empire consisted of an l aggregation of scattered states loosely held together by an elective head, were
 exceedingly jealous of their majesty and with reason for it was often their | principal possession. They had no lit | tie trouble about it, for the princes who elected the emperor considered them l selves quite his equal in all but name, | and did not scruple to remind him of | the fact. When the emperor happened l to be a weak man, as was often the | case, he was forced to endure the tur | bulence of the princes and little sover- l eigns of the empire as best he could, | but strong monarch often avenged his insulted majesty in very perempto- " fashion. Otho the Great had mo- bleman beheaded for splitting in his
 presence. The chief had exhibited
 signs of insubordination, and at a pub 1 lie council on some affair of state l showed his contempt for the emperor | by turning his back and splitting on the ground. He was instantly dragged
 away by the guards at the command of Otho and his head was hacked off on a i log with battle axe. His successor, | Otho IT., took serious offence at all his chief nobility for what he regarded as I an insult to his majesty and planned 8 wholesale vengeance. The cause is | said by one authority to have been the i fact that, regarding themselves as his equals, 8 number of them assumed cor onets on their helmets He cunningly dissembled his anger and invited them all to feast. They came, and after the entertainment had reached a stage where they were comfortably ! fuddled with the emperor's good cheer l they were all butchered by his guards. 1 The German emperors derived their ideas of royal dignity from their prede- cessors, the Caesars, among whom the crime of violated majesty was made | the pretext for getting rid of any ob- l noxious person, no matter whom or of what degree. It was Tiberius who had a nobleman put to death because, at a feast, he was crowned by his friends with a garland of golden laurel leaves. Wearing crowns or garlands at feasts was a common practice, and the 1 friends of this man designed nothing more than a neat compliment, but the | gloomy autocrat took a different view l of the matter. Commodus prided him. self on his skill as a gladiator, and re- peatedly fought in the arena but on one occasion, though a physical giant. | he met more than his match in an op- ponent who did not value the honor of | being killed by an emperor. The un- worthy occupant of the throne would have lost his life had not the attend | ants ran to his assistance, upon which I the stubborn gladiator, who refused to be quietly killed, attacked them, an1, after killing five or six, was himself killed for not respecting the emperor's | majesty. Nero prided himself on his l musical abilities, and when he made | his famous tour through Greece he met | in contest of song, and triumphantly | overcame all antagonists but one, who resolutely stood up for the art he rep l resented, loudly declared that Nero could not sing, and that it was an out | rage for the judges to give the prize to a man with such a voice. As might have been expected, little ceremony was shown with such a traitor. The emperor declared him guilty of insult ing majesty, and, on the theater stage, the stubborn singer was pushed against the wall and despatched by the lictors in the presence of the audience. The emperor had no trouble in winning prizes after this little incident, and when he returned to Rome over two hundred crowns. won at vocal contests in the various cities of Greece, were