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Elizabeth, the great statesman, as Richelieu called her, earned no substantial advantages from her partiality to Leicester or Essex. Is it then not a bitter condition of monarchy that rulers should studiously avoid allowing personal inclinations, the sweets of private life, to grow to a degree, when it is too late to resist them, that they may not preponderate over the interests of public welfare? Undoubtedly it is so, but we must not forget, that although monarchy is necessary for many states, it is in itself an expedient, to avoid certain evils; a government, which, not viewed with regard to practical utility, but in the abstract, contains always this contradiction, that we adopt for the highest, most important place, a principle, which civilisation steadily eliminates in wider and wider circles, as injurious to society, respecting all other offices of any importance, that of inheriting them without reference to capacity. Even those who do not see in the monarch the highest officer, but something more and higher, must at least admit, that among other things he is an officer or magistrate likewise, unless they claim a confused essence in the monarch, according to which he is the mystic shrine of sovereignty, a view I hope to have combated in the first volume. But nowhere can we depart from strict principle, and resort to compromising expediency, however necessary or right, without proportionable sacrifice. The monarch, who does not obtain his place by his talent, must allow himself to be surrounded with fetters which for the private citizen would not be endurable.

Monarchical favoritism becomes still more serious in countries in which the expediency of hereditary government is carried still farther against abstract principle, and the crown is suffered to descend upon that sex which otherwise is justly excluded from all public employment. While favoritism has with female princes the additional incentive of difference of sex, which by no means must on that account be founded upon unlawful affection, it is, generally speaking, for them more difficult to overcome the feeling of partiality by reason alone; since the soul of the woman is by nature more active in the spheres of affection and feeling, than in that of the reasoning judgment. It is necessary therefore that ruling princesses and their advisers most especially guard against this dangerous political fault. These remarks do not obtain against real friendship in a monarch. On the contrary, if himself is capable of friendship, and if he finds a friend, which is very different from capricious favoritism in the one, or interested submission in the other, friendship is one of the greatest blessings to monarchs. I do not know that any thing in Henry IV. of France is a truer sign of the greatness of the soul, than that he could be so true a friend, as he was to Sully, or that any event in his reign can be called happier than that he found Sully and did conclude friendship with him. They were united in the great desire to live for France, in a generous, candid, manly friendship. But the narrower the mind of the monarch, or any man of power, the more danger exists that favoritism will steal in under the garb of friendship.

Favoritism is, however, not only dangerous in monarchies, or in these in the monarch only; it is equally dangerous in republics, and in every citizen according to his sphere. If it becomes general, it tramples justice, the foundation of the state, under feet; it stifles virtue and exertion of talent, because they do not avail; it leads to party rancor, because it bestows places of profit or honor upon "friends" alone, not for past merit and future benefit to the commonwealth, but for past and future party services, or it substitutes altogether caprice for reason, and leads infallibly to that deplorable state of things, in which public places are considered as berths of enrichment, pilfering or family aggrandizement, to general public dishonesty; it leads to the appointment of incompetent men and to general public disgrace and apathy, to servile adherence and ruinous flattery. There are letters of Washington's (1) which might show how utterly unjust and subversive of the best interests of the state he considered favoritism. Pym is another striking example of perfect freedom from this vice. "He knew neither brother, kinsman, nor friend, superior nor inferior, when they stood in the way to hinder his pursuit of the public good." (2) It was a saying of his: "Such-a-one is my entire friend, to whom I am much obliged, but I must not pay my private debts out of the public stock." (3) "Το such a degree and with such sincerity did he act upon this principle, that when his friends frequently put him in mind of his children, and pressed upon his consideration, that although he regarded not himself, yet he ought to provide that it might be well with them, his usual answer was, if it were well with the public, his family was well enough." (4)

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(1) Sparks's Collection.

(2) (3) These two extracts are from Stephen Marshall's Sermon preached before Parliament, at the Funeral of Mr. Pym, 4to, 1644, as quoted in the Westminster Review for July, 1833, in an article on the Life of Pym, from which likewise the next following quotation in the above is taken.

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XLV. The family is not only important for the stricter political reasons which have been dwelt upon in previous passages, but likewise as affording those relations out of which mutual affections grow, feelings strongly connected with public spirit and patriotism. The love of our family, of kinsfolks, is not only innocent, but necessary and a powerful agent in society, incentive to exertion and source of public spirit. Yet, as all other original agents, it must be judiciously watched, lest it grow stronger than it ought to be, powerful as all these elementary agents are. Not to have greater forbearance towards members of our own family than to others, so long as strict duty allows of this forbearance, would certainly be wanting in duty; but to allow family considerations to outweigh higher and the highest considerations, is either pusillanimous or dastardly. If William III. saw, as I for one believe that he did, that England with her best laws would be ruined and would be forced into retrograde steps or into a political system similar to that of France and Spain, appalling indeed to every honest man; if he felt convinced that James had become a rebel against the country and constitution, and saw that he himself could rescue this country, when called upon by circumstances and many of the endangered nation, he would have acted more than pusillanimously if he had allowed family relations to weigh against this sacred calling of the welfare of Britain and of Europe.

Yet as the undue attachment to friends or favorites assumes the dangerous form of favoritism, so does the excessive attachment to the members of one family become nepotism. The name of this political vice comes from the government of the papal hierarchy, and has been chiefly restricted to it; but the evil principle is visible elsewhere too, and there is no reason why we should not use the term in a general sense. Nepotism, or the showering of riches, power and honors upon the nephews (nepotes) of the pope (hence the name), became actually a state institution, not unlike to the keeping of royal mistresses in France; until finally, endowed and powerful relations of the pope were considered necessary for the honor of the pope and despatch of business, even by some of the highest clergy in Rome, who do not always seem to have had flattery in view. (1) Indeed the government was so badly contrived, the cardinals so divided and subservient to foreign courts, and the state of Italy so utterly demoralized that the pope was not expected to trust all his secrets to any stranger out of his family; yet the business required some minister or other, who had the confidence of the pope. Who then could be this person except a relation of his?

There is indeed no danger at present that nepotism, as it existed toward the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, can reappear there or in any other state; yet it is one of our duties to weigh attentively any institution or fact, in which we find a general principle, good or bad, developed distinctly and in all its consistency, in all its beauty or hideousness. We shall then better understand the less distinct manifestations of the same principle at other periods or in other spheres. The crime and plunder which was connected with nepotism is appalling; state property was alienated and changed into hereditary principalities for the nepots, until at last these treasonable procedures were prohibited by the pope and cardi

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