Changed Conditions.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 33, 14 August 1902, Page 2

Changed Conditions.

The notable ceremonies that took place a few days ago in Westminster Abbey led us to make a passing reference in a recent issue to the enormous change which has been wrought in the relations of royalty to the people by the general abandonment of the principle of personal rule. It is a long stride, not in time, but in progress, back to the days when Louis XIV., as a boy, wrote, line after line, in a large, straggling hand the following lesson set him by his tutor : ' Homage is due to kings; they do what they like'; and when, in later years, he appeared before his Parliament and said: /am the State ' ; and when he detailed the following direction for the guidance of his grandson, the Duke of Burgundy : ' The nation is not corporate in France : it lives entirely in the person of the king.' On another occasion, a number of Louis's courtieis were detailing in his presence some examples of the absolute power which the Sultans of Turkey exercised over their subjects. ' That,' exclaimed the autocratic monarch, 'is as it should be ; that is really reigning,'

It was such absolute rule that Elizabeth Stuart (daughter of James I. of England) had in her mind's eye when she successfully urged her wavering husband, the Elector Palatine Frederick V. to accept the Crown of Bohemia. She loved the royal style and title; but she loved still more dearly the power which was associated with it in those days. ' You would not,'said she to Frederick, ' have married a king's daughter if you had not the courage to become yourself a king.' 'To reign is glorious,' said she to him again, 'were it only for a moment.' But Frederick guaged the situation more accurately, and was not so greatly attracted by the glint of barren titles. 'If I accept,' said he ' I shall be accused of ambition ; if I decline, of cowardice. Decide as I may, peace is over for me and my country.' At his wife's urgent pleadings he accepted the empty honor of a shaky throne. It was a fatal step, that involved him in a death-grapple with the Emptror of Germany, and cost him not alone the crown that he had reached out his hand to seize, but his safe hereditary electorate as well. An idea similar to that of the ambitious Elizabeth Stuart seems to have worked its way into the brain-cells of the First Napoleon. When he was playing the p .rt of another Warwick the Kingmaker and disposing of crowns to his relatives and friends, he urged that of Holland upon his brother Louis. Louis pleaded ill-health as an excuse for declining the honor. Napoleon answered : ' Better die a king than live a prince.'