MONARCHY (Gr. monarchia, from monos, alone, and amid), to govern; literally, the government of a single individual) is that form of government in a community by which One person exercises the sovereign authority. It is only when the king, or chief magis trate of the community, possesses the entire ruling power that he is, in the proper accep tation of the term, a monarch. Most of the oriental governments past and present, Russia at present, and Spain and :France as they were in the last century, are in this strict sense monarchies. The degenerate form of monarchy is tyranny, or government for the exclu sive benefit of the ruler. When the head of the state, still possessing the status and dignity of royalty, shares the supreme power with a class of nobles, with a popular body, or with both, as in our own country, the government. though .o longer in strictness monarchical, is called in popular language a mixed or limited monarchy, the term abso lute monarchy being applied to a government properly monarchical. The highest ideal of government would perhaps be attained by an absolute monarchy, if there were any security for always possessing a thoroughly wise and good monarch; but this condition is obviously unattainable, and a bad despot has it in his power to inflict infinite evil, It therefore becomes desirable that a governing class, composed, if possible, of the wisest and most enlightened in the country, should share the supreme power with the sovereign.
A limited monarchy has this advantage over an aristocratic republic that, in difficult 'crises of the nation's existence, royalty becomes a neutral and guiding power, raised above the accidents and struggles of political life.
/tionarchy, most dually hereditary, has sometimes been elective, a condition generally attended with feuds and distractions, as was the case in Poland. The elective system is 'still followed in the choice of the pope. Constitutional monarchy may be in its origin elective, or combine both systems, as when one family is disinherited, and the scepter declared hereditary in the hands of another under certain conditions. See KING, REPUBLIC.