There are other words employed to de signate the sovereign, or the person who is invested with the chief power, of par ticular states, in using which we adopt the word which the people of those states use, instead of the word king. Thus there is the Shah of Persia, the grand Sultan, and formerly there was the Deg of Algiers. In the United States of America certain powers are given by the Federal Consti tution to one person, who is elected to en joy them for four years with the title of President. A Regent is a person ap pointed by competent authority to exer cise the kingly office during the minority or the mental incapacity of the real king : this definition at least is true of a regent of the British empire.
A personage in whom such extraordi nary powers have been vested must of necessity have had very much to do with the progress and welfare of particular nations, and with the progress of human society at large. When held by a per son of a tyrannical turn, they might be made use of to repress all that was great and generous in the masses who were go verned, and to introduce among them all the miseries of slavery. Possessed by a person of an ambitious spirit, they might introduce unnecessary quarrelling among nations to open the way for conquest, so that whole nations might suffer for the gratification of the personal ambition of one. The lover of peace and truth, and human improvement and security, may have found in the possession of kingly power the means of benefiting a people to an extent that might satisfy the most benevolent heart. But the long expe rience of mankind has proved that for! the king himself and for his people it is best that there should be strong checks in the frame of society on the will of kings, in the forms of courts of justice, councils, parliaments, and other bodies or single persons whose concurrence must be obtained before anything is under taken in which the interests of the corn taunity are extensively involved. In constitutional kingdoms, as in England, there are controlling powers, and even in countries in which the executive and legislative power are nominally in some one person absolutely, the acts of that person are virtually controlled by the opinion of the people, a power constantly increasing as the facilities of communi cation and the knowledge of a people ad vance.
Nothing can be more various than the constitutional checks in different states on the kingly power, or, as it is more usually called iu England, the royal prerogative. Such a subject must be passed over in an article of confined limits such as this must be, else in speaking of the kingly dignity it might have been proper to ex hibit how diversely power is distributed in different states, each having at its head a king. But the subject must not be dis
missed without a few observations on the kingly office (now by hereditary descent discharged by a queen) as it exists in the British empire.
The English kingly power is traced to the establishment of Egbert, at the close of the eighth century, as king of the English. His family is illustrated by the talents and virtues of Alfred, and the peacefulness and piety of Edward. On his death there ensued a struggle for the succession between the representative of the Danish kings, who for a while had usurped upon the posterity of Egbert, and William, then duke of Normandy. It ended with the success of William at the battle of Hastings, A.D. 106G.
This is generally regarded as a new beginning of the race of English kings, for William was but remotely allied to the Saxon kings. In his descendants the kingly office has ever since continued ; but though the English throne is heredi tary, it is not hereditary in a sense per fectly absolute, nor does it seem to have been ever so considered. When Henry I. was dead, leaving only a daughter, named Maud, she did not succeed to the throne ; and when Stephen died, his son did not succeed, but the crown passed to the son of Maud. Again, on the death of Ri chard I. a younger brother succeeded, to the exclusion of the son and daughter of an elder brother deceased. Then ensued a long series of regular and undisputed successions ; but when Richard II. was deposed, the crown passed to his cousin Henry of Lancaster, son of John of Gaunt, son of Edward III., though there were descendants living of Lionel, duke of Clarence, who was older than John among the children of Edward III. When the rule of Henry VI. became weak, the issue of Lionel advanced their claim. The struggle was long and bloody. It ended in a kind of compromise, the chief of the Lancastrian party taking to wife the heiress of the Yorkists From that marriage have sprung all the later kings, and the principle of hereditary succession remained undisturbed till the reign of King William HI , who was called to the throne on the abdication of James II., when an act was passed excluding the male issue of James, the issue of his sister the duchess of Orleans, and the issue of his aunt the queen of Bohemia, with the exception of her youngest daughter the Princess Sophia and her issue, who were Protestants. On the death of Queen Anne this law of succession took effect in favour of King George I., son of the Princess Sophia.