KING. The primary use of this word is to denote a person in whom is vested the higher executive functions in an independent state, together with a share, more or lam limited, of the sovereign power. The state may of a mat assemblage of persons, like the French or the Spanish nation, or the British people, in which liereml nations are banded ; or it may be small, like the Danes, or like one of the states while in England there were seven states independent of each other; yet if the chief executive functions are vested in some one person who has also a ahem in the sovereign power, the idea represented by the word Liao seems to be complete. It is even used for those chiefs of savage tribes who are n state only in a certain loose and colloquial sense of the term.
It signifies nothing whether the power of such a person be limited only by his own conscience and will, or whether his power be limited by certain linniemorial usages and written lawn, or in any other way ; torn such a person in a king.
sloes it signify who Hier he succeed to the :Arose, the seat on which he nu when in the exercise of his royal authority, by descent and inheritance on theoleath of his predecessor, just as the eldest son '4 a peer PACCOMIA to his father's rank mei title on the death of the parent, or is elected to fill the Aim by some council or body of persona selarteel out of the nation he is to tiovern, or by the suffrages of the whole nation. Thus there was a king of Poland who was an elected king; a ling of England who succeeded by hereditar . right.
Stall, in countries where the kingly office Is hereditai7, somo form has always been gone through on the accession of a new king, in which there was II recognition on the part of the people of hie right, a claim hum them that he should pledge himself to the performance of certain duties, and generally a religious' ceremony performol, hi which anoint ing him with ell and placing a crown upon his head were conspicuous acta By this last' act is "yiniedised his supremacy ; and by the anointing a certain sacredness is thrown around his person. There
kinds of ceremonies, we believe, are found in all countries in which the pore/Ars or the perwm sharing In the sovereign 'ismer, is known as king; anti these ceremonies seem to make a distinction between the succession of an hereditary king to his throne and the succession of an hereslitary jeer to his rank.
The (bonnet's's! between a king and an emperor is not very clearly defined. Emperor comes from 1/11perni0e, a title used by the sovereigns of the Ronan empire. When that empire became divided, each move reign, that of the West and that of the East, called himself an emperor. Them empensni claimed a kind of supremacy over other sovereigns. The emperor of Germany was regarded as a kind of successor to the emperor's of the West, and the emperor of Brunie (who was and is oftencalled the Oar), le, with lens pretension to the honour, sometimes vet en of as mecemor to the emperor of the East. But we 'speak of t rimer r of China, where emperor Is clearly nothing more than k -ng, aml we nu emperor rather than king only out of regard to the vast extent of him dominions. Napoleon I. called himself an emperor, a title revivol by his nephew Napoleon I l I.; and we sometimes speak of the British empire. (Euronomj The word king is of pure Teutonic origin, and is found slightly varied in its literal elements in most of the languages which are sprung from the Teutonic. The French, tho Italian, the Spanish, and the Portuguese, on the other hand, have chosen to continue the use of the Latin word ror, only slightly varying the orthography according to the analogies of each particular language. King, traced to its origin, seems to denote one to whom superior knowledge has given superior power, allied, as it seems to be, to know, con, cos; but on the etymology, or what is the same thing, the remote origin of the word, difterent opinions have been held, and the question may still be considered undetermined.