FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. In respect of its na ture a government may be either autocratic, as wherever the essential power of the State is, under whatever form, directed by an individ ual or by a select class of persons constitut ing a minority of the State; or it may be popu lar, as where the substantial power is vested in the entire body of persons constituting the State. The old classification of governments into mon archies or tyrannies, aristocracies or oligarchies, and democracies, which we owe to Aristotle, is defective in that it confuses the external form with the essential character of the government. It presupposes a simplicity of organization, and a correspondence between the form of the gov ernment and the actual seat of power, which are not always realized outside of the ideal common wealth. There is, it is true, a form of political organization which is peculiarly appropriate to every kind of government. Under such an ideal arrangement, a tyrant would always be a king or emperor; an oligarchy would dispense with the trappings of royalty, and with the fiction of republican forms; and popular government would always appear in the proper guise of a re public. But in practice the matter is by no means so simple. Old forms of government re main long after the balance of power. and the actual seat of authority have been shifted and transferred, or a popular form may be deliber ately adopted to veil an unpopular exercise of au thority. The republican form of government survived in Rome, for centuries after the assump tion of power by the emperors had become com plete. The government of Mexico, like that of most of the Spanish-American republics, is a scarcely disguised autocracy. The same was true of the consulate of the first Napoleon, while the government which bears the name of King Ed ward VII. of England is perhaps the best existing example of a government of the popular or democratic type.
The monarchical form of government is still the prevalent form, covering as it does substantially the whole of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and half of North America. These royal governments may
be divided into two groups, those in which the royal power has been wholly or partially trans ferred to the body of the people, known as lim ited monarchies; and those in which the auto cratic principle remains substantially unim paired. The more usual type of autocracy is an oligarchy, more or less thinly disguised under the forms of monarchy. In such States it is not an individual, but a caste, a ruling class, which actually directs the energies of the State. This caste may be hereditary, as in Japan, in which case we call it an aristocracy; or it may be tribal, or racial, like the Manchu oligarchy which sways the destinies of the vast Chinese Empire, and the castes which formerly dominated the native States of India; or it may be merely bureau cratic, a compact guild of officeholders, such as that which, under the influence of Russian tra ditions, directs the policy of the Czar. This con tinued prevalence of the monarchical form of government is one of the surprises of recent po litical history. To the observers of half a cen tury ago it seemed as though the democratic movement which swept over Europe at that time was destined to destroy all the ancient thrones, and set up self-governing republics in their stead. But such observers forgot that royalty might con tinue, though shorn of much of its power, and that the people might rule through the forms of monarchy. Accordingly every government in Europe, with the exception of Russia and Tur key, has become largely popular in substance, if not in form, and, of these two, Turkey is the only remaining example of a pure monarchy of the feudal type. See ARISTOCRACY; CONSTITU TION; DEMOCRACY; MONARCHY; OLIGARCIIY.