MONARCHY. That government which is ruled, really or theoretically, by one man, who is wholly set apart from all other mem bers of the state.
According to the etymology of the word, monarchy is that government in which one person rules supreme—alone. In modern times the terms autocracy, autocrat, have come into use to indicate that monarchy of which the ruler desires to be exclusively con sidered the source of all power and author ity. The Russian emperor styles himself Autocrat .of all the Russias. Autocrat is the same with despot; but the latter term has fallen somewhat into .disrepute. Monarchy is contradistinguished from republic. Al though the etymology of the term monarchy is simple and clear, it is by no means easy to give a definition either of monarchy or of republic. The constitution of the United States guarantees a republican government to every state. What is a republic? In this case the meaning of the term must be gath ered from the republics which existed at the time of the formation of our government, and which were habitually called republics. Lieber, in a paper on the question, "Shall Utah be admitted into the Union?" (in Put nam's Magazine), declared that the Mor mons did not form a republic.
The fact that one man stands at the head of a government does not make it a mon archy. We have a president at the head. Nor is it necessary that the one person have an unlimited amount of power, to make a government a monarchy. The power of the king of England is limited by law and theory, and reduced to a small amount in reality ; yet England is called a monarchy. Nor does hereditariness furnish us with a distinction. The pope is elected by the cardinals, yet the States of the Church were a monarchy ; and the stadtholder of several states of the Netherlands was hereditary, yet the states were republics. We cannot find any better definition of monarchy than this: a monarchy is that government which is ruled (really or theoretically) by one man, who is wholly set apart from all other members of the state (called his subjects); while we call republic that government in which not only there ex ists an organism by which the opinion of the people, or of a portion of the people (as in aristocracies), passes over into public will, that is, law, but in which also the supreme power, or the executive power, returns, ei ther periodically or at stated times (where the chief magistracy is for life), to the peo ple, or a portion of the people, to be given anew to another person ; or else, that gov ernment in which the hereditary portion (if there be any) is not the chief and leading portion of the government, as was the case in the Netherlands.
Monarchy is the prevailing type of gov ernment. Whether it will remain so with our Caucasian race is a question not to be discussed in a law dictionary. The two types of monarchy as it exists in Europe are the limited or constitutional monarchy, de veloped in England, and centralized mon archy—to which was added the modern French type, which consisted in the adop tion of Rousseau's idea of sovereignty, and applying it to a transfer of all the sovereign power of the people to one Cesar, who thus became an unqualified and unmitigated auto crat or despot. It was a relapse into coarse absolutism.
Paley has endeavored to point out the ad vantages and disadvantages of the different classes of government—not successfully, we think. The great advantages of the mon archial element in a free government are: first, that there remains a stable and firm point in the unavoidable party struggle ; and secondly, that supreme power, and it may be said the whole government, being repre sented by or symbolized in one living person, authority, respect, and, with regard to pub lic money, even public morality, stand a bet ter chance to be preserved.
The great disadvantages of a monarchy are that the personal interests or inclina tions of the monarch or his house (of the dynasty) are substituted for the public in terest ; that to the chance of birth is left what with rational beings certainly ought to be the result of reason and wisdom ; and that loyalty to the ruler comes easily to be substituted for real patriotism, and frequent ly passes over into undignified and perni cious man-worship. Monarchy is assuredly the best government for many nations at the present period, and the only government under which in this period they can obtain security and liberty ; yet, unless we believe in a pre-existing divine right of the mon arch, monarchy can never be anything but a substitute—acceptable, wise, even desirable, as the case may be—for something more dig nified, which, unfortunately, the papions or derelictions of men prevent. The advan tages and disadvantages of republics may be said to be the reverse of what has been stat ed regarding monarchy. A frequent mistake in modern times is this: that a state simply for the time without a king—a kingless gov ernment—ls called a republic. But a mon archy does not change into a republic sim ply by expelling the king or the dynasty ; as was seen in France in 1848. Few govern ments are less acceptable than an elective monarchy ; for it has the disadvantages of the monarchy without its advantages, and the disadvantages of a republic without its advantages. See GOVERNMENT; ABSOLUTISM; REPUBLICAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT.