They hold it from
him, not from the Persian state.
The public domain of the Greek empire is in theory the private
domain of the Ottoman emperor or Turkish sultan. There is in
barbaric states no republic, no commonwealth; authority is
parental, without being tempered by parental affection. The
chief is a despot, and rules with the united authority of the
father and the harshness of the proprietor. He owns the land and
his subjects.
Feudalism, established in Western Europe after the downfall of
the Roman Empire, however modified by the Church and by
reminiscences of Graeco-Roman civilization retained by the
conquered, was a barbaric constitution. The feudal monarch, as
far as he governed at all, governed as proprietor or landholder,
not as the representative of the commonwealth. Under feudalism
there are estates, but no state. The king governs as an estate,
the nobles hold their power as an estate, and the commons are
represented as an estate. The whole theory of power is, that it
is an estate; a private right, not a public trust. It is not
without reason, then that the common sense of civilized nations
terms the ages when it prevailed in Western Europe barbarous ages.
It may seem a paradox to class democracy with the barbaric
constitutions, and yet as it is defended by many stanch
democrats, especially European democrats and revolutionists, and
by French and Germans settled in our own country, it is
essentially barbaric and anti-republican.
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