THE EMBITTERING- OF THE KINGS. T HERE is one point in
connection with the murder of the Empress Elisabeth which has hitherto escaped attention, and which seems to us to have real and per- manent political importance. This is the degree to which crimes of the kind spoil the relation between the Kings and the peoples. Outside Russia, very few white men believe any more in Divine Right, but a great many, pro- bably a large majority, believe in the usefulness of thrones, and on the Continent, at all events, define that usefulness pretty clearly. They want their Kings to restrain the parties, to keep the Executive efficient, to prevent the besetting evil of modern States,—their tendency towards class government. The King, being above all, is expected to be impartial towards all, to be, in fact, the Grand Referee when anything goes wrong. He is not asked so much to govern—Ministers can do that better — as to prevent failures in government, and especially failures which affect the body of the people. He is to be Sovereign of all men, and not only of the well-to-do. The Kings as a rule are quite aware of their position in opinion, and fulfil their special function fairly well ; but the Anarchist attempts at assassination interfere terribly with their performance of this duty. They cease to be able to move about freely, or even to travel freely, to see people without precautions, to be able to talk to men whom their acts are intended to affect. There is now not a King in Europe, outside Denmark, who can walk unguarded about his . own capital, or ride without guards, or travel with- out driving railway functionaries and Head-Policemen half mad with an anxiety which in Russia has even produced suicides. It is not a question of courage, for, except in England, all Kings are soldiers, and, to do them justice, they are rarely wanting in pluck ; but their Ministers will not let them "expose themselves," their police gain in importance by dwelling on dangers, and they themselves are naturally apt to think that their lives are of vast significance to great communities. They live, therefore, in a. sense, shut up, the degree of physical seclusion varying in every country, but the remoteness from usual life being real and regrettable in every one. Nor is this all. They learn to distrust the commonalty from among whom their assailants come, and especially that section of it, "the disinherited," for whom good Kings have always felt a special care. The evil, of course, is exasperated to the last degree when their wives or sisters or children are struck. This danger has not hitherto been greatly feared, no female ruler all through history having ever been assassinated, and no Princess having been killed—except, indeed, by judicial decree— merely because her rank had begotten an envious dislike, but it will be feared in future. Men, even specially brave men, suffer under permanent risk of assassination, which destroys their tranquillity when they are off duty ; but danger to their women or their children, who are in no way guilty even of possessing "authority," makes them savagely bitter. They learn to hate the Anarchists and all those wild social reformers whose theories seem to produce the tendency to Anarchism ; and with hatred of that kind, justified at intervals by horrible facts, impartiality is no longer possible, and schemes of savage repression put on an aspect of righteousness fatal alike to prudence and to that cold adherence to equal justice which is the strongest security for good government. The feeling generated, in fact, resembles the old religious hatreds under which a heretic deserved death, not for doing, but for being only. We remember to have been told, truly or falsely, tha when Nihilism threatened Alexander III. both he and his Empress kept their minds cool till they were informed of a plot for kidnapping their children, and to prevent that accepted both the despotism of the secret police and their gloomy imprisonment in Gatschina. Kings do not naturally dread Socialists ; the terror which so disheartens their natural feeling for the poor comes from the persuasion that in Socialism and the like is the reservoir out of which the Anarchy which justifies murder naturally flows. It is useless or foolish to say they ought to be more steadfast in their endurance. To all but a very few the risk of murder to those they love is absolutely intolerable. Kings aro only human beings, and we all see how savage such events make the most ordinary of mankind, how little even of trial ordinary men would give to assassins like Luccheni. Half the journalists of Europe were angry because he had not been lynched on the spot, and why should the Kings who actually suffer what the journalists only re- port be expected to be so much more calm ? They are, as we believe, twice as bitter as they were before September 10th, and in bitterness is no help towards the impartial government of men.
The mischief is, as we believe, serious, for kingship is neither dead nor dying, but rather on the ascending grade, and for all we can see it may prove a permanent one. There is just the chance that the practice of mur- dering the highly placed may die away of itself, as it seems to have done in the Middle Ages, but there is very little in any of the remedies suggested to make one san- guine. The supply of men who hate the great, and are half mad with discontent and the wish to be noticed, is not likely to die away, should indeed rather increase with the spread of education and the decay of religious faith. Women, it must be remembered1 have not as yet been political assassins—unless we consider Charlotte Corday one—and there is nothing whatever in women, except want of physical strength, to prevent their swelling the army of those who kill their social enemies. The women who shrieked at Marie Antoinette would have killed her with knives or sharpened files if they had had the chance. The new passion of recent times, the savage resentmeut at poverty, is becoming more general, and with it in many minds a more bitter malignity against the prosperous and the highly placed. There will be plenty, we fear, of potential assassins, and of deterrent motives we can see none that do not already exist. What are they to be ? A new growth of intelligence ? Improve- ment in that respect has hitherto developed assassination. A new liking for the great ? What is to produce that, espe- cially since the great, or indeed all in whom the world takes interest, live under the microscope ? A new fear of the con- sequences of crime ? How is that to be developed ? We cannot torture assassins, who in the old days were not checked by fear of the inevitable breaking on the wheel, and who, if threatened with the rack, would kill them- selves the moment they had struck their blow. The only effect of such a departure from Christian principle would be to diminish the just horror of their crimes, or even to transfer to them some of the pity which ought to be reserved for their victims. The notion of declaring all Anarchists insane, and sending them to an infinity of Broadmoors is chimerical, for the really dangerous Anarchist can conceal his opinions until the opportunity arrives for acting on them. More police supervision there can scarcely be, and the practice of hunting them from country to country does but deepen, as in Luccheni's case, their malignant resentment against society, and the great who, as they think, set society in motion. There is nothing for it except for those threatened to increase their pre. cautions, and precaution, to be successful, means, as we pointed out some fifteen years ago, living like the great Barons of old in defended houses and under the incessant surveillance of watchful guards. Nothing could be more injurious to the mental equilibrium of the Kings, and nothing, we may add, tend more strongly to increase the latent dislike and dread of them. It is not from mere spite, but from an instinct of human nature, that the secluded ruler is esteemed a tyrant, and that Tiberius at Capri is credited with offences of which, had he lived in Rome, even a Roman patrician would never have accused him. The Anarchists do succeed in one thing, they separate Kings and peoples, though how that separation is to advance their cause we entirely fail to perceive.
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