This is the veritable origin of modern royalty, its vital principle, so to speak; that which has been developed in the course of its career, and which, I do not hesitate to affirm, has been the cause of its prosperity. In the different eras of history we perceive the various characters of royalty, the distinct orders that I have described, endeavouring by turns to reassume preponderance. Thus the clergy have always preached up the religious royalty; jurisconsults have laboured to resuscitate the imperial royalty; and the nobles have sometimes been inclined to renew the elective royalty, or to assert its feudal character. And not only have the clergy, the publicists, and the nobility, striven to make predominant in royalty such or such a character, but it has itself rendered them all subservient to the aggrandisement of its power. Kings have asserted themselves sometimes the delegates of the Almighty, sometimes the successors of the emperors, or the first nobles of the land, according to the exigency or the whim of the moment; they have illegitimately availed themselves of these different titles, but not one of them has been the true title of modern royalty, or the source of its preponderating influence. It is, I once again assert, as the depositary and protector of the public order, of general justice, and of the common interests--under the features of a great magistracy, the centre and nucleus of society--that it has exhibited itself to the eyes of nations, and has monopolised their force by obtaining their adhesion. As we proceed onwards, we shall see this character of modern European royalty, which commenced with the reign of Louis the Fat in the twelfth century, gain strength, develop itself, and finally become, so to speak, its political physiognomy. It is through it that royalty has contributed to the great result which characterises European societies, the reduction of all the social elements to two--the government and the nation. {166} Thus, then, Europe, after the termination of the crusades, entered upon the track which was to lead it to its actual state, and we have now seen that royalty took its appropriate part in that great transition. We shall next survey the different attempts at political organisation that were made, from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, with the object of maintaining, by rendering it more regular, the order of things then in vogue, but ready to crumble. We shall inquire into the efforts of feudalism, the church, and even the boroughs, to constitute society after its ancient principles, and under its primitive forms, and thus defend themselves against the general metamorphosis which was in preparation. {167} Lecture X. Union Of Elements Of Modern Society. I think it proper preliminarily to determine the precise object of this lecture.