I have enlarged on the development and decay of the Roman republic, not only because in point of political achievement Rome is by far the most notable of the great States of the world, but because in the struggle between aristocracy and democracy which was the salient feature of its history from the expulsion of the kings to the battle of Actium, it presents a very close and instructive parallel to what has been going on amongst ourselves from the revolution settlement of 1688 to the present hour. If for annual kings with large power we put hereditary kings with small power, the parallel is complete.[12] Let us now cast a glance, for time and space allow us no more, over some modern developments. The modern States of Europe have good reason, upon the whole, to think themselves fortunate in their having retained the kingship, which the Greeks and Romans rejected, either as their original type, or elevated and glorified from the dukedoms, margravates, and electorates with which they started. There cannot be much doubt, I imagine, that, if the Romans had retained their king in a hereditary or nearly hereditary form, he might have exercised a mediatorial function between the contending parties that would have prevented those bloody strifes and those ugly civic wounds with which the record of their political career stands now so sorrowfully defaced. In the experience of their own earliest story, Servius Tullius had already shown them how a king in the strife of classes might step in by a peaceful new model to open the ranks of a close aristocracy with dignity and safety to a rising democracy; and in modern times the case of Leopold II. of Tuscany does not stand alone as an example of what good service a wise king may do in the adjustment of contending claims and smoothing the march of necessary social transitions. In fact, the most democratic people amongst the ancients, in order to effect such an adjustment in a peaceful way, had been obliged to make Solon a king for the nonce; and the Romans, urged by a like social pressure, named their dictator, or re-elected their consuls and their tribunes, in order to secure for the need of the moment that unity of counsel, energy of conduct, and moral authority which is the grand recommendation of the kingship. No doubt kings in modern as in ancient times have erred; they have not been able always to keep themselves sober under the intoxicating influence of absolute power, and they have paid dearly for their errors; but we were wise in this country, while beheading one despot and banishing another, to punish the offender without abolishing the office. True, a thorough-going and sternly-consistent republican may ask, with an indignant sneer, What is the use of a king, when we have shorn him of all honours save the grace of a crown and the bauble of a sceptre--reduced him, in fact, to a mere machine to register the decrees of a democratic assembly? But such