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ON THE KISE, PROGRESS, ETC.in Rousseau's belief that this sovereignty mail be associatedwith monarchy. The boundary line between monarchy andrepublicanism was thus wholly effaced, and the way preparedto errors for which Europe has already in part atoned, andstill atones most dearly. It might surely have been thought,that after the science of government had been treated offor centuries., after it had been laid down upon every occasion, that monarchy and republicanism are forms of government in direct oppositionto each other,itmight have beenthought, I say, that the peculiar character of each wouldhave been fully understood, and their limits distinctlymarked : but when a philosopher, such as Rousseau, either doesnot know, or pays no attention to this when the;practicalpolicy of whole nations, and of their representatives, is carried on without any respectto it,we have a rightto conclude that either these lines have never been clearly drawn,or (which amounts to the same thing in practice) that theyhave in time become forgotten. And yet there could notbe a moment at which such an error would be more fatalthan the present. "We have no longer to consider merespeculation and theory, the question which concerns us isone of fearful practical importance.Europe, after having apparently escaped from the dangers of democracy, is on the verge of seeing either monarchical republics, or republics under the name of monarchies,occupying the chief places among her states. I hold theseto be more formidable dangers even than those from whichshe has escaped. Of the comparative advantages of monarchies and republics nothing general can be asserted. Itis possible to live happily or unhappily in either, accordingto the turn which events may take. But we may be surethat a nation (with individuals we have nothing to do) cannever be happy in a pseudo-monarchy or a pseudo-republic, because such a form of government is contradictory toitself. The history of Poland, as it was, affords at once awarning and an exampleWe !wish, therefore, either for actual monarchies, or actual republics. Now the European political system has beenfor centuries monarchical. All the chief states received thename of monarchies, and were so in reality.The free states belonging to it were of the second or third