The case of a Minister under an hereditary form of government is yet worse.  The hereditary king may be weak; may be under the government of women; may appoint a Minister from childish motives; may remove one from absurd whims.  There is no security that an hereditary king will be competent to choose a good chief Minister, and thousands of such kings have chosen millions of bad Ministers.

By the Dictatorial, or Revolutionary, sort of government, I mean that very important sort in which the sovereign—­the absolute sovereign—­is selected by insurrection.  In theory, one would certainly have hoped that by this time such a crude elective machinery would have been reduced to a secondary part.  But, in fact, the greatest nation (or, perhaps, after the exploits of Bismarck, I should say one of the two greatest nations of the Continent) vacillates between the Revolutionary and the Parliamentary, and now is governed under the Revolutionary form.  France elects its ruler in the streets of Paris.  Flatterers may suggest that the democratic empire will become hereditary, but close observers know that it cannot.  The idea of the Government is that the Emperor represents the people in capacity, in judgment, in instinct.  But no family through generations can have sufficient, or half sufficient, mind to do so.  The representative despot must be chosen by fighting, as Napoleon I. and Napoleon III. were chosen.  And such a Government is likely, whatever be its other defects, to have a far better and abler administration than any other Government.  The head of the Government must be a man of the most consummate ability.  He cannot keep his place, he can hardly keep his life, unless he is.  He is sure to be active, because he knows that his power, and perhaps his head, may be lost if he be negligent.  The whole frame of his State is strained to keep down revolution.  The most difficult of all political problems is to be solved—­the people are to be at once thoroughly restrained and thoroughly pleased.  The executive must be like a steel shirt of the Middle Ages—­extremely hard and extremely flexible.  It must give way to attractive novelties which do not hurt; it must resist such as are dangerous; it must maintain old things which are good and fitting; it must alter such as cramp and give pain.  The dictator dare not appoint a bad Minister if he would.  I admit that such a despot is a better selector of administrators than a Parliament; that he will know how to mix fresh minds and used minds better; that he is under a stronger motive to combine them well; that here is to be seen the best of all choosers with the keenest motives to choose.  But I need not prove in England that the revolutionary selection of rulers obtains administrative efficiency at a price altogether transcending its value; that it shocks credit by its catastrophes; that for intervals it does not protect property or life; that it maintains an undergrowth of fear through all prosperity; that it may take years to find the true capable despot; that the interregna of the incapable are full of all evil; that the fit despot may die as soon as found; that the good administration and all else hang by the thread of his life.