And when their kings broke the law, they changed their
kings. But a king they must have, for their own sakes; not merely for
the sake of the nation's security and peace, but for the sake of their
own self-respect. They felt, those old forefathers of ours, that loyalty
was not a degrading, but an ennobling influence; that a free man can give
up his independence without losing it; that--as the example of that
mighty German army has just shown an astounded world--independence is
never more called out than by subordination; and that a free man never
feels himself so free as when obeying those whom the laws of his country
have set over him; an able man never feels himself so able as when he is
following the lead of an abler man than himself. And what if, as needs
must happen at whiles, the sovereign were not a man, but a woman or a
child? Then was added to loyalty in the hearts of our forefathers, and
of many another nation in Europe, an instinct even deeper, and tenderer,
and more unselfish--the instinct of chivalry; and the widowed queen, or
the prince, became to them a precious jewel committed to their charge by
the will of their forefathers and the providence of God; an heirloom for
which they were responsible to God, and to their forefathers, and to
their children after them, lest their names should be stained to all
future generations by the crime of baseness toward the weak.
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