54 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that honor shall be divorced from power. In England the nobliity is 

 being edged out of office, and on Lord Salisbury's grave might be 

 written, " The last of the nobles " — the last who governed his coun- 

 try. In her colonies one premier after another resolutely refuses 

 the forbidden dignity that would banish him from the ministerial 

 Eden. The same point has been reached in the United States from 

 the opposite side. Most of the charter and some of the proprietary 

 colonies developed into republican societies, with political equality as 

 their badge, a popular legislature, an elected judiciary, and a half- 

 elected executive. Side by side with this democracy of power there 

 has grown up in the great cities — Philadelphia, Boston, New York 

 — an aristocracy of blood, culture, or dollars. This aristocracy of 

 fashion — as in France and England, so in the United States and 

 (on a small scale) in Australia — consoles itself for lifelong exclusion 

 from public affairs by addicting itself to literature, art, philanthropy, 

 and such like. But these are only its recreations. Its chief use is to 

 exist, to exhibit the civilization of a people at its flower, to give' 

 pleasure to others and to itself. The proportion of this element to 

 the rest of the population will measure the age of the community. 



The core of the executive is the governor. The governor of the 

 monarchical colonies is the deputy of the sovereign, and the story of 

 his authority is the story in brief of the royal prerogative. The 

 governors of the Spanish colonies arrogated and abused a power far 

 more despotic than a Spanish king's. The French Governor of Illi- 

 nois ruled with absolute sway. The first Governor of New South 

 Wales exercised unparalleled powers. He could inflict five hundred 

 lashes and impose a five-hundred-pound fine; could sentence to 

 death, execute, or pardon. He regulated trade. He fixed prices, 

 wages, and customs duties. All the labor in the colony was at his 

 disposal. He could bestow grants of land. He appointed to all 

 offices of honor or emolument. The administration of justice was 

 exclusively in his hands. The colonists were his subjects. He was 

 practically irresponsible. Thus an Anglo-Saxon community can 

 take on the characters of an Oriental satrapy. It can also become a 

 military despotism. For some years after the departure of one 

 governor and the deposition of another the government of the 

 colony was in the hands, or under the feet, of the officers of the 

 New South Wales Corps, who ruled it as the Sultan rules Turkey. 

 The stage of pure absolutism, which is necessitated in a colony, as in 

 the mother country, by the existence of a small band of immigrants 

 in the midst of a hostile indigenous population, or of a small number 

 of free settlers among a convict populace, is succeeded by that of 

 limited absolutism. The authority of the governor is checked by the 

 appointment of a council. Most of the early North American crown 



