MINISTRIES. 447 



the purpose of establishing a monopoly of his office among 

 his own descendants. Generally his desire is effectually 

 antagonized by that of the ruler; but where, as in Japan, 

 seclusion of the ruler impedes his hold on affairs, this desire 

 of the minister takes effect. 



Since there ever tend to arise these struggles between a 

 king and one or more of those who serve him since his efforts 

 to maintain his authority are sometimes so far defeated that 

 he is obliged to accept assistants who are hereditary ; there 

 results a jealousy of thos Q whose interests are at variance 

 with his own, and an endeavour to protect himself by ex 

 cluding them from office. There comes a motive for choosing 

 as ministers men who, having no children, cannot found 

 houses which, growing powerful, may compete for supremacy ; 

 and hence in certain times the preference for celibate priests. 

 Or, from allied motives, men neither clerical nor military are 

 selected ; as in France, where in the 15th and 17th centuries, 

 members of the bourgeois class came to be preferred. A policy 

 like that shown in the befriending of towns as a set-off against 

 feudal chiefs, prompted the official employment of citizens 

 instead of nobles. Under other conditions, again, there is a 

 jealousy of ecclesiastics and an exclusion of them from power. 

 For generations before the time of Peter the Great, the head 

 of the church in Russia was &quot; considered the second person in 

 the empire ; he was consulted on all State-affairs, until at 

 length, their [his] spiritual pride outrunning all decorum, 

 venturing upon, and even attempting to control the sovereign 

 power, it was resolved by Peter the Great to abolish the 

 patriarchate altogether.&quot; Between Louis XIV. and the Pope, 

 there was a conflict for supremacy over the French church ; 

 and on more occasions than one, certain of the clergy 

 encouraged &quot;the absolutist pretensions of the Ptoman Pontiffs :&quot; 

 the result being that such prelates as held office were those 

 who subordinated clerical to political aims, and that by 

 Louis XIV., after 1661, &quot;no churchman was allowed to touch 

 the great engine of State-government &quot; Among ourselves may 



