Political Evolution. 63 



The spectre of sans-culottism at Paris frightened back 

 the European sovereigns into a temporary reversal of 

 previous action, and made them seek to revitalise the 

 rapidly decaying mediaeval theocracy in the selfish 

 interest of their own power. The experiment has been 

 short-lived ; Austria has thoroughly changed her policy, 

 and Christianity, whatever its future may be, seems 

 likely to suffer but little from the incubus of so damag- 

 ing a support. The equally selfish and essentially hypo- 

 critical system of Prussia has also ended, and given place 

 to an antagonism capable of putting the vitality of 

 German Christianity to the proof. Even then, .by these 

 two powers Austria and Prussia, which in different 

 aspects may claim to be the nearest existing represen- 

 tatives of the old temporal head of Christendom, the 

 Christian theocracy is finally disavowed. The northern 

 kaiser has been ostentatiously welcomed in the old im- 

 perial city as the avowed author of a letter to the su- 

 preme head of that theocracy, in which the claims of 

 that head are repudiated and his authority defied. 



It is true that the southern emperor is the crowned 

 king of Hungary, and that his present conduct seems 

 only to have been forced on him by circumstances, after 

 years of fruitless efforts to found his empire on some 

 modification of the old theocratic basis, much of which, 

 indeed, still remains within the bounds of his empire. 

 His failure is but a still greater proof of the irresis- 



