THE BE14 NATION. 265 



CHAPTER XXI. 



MONARCHY, SOCIALISM, AND INSTINCT. 



THE "bee State has often been held up as the ideal and 

 example of the system of so-called constitutional 

 monarchy, of that system which is now prevalent in most 

 European countries, and which is regarded by some as the 

 highest political ideal, and by others as a gross political 

 sham. The Frenchman, Mandeville, as long ago as the 

 beginning of the last century, in his famous (or much 

 talked-of) " Bee Fables," held up the polity of the bees 

 as a model for human arrangements, although in a very 

 exaggerated way. 



As a matter of fact there is no small resemblance between 

 the bee system and that of constitutional monarchy in so far 

 as the bees appear to lay no stress on the person of their 

 queen, and are perfectly contented so long as they have one, 

 that is someone capable of discharging the royal or rather 

 maternal duties. They change the sovereignty, as a rule, 

 easily and quickly, and thoroughly admit the well-known 

 maxim of constitutional royalty : " Le roi est mort vive le 

 rot /" (The king is dead long Jive the king!) A chiefless 

 hive, one robbed of its queen, either does homage, as already 

 described, to a fresh queen introduced into it just as to her 

 predecessor, or brings up a new sovereign by its own efforts ; 

 while a hive, left long queenless, falls into sloth and riot 

 and sooner or later perishes. The queen, since all revolves 

 round her, is the necessary centre and bond of the hive, but 

 without herself taking any personal part in the business and 

 proceedings. She therefore, in reality, exactly answers to the 

 foundation-stone of constitutionalism, and is what Napoleon I. 

 declared he would not be, in reply to the famous constitu- 

 tional reproach of Sieyes: "The prize pig of the nation." She 

 is indeed widely separated frorn her human antitype in that 

 she is not merely " representative," giving to high and low 



