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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



For this reason, republics have usually 

 sought to find a safeguard in federation, 

 through which alone the republics of the 

 eighteenth century were able to survive. 

 Those which failed to avail themselves 

 of this principle have been short-lived. 



It was owing to this failure on the part 

 of the Greek republics that Macedonian 

 supremacy was finally established over 

 the whole of Greece. A different foreign 

 policy on the part of Athens, which might 

 have united the rest of the Greek cities 

 for common defense, would, in the opin- 

 ion of historians, have saved the Greek 

 republics from extinction ; but democra- 

 cies have usually been short-sighted in 

 matters of foreign policy. 



For obvious reasons, republics have as 

 a rule possessed but a limited territorial 

 extent; but magnitude alone is not a 

 source of strength. Before the first par- 

 tition, in 1772, Poland covered a larger 

 area of territory than Spain, or France, 

 or all the States of Germany put together. 



A turbulent nobility had completely 

 throttled the elective monarchy. It was 

 the triumph of an oligarchy of landed 

 proprietors whose anarchy was balanced 

 by no industrial and commercial middle 

 class, and which failed to evolve a leader 

 sufficiently powerful to impose unity of 

 action upon the nation. 



By the libera m veto, adopted in 1650, 

 a single member of the Polish Diet could, 

 from that time onward, nullify the reso- 

 lutions of the entire assembly, thus para- 

 lyzing every policy for the conservation 

 of the republic. 



THE LOVE OF LIBERTY SPREADS IN FRANCE 



Between 1776 and 1806 profound 

 causes of change were introduced into 

 the European system, some of them from 

 within and others from without, which 

 at first greatly promoted the development 

 of republics " and afterward nearly de- 

 stroyed them altogether. 



It is important to note that in 1776 

 there was no expectation that a revolu- 

 tion would occur in France such as, fif- 

 teen years later, was to shake the conti- 

 nent of Europe to its foundations and in- 

 stitute, for a time at least, a wholly new 

 order of tilings. No contemporary could 

 possibly have foreseen this process of 



political evolution, for the causes of it 

 were not confined to Europe. 



The accession of the young king, Louis 

 XVI, to the throne of France, in 1772, 

 had aroused the hope that the evils 

 brought upon Europe by the age of abso- 

 lutism were likely to be remedied by a 

 better administration of public affairs. 



In 1776 there was not the slightest sign 

 of the general upheaval that came to Eu- 

 rope during the young monarch's reign. 

 There had been, it is true, much radical 

 speculation regarding the nature of gov- 

 ernment. Montesquieu, Voltaire, Dide- 

 rot, Mably, and Rousseau had spoken out 

 boldly for greater liberty. In fact, their 

 work of iconoclasm was already finished, 

 so far as mere discussion was concerned. 

 Montesquieu's Spirit of the Lazus, in 

 which he extolled the English system of 

 government as the most perfect guaran- 

 tee of freedom that had ever been de- 

 vised, had been published a whole gener- 

 ation earlier, in 1748. Young men who 

 had read Rousseau's Social Contract in 

 its first edition, in 1762, had passed into 

 middle life. 



OUR FIRST AND GREATEST AMERICAN 

 INVENTION 



Although the sovereignty of the people 

 and the right of the majority to rule, ad- 

 vocated by Rousseau, were theoretically 

 hostile to the "old regime," they had pro- 

 duced in 1776 no actual fruit. Not one 

 of the philosophers of the enlightenment 

 had propounded a concrete program of 

 political reconstruction. 



Such literature as theirs might have 

 existed forever without producing a revo- 

 lution ; and, in 1789, when the earliest 

 tokens of a real revolutionary movement 

 in France were perceptible, no definite 

 proposition had been offered by any of 

 the philosophical writers that could be of 

 practical utility in guiding the nation in 

 its desire to abolish the abuses of power 

 from which France was then suffering; 

 yet a whole generation had come to man- 

 hood since Rousseau's eulogy of democ- 

 racy had appeared. 



But in the meantime something of 

 great import had happened. In America 

 thirteen British colonies had, in 1776, de- 

 clared their independence and had repu- 



