Germany and the Germans | Page 8

man with an income of $50,000 a year had a right to a peerage. There
can be no aristocracy except of the powerful, which lasts. The
difference to-day is seen in the puppet nobility of Austria, Italy, Spain,
and Germany as compared with the nobility of England, which is not a
nobility of birth or of tradition, but of the powerful: brewers and
bankers, and statesmen and lawyers, and leaders of public opinion,
covering their humble past with ermine, and crowning their
achievements with coronets.
The Crusades brought about as great a shifting of the balance of power,
as did later the rise of the rich merchants, industrials, and nabobs in
England. As the power of the nobles decreased, the central power or the
power of the kings increased; increased indeed, and lasted, down to the

greatest crusade of all, when democracy organized itself, and marched
to the redemption of the rights of man as man, without regard to his
previous condition of servitude.
During the thousand years between the time when we first hear of the
German tribes, in 113 B. C., and the year 1411, which marks the
beginnings of what is now the Prussian monarchy, customs were
becoming habits, and habits were becoming laws, and the political and
social origins of the life of our day were being beaten into shape, by the
exigencies of living together of these tribes in the woods of Germany.
There it was that the essence of democracy was distilled. Democracy,
Demos, the crowd, the people, the nation, were already, in the woods of
Germany, the court of last resort. They growled dissent, and they gave
assent with the brandishing of their weapons, javelins, or ballots. They
were called together but seldom, and between the meetings of the
assembly, the executive work, the judicial work, the punishing of
offenders, was left to a chosen few; left to those who by their control
over themselves, their control over their families, their control over
their neighbors, seemed best qualified to exercise the delegated control
of all.
The chief aim of their organized government, such as it was, seems to
have been to leave themselves free to go about their private business,
with as little interference from the demands of public business as
possible. The chief concern of each one was to secure his right to mind
his own business, under certain safeguards provided by all. If those
delegated to govern became autocratic, or evil-doers, or used their
power for self-advancement or self-enrichment, they were speedily
brought to book. The philosophy of government, then, was to make
men free to go about their private business. That the time might come
when politics would be the absorbing business of all, dictating the
hours and wages of men under the earth, and reaching up to the
institution of a recall for the angel Gabriel, and a referendum for the
Day of Judgment, was undreamed of. The chiefs of the clans, the chiefs
of the tribes, the kings of the Germans, and finally the emperors were
all elective. The divine right of kings is a purely modern development.

The descendants of these German tribes in England, elected their king
in the days of William the Conqueror even, and as late as 1689 the
Commons of England voted that King James had abdicated, and that
the throne was vacant!
The so-called mayors of the palace, who became kings, were in their
day representatives of the landholders, delegates of the people, who
advised the king and aided in commanding the armies. These hereditary
mayors of the palace drifted into ever greater and greater control, until
they became hereditary kings. The title was only hereditary, however,
because it was convenient that one man of experience in an office
should be succeeded by another educated to, and familiar with, the
same experiences and duties, and this system of heredity continues
down to this day in business, and in many professions and so long as
there is freedom to oust the incompetent, it is a good system. There can
never be any real progress until the sons take over the accumulated
wisdom and experience of the fathers; if this is not done, then each one
must begin for himself all over again. The hereditary principle is sound
enough, so long as there is freedom of decapitation in cases of tyranny
or folly.
There has continued all through the history of those of the blood of the
German tribes, whether in Germany, England, America, Norway,
Sweden, or Denmark, the sound doctrine that ability may at any time
take the place of the rights of birth. Power, or command, or leadership
by heredity is looked upon as a convenience, not as an unimpeachable
right.
Charlemagne (742-814), a descendant of a mayor of the palace who
had become