What is the meaning of absolute power? Absolute, in the full sense of the word, means freedom from all limitation. And it is not always bad men who incline toward absolutism. Instances of a leaning toward absolute power are, therefore, frequently met with in the history of modern European states, and were the causes provocative of a great many political events. Individuals of great energy and superior intellect, when at the head of the government, are most apt to be provoked to resistance by any limit imposed to their universal authority, and seek to justify their action whenever they overstep the limit imposed, by an appeal to the necessity of absolute power. The aristocratic Romans, the first in the science of law, adhered, in the principles underlying their private and public laws, and by way of national preference, to the idea of absolute power. The democratic Greeks sought the most perfect political freedom in an absolute government of the people. And though the noblest nations, the Aryan, did not willingly submit to this form of government, and were jealous of it, they still have shown similar tendencies, both in theory and practice.
The Mongolian race and the superior Semitic peoples even, favored an absolute form of government.
It is not simply the lower races of negroes which have submitted to an absolute ruler. There are whole families of nations, with which a high respect for absolute power seems to be a natural tendency, which submit to it willingly and without reserve. Absolute power and sovereignty are sometimesĬalled synonymous. Without absolute power, they say, there is no peace, no unity in the state, no authority which is either final or supreme. They disagree, however, as to who should be invested with this absolute power, the executive or the people but they agree in the opinion that it should be lodged somewhere. The opinion that absolute power is essential to the state, is very prevalent among statesmen and publicists.
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