THE DIVINE RIGHTS OF KINGS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6090, 29 January 1898, Page 2

THE DIVINE RIGHTS OF KINGS.

The Prussian kings have always held the doctrine of Divine Eight, with which, indeed, the monarchy encountered the democratic pretensions of the Frankfort Diet in 1849. But whereas the old Kaiser William 1., while abating -no jot-of his supposed rights, adopted a tone of simple humility, the present Emperor seemß to regard himself as in some sense a privileged partner of the Almighty, admitted to His counsels, favoured by His regard. It is not cant, but it is the mark of an unbalanced and crude fancy, of an overmastering passion, of a temperament dangerous to a ruler at all times, specially dangerous to a ruler of to-day. The Kaiser is manifestly failing in his policy, as he as irritating foreign nations by bis presumptuous and restless methods. How utterly he misconceives his mission maybe seen in his notions as to forming a worldempire. A German world-empire, indeed, where no man may call his soul bis own, where scarce a vestige of personal liberty is endured to exist, where honest citizens can never sit at their ease without a suspicion of the spy or the policeman at their elbow, where cultivated men are imprisoned for lese-majeste, an empire officialised and regulated to death! World-empires are not made in that way ; no, not if all the armies and navies in the world could be combined in their support. So far as England and America have created great and extended commonwealths, they have created and sustained them by methods.exactly the reverse of those made use of by the German Emperor. — Spectator.