king of the Carlovingian dynasty, as Pepin had done against his Merovingian monarch? Or when Rudolph of Hapsburg conquered his rival Ottocar of Bohemia? And what if these three founders of legitimate dynasties had been defeated? If William had been driven back to Normandy, and Hugh strung up for the rebel that he was, and Rudolph had remained dead on the Marchfeld plains, what then? What would have become then of the "grace of God"? Would not those exalted personages, the founders of the three mighty dynasties, would not they in that case have been and remained merely robbers and adventurers? Or was it success that made them divine? Does the "grace of God" consist then only in the fact that a daring and powerful man has fought his way by force to the summit of his ambition? And does his government become legitimate from the moment he assumes the power? That seems to be its only meaning. The people seem to think: when God gives office to a man, he gives him sense to go with it. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that when he gives a crown to any one, he presents him at the same time with a legitimate right to it. But according to this view, every revolutionist becomes a legitimate monarch, if his attempt is successful. Cromwell would then be as legitimate a sovereign as Charles I. whom he beheaded, Barras and Bonaparte as legitimate as Louis XVI. who met with the same fate, Louis Philippe as legitimate as Charles X., and Napoleon III. as legitimate as Louis Phillippe. The royalists would then have no right to resist nor even to disapprove when any one usurps the sovereignty of the State; they would then be obliged to admit that Rienzi, Masaniello, Mazzini, Kossuth and Hecker would have been "sovereigns by the grace of God," if their attempts had been crowned with success. More than this, they would be obliged
