VII.
No Gentile Kings in America.
The prophet Jacob, brother of the first Nephi, addressing himself to the Nephites, said:
Behold, this land, saith God, shall be a land of thine inheritance, and the Gentiles shall be blessed upon the land. And this land shall be a land of liberty unto the Gentiles, and there shall be no kings upon the land, who shall raise up unto the Gentiles; and I will fortify this land against all other nations; and he that fighteth against Zion shall perish, saith God; for he that raiseth up a king against me shall perish, for I, the Lord, the King of heaven, will be their king, and I will be a light unto them forever, that hear my words.[[53]]
There are many decrees of God concerning America as a choice land, which will be noted in the place I have assigned for their consideration, but here I am concerned only with this remarkable prophecy, viz., that the land of America (both continents) is consecrated to liberty, and there shall be no kings upon the land "who shall rise up unto the Gentiles." Note the limits of the prophecy. It is not extended to the native races of America, but to the Gentiles who shall inhabit the land. That is to say, there shall be no kings upon the land "who shall rise up unto the Gentiles."
A rather bold prediction this, whether the utterances he accredited to Jacob, in the first half of the 5th century B. C., or to Joseph Smith in 1830. In any event the prophecy, so far, has been fulfilled; and today from the frozen north, Alaska, to the straits of Magellan in the south continent, the "new world" under the consecration of God, is blessed with freedom, and republican, not monarchial, institutions, obtain.
It may be objected that this prophecy has failed because of two notable attempts to establish monarchies in the New World by European governments, one in Brazil, the other in Mexico. Let us investigate these two attempts.
By an accidental discovery along the east shore of South America, by Cabral, a Portuguese navigator, (1500 A. D.,) that section of the south continent now known to us as Brazil, became a colony of the kingdom of Portugal. It remained so until 1822, when Dom Pedro, the son of King John VI., of Portugal, sided with the people of Brazil in declaring the independence of the country, and was crowned Emperor under the title of Dom Pedro I.
His rule, however, was tyrranical, and the people at length rose against him, in 1831, dragged him to the public square of Rio de Janeiro and forced him to remove from his head the imperial crown, and thus his reign ended in public disgrace.
His son became emperor under the title of Dom Pedro II. As he was a child of but six years when his father abdicated in his favor, Brazil was governed by regents until 1841, when the Prince, having attained his majority, was proclaimed emperor. It is said of him that from the first he proved himself an intelligent, liberal and humane ruler, and during his reign Brazil made great advancement in civilization and material prosperity. He was so strongly attached to constitutional forms, and governed so entirely through his ministers, that he can scarcely be regarded as a monarch at all. In November, 1889, he acquiesced in the wishes of the people, abdicated his throne in favor of a republican form of government, and retired to Portugal. Since that time Brazil has remained a republic.
The attempts to establish monarchy in Mexico arose under the following circumstances: In 1862, France, Great Britain, and Spain sent a joint military expedition to Mexico to enforce payment of certain claims. When their ostensible object was attained Great Britain and Spain withdrew; but Napoleon III, Emperor of France, confident that the war between the states of the American Union would end in dissolution of the Union, regarded the conditions as favorable to the establishment of a Latin empire in the Western world which he hoped would be a counterpoise to the Anglo Saxon republics; and invited Archduke Maximilian, brother of the Austrian Emperor, to accept the crown of the proposed new government, Napoleon promising to maintain an army of twenty-five thousand French soldiers for his protection. This proposition the Archduke accepted, and was hailed emperor of Mexico.
Meantime the United States government refused to recognize any authority in Mexico except that of the deposed President of the Republic, Juarez; but in consequence of the civil war then at its heighth was unable to resist this flagrant violation of the Monroe Doctrine.[[54]] The civil war closed, however, notice was served upon the French emperor that his soldiers must be withdrawn from Mexico, and he judged it expedient to comply, though it was a dastardly desertion of Maximilian, whose situation at once became precarious. In vain his faithful consort, Carlotta, journeyed from court to court in Europe intreating assistance for her husband, and denouncing Napoleon's dissertion of him. Her successive disappointments finally overthrew her reason. No hand in Europe was raised to maintain monarchy in Mexico. Juarez, the deposed President of the republic of Mexico, made short work of the empire. He captured Maximilian, and had him shot as a usurper, June 19, 1867. The event cast a gloom over all Europe, but no king nor potentate sought to avenge the execution. May it not be that those nations were as much awed, though unconsciously, by the spirit of the decree of God concerning the land of America, as by the policy of the government of the United States laid down in the Monroe Doctrine? And, indeed, may not the Monroe Doctrine itself be regarded as a heaven-inspired decree by a competent national agency to make of effect the old Nephite prophecy, "there shall be no kings on this land?" "The French empire," says Ekwin A. Grosvenor, professor of European History in Amherst College, and author of "Contemporary History of the World"—"The French empire never recovered from the shock of this Mexican failure."
The Emperor, Napoleon III, engaged in a war with Germany in 1870, in which himself and France suffered the most humiliating defeat ever inflicted on a modern state or its ruler. He himself was captured at the surrender of Sedan and imprisoned for sometime at Wilhelmshohe, near Cassel. Meantime he was deposed by the French people who established a Republican form of government, in place of the Empire. Some two years after his imprisonment he died an exile at Chiselhurst, England. The Empress, Eugenie, was also forced into exile and was for same years the guest of England. On June 1, 1879, Napoleon's son, Imperial, the only son of the Emperor, was killed by the Zulus in south Africa, thus blotting out, we may say, the entire family of the French Monarch, and fulfilling in a marked manner the terms of this prophecy: "And he that raiseth up a King against me shall perish."
The foregoing attempts in Brazil and Mexico to found monarchies in the New World cannot properly be regarded as proving the failure of the Book of Mormon prophecy. The monarchies existed for a short time only, and were so precarious while they lasted, and ended so disastrously for those making the attempt to establish them, that they emphasize the force of the prophecy rather than prove its failure. They are as slight exceptions tending to prove a rule. It is not said in the Book of Mormon that attempts would not be made to set up kings, but that such attempts should end disastrously for those making them; and that no kings should be established, that is permanently established, in the new world. Surely no candid mind will read this prophecy and consider all the facts involved in the attempts to establish monarchies in America, but will say that they have ended disastrously, and that this prophecy has been verily fulfilled.