The Irish Race in the Past and the Present

by Augustus J. Thébaud

Any kind of government is good only according to the circumstances of the nation subjected to it. What may suit one people would not give happiness to another, and democratic, aristocratic, or monarchical governments, have each their respective uses, so that none of them can be condemned or approved absolutely. No one will ever be able to show that the Roman Pontiffs held any exclusive theory on this subject, and adopted a stern policy from which they did not recede.

But a positive line of policy they did hold to, namely, the insuring the stability of society by securing the stability of governments.

Whoever reads the life of Gregory VII side by side with that of William the Conqueror, is at first astonished to find Hildebrand, who, though not yet Pope, was already powerful in the counsels of the Papacy, favoring the Norman king, although William eventually proved far from grateful. But, when the reader comes to inquire what can have moved the great monk to take up this line of action, he will find that a deep political motive lay at the bottom of it, which throws a flood of light over the policy of the Popes and the history of Europe during the middle ages. He finds Hildebrand persuaded that William of Normandy possessed the true hereditary right to the crown of England, and the policy of the Popes was already in favor of hereditary right in kingdoms, thereby to insure the stability of dynasties, and consequently that of society itself.

Harold, son of Godwin, belonged in no way to the royal race of Anglo-Saxon kings. The Dukes of Normandy had contracted alliances by marriage with the Anglo-Saxon monarchs, and were thought to be more nearly related to Edward the Confessor than Harold, whose only title was derived from his sister.

What had been the state of Europe up to that time? Since the establishment and conversion of the northern races, a constant change of rulers, an ever-recurring moving of territorial limit, and consequently an endless disturbance in all that secures the stability of rights, was common everywhere: in England, under the heptarchy; in France, under the Carlovingians; in the various states of Germany; everywhere, except, perhaps, in a part of Italy, where small republics were springing up from municipal communes, which were better adapted to the wants of the people.

The great evils of those times were owing to these perpetual changes, which all came from the undefined rights of succession to power, as left by Charlemagne; a striking proof that a monarch may be a man of genius, a great and acceptable ruler, and still fail to see the consequences to future times of the legacy he leaves them in the incomplete institutions of his own time. Well has Bossuet said, that "human wisdom is always short of something."

Those rapid, and, to us, wonderful partitions of empires and kingdoms; those loose and ill-defined rules of succession in Germany, France, England, and elsewhere; productive of revolution at the death of every sovereign, and often during every reign, showed the Popes that hereditary rights ought to be clear and fixed, and confined to one person in each nation. From that period, date the long lines of the Capetians in France, the Plantagenets in England; while rights of a similar kind are introduced into Spain and Portugal; likewise into the various states of Northern Germany, or Scandinavia; and Southern Italy, or Norman Sicily—the rest of Italy and Germany are placed on a different footing, the empire and the popedom being both elective.

Such was the grand policy of the Popes inaugurated by Hildebrand, which came out in all its strong features, at the same time, under his powerful influence. Such was the policy which insured the stability of Europe for upward of six hundred years; a set of views to which a word only can be devoted here, but on which volumes would not be thrown away.

In consequence of it, for six hundred years dynasties seldom changed; the territorial limits of each great division of Europe remained, on the whole, settled; and an order of society ensued, of such a nature that any father of a family might rest assured of the state of his children and grandchildren after him.

In this respect, therefore, as in many others, the papacy was the key-stone of Christendom.