CHAP. X.: Of the Expedition peculiar to the executive Power in Monarchies.

GREAT is the advantage which a monarchical government has over a republic. As the state is conducted by a single person, the executive power is thereby enabled to act with greater expedition: but, as this expedition may degenerate into rapidity, the laws should use some contrivance to slacken it: they ought not only to favour the nature of each constitution, but likewise to remedy the abuses that might result from this very nature.

Cardinal Richelieu Testam. polit. ^†105 advises monarchs to permit no such things as societies or communities that raise

difficulties upon every trifle. If this man’s heart had not been bewitched with the love of despotic power, still these arbitrary notions would have filled his head.

The bodies, intrusted with the depositum of the laws, are never more obedient than when they proceed slowly, and use that reflection in the prince’s affairs which can scarcely be expected from the ignorance of a court, or from the precipitation of its councils Barbaris cunctatio servilis, statim exequi regium videtur. Tacit. Annal. l. 5. ^†106.

What would have become of the finest monarchy in the world, if the magistrates, by their delays, their complaints, and entreaties, had not checked the rapidity even of their princes virtues, when these monarchs, consulting only the generous impulse of their minds, would fain have given a boundless reward to services performed with an unlimited courage and fidelity?