he best, and one of the most
vigorous rulers, since the time of Charlemagne. Both these princesses
ruled in a manner hardly equalled by any prince among their
contemporaries. The emperor Charles the Fifth, the most politic
prince of his time, who had as great a number of able men in his
service as a ruler ever had, and was one of the least likely of all
sovereigns to sacrifice his interest to personal feelings, made two
princesses of his family successively Governors of the Netherlands,
and kept one or other of them in that post during his whole life,
(they were afterwards succeeded by a third). Both ruled very
successfully, and one of them, Margaret of Austria, was one of the
ablest politicians of the age. So much for one side of the question.
Now as to the other. When it is said that under queens men govern, is
the same meaning to be understood as when kings are said to be
governed by women? Is it meant that queens choose as their
instruments of government, the associates of their personal
pleasures? The case is rare even with those who are as unscrupulous
on the latter point as Catherine II.: and it is not in these cases
that the good government, alleged to arise from male influence, is to
be found. If it be true, then, that the administration is in the
hands of better men under a queen than under an average king, it must
be that queens have a superior capacity for choosing them; and women
must be better qualified than men both for the position of sovereign,
and for that of chief minister; for the principal business of a prime
minister is not to govern in person, but to find the fittest persons
to conduct every department of public affairs. The more rapid insight
into character, which is one of the admitted points of superiority in
women over men, must certainly make them, with anything like parity
of qualifications in other respects, more apt than men in that choice
of instruments, which is nearly the most important business of every
one who has to do with governing mankind. Even the unprincipled
Catherine de' Medici could feel the value of a Chancellor de
l'Hopital. But it is also true that most great queens have been great
by their own talents for government, and have been well served
precisely for that reason. They retained the supreme direction of
affairs in their own hands: and if they listened to good advisers,
they gave by that fact the strongest proof that their judgment fitted
them for dealing with the grea