Part 16

GOUTHIERE, PIERRE (1740-1806), French metal worker, was born at Troyes and went to Paris at an early age as the pupil of Martin Cour. During his brilliant career he executed a vast quantity of metal work of the utmost variety, the best of which was unsurpassed by any of his rivals in that great art period. It was long believed that he received many commissions for furniture from the court of Louis XVI., and especially from Marie Antoinette, but recent searches suggest that his work for the queen was confined to bronzes. Gouthiere can, however, well bear this loss, nor will his reputation suffer should those critics ultimately be justified who believe that many of the furniture mounts attributed to him were from the hand of Thomire. But if he did not work for the court he unquestionably produced many of the most splendid belongings of the duc d'Aumont, the duchesse de Mazarin and Mme du Barry. Indeed the custom of the beautiful mistress of Louis XV. brought about the financial ruin of the great artist, who accomplished more than any other man for the fame of her chateau of Louveciennes. When the collection of the duc d'Aumont was sold by auction in Paris in 1782 so many objects mounted by Gouthiere were bought for Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette that it is not difficult to perceive the basis of the belief that they were actually made for the court. The duc's sale catalogue is, however, in existence, with the names of the purchasers and the prices realized. The auction was almost an apotheosis of Gouthiere. The precious lacquer cabinets, the chandeliers and candelabra, the tables and cabinets in marquetry, the columns and vases in porphyry, jasper and choice marbles, the porcelains of China and Japan were nearly all mounted in bronze by him. More than fifty of these pieces bore Gouthiere's signature. The duc d'Aumont's cabinet represented the high-water mark of the chaser's art, and the great prices which were paid for Gouthiere's work at this sale are the most conclusive criterion of the value set upon his achievement in his own day. Thus Marie Antoinette paid 12,000 livres for a red jasper bowl or _brule-parfums_ mounted by him, which was then already famous. Curiously enough it commanded only one-tenth of that price at the Fournier sale in 1831; but in 1865, when the marquis of Hertford bought it at the prince de Beauvais's sale, it fetched 31,900 francs. It is now in the Wallace Collection, which contains the finest and most representative gathering of Gouthiere's undoubted work. The mounts of gilt bronze, cast and elaborately chased, show satyrs' heads, from which hang festoons of vine leaves, while within the feet a serpent is coiled to spring. A smaller cup is one of the treasures of the Louvre. There too is a bronze clock, signed by "Gouthiere, _cizileur et doreur du Roy a Paris_," dated 1771, with a river god, a water nymph symbolizing the Rhone and its tributary the Durance, and a female figure typifying the city of Avignon. Not all of Gouthiere's work is of the highest quality, and much of what he executed was from the designs of others. At his best his delicacy, refinement and finish are exceedingly delightful--in his great moments he ranks with the highest alike as artist and as craftsman. The tone of soft dead gold which is found on some of his mounts he is believed to have invented, but indeed the gilding of all his superlative work possesses a remarkable quality. This charm of tone is admirably seen in the bronzes and candelabra which he executed for the chimney-piece of Marie Antoinette's boudoir at Fontainebleau. He continued to embellish Louveciennes for Madame du Barry until the Revolution, and then the guillotine came for her and absolute ruin for him. When her property was seized she owed him 756,000 livres, of which he never received a sol, despite repeated applications to the administrators. "_Reduit a solliciter une place a l'hospice, il mourut dans la misere._" So it was stated in a lawsuit brought by his sons against du Barry's heirs.

GOUVION SAINT-CYR, LAURENT, MARQUIS DE (1764-1830), French marshal, was born at Toul on the 13th of April 1764. At the age of eighteen he went to Rome with the view of prosecuting the study of painting, but although he continued his artistic studies after his return to Paris in 1784 he never definitely adopted the profession of a painter. In 1792 he was chosen a captain in a volunteer battalion, and served on the staff of General Custine. Promotion rapidly followed, and in the course of two years he had become a general of division. In 1796 he commanded the centre division of Moreau's army in the campaign of the Rhine, and by coolness and sagacity greatly aided him in the celebrated retreat from Bavaria to the Rhine. In 1798 he succeeded Massena in the command of the army of Italy. In the following year he commanded the left wing of Jourdan's army in Germany; but when Jourdan was succeeded by Massena, he joined the army of Moreau in Italy, where he distinguished himself in face of the great difficulties that followed the defeat of Novi. When Moreau, in 1800, was appointed to the command of the army of the Rhine, Gouvion St-Cyr was named his principal lieutenant, and on the 9th of May gained a victory over General Kray at Biberach. He was not, however, on good terms with his commander and retired to France after the first operations of the campaign. In 1801 he was sent to Spain to command the army intended for the invasion of Portugal, and was named grand officer of the Legion of Honour. When a treaty of peace was shortly afterwards concluded with Portugal, he succeeded Lucien Bonaparte as ambassador at Madrid. In 1803 he was appointed to the command of an army corps in Italy, in 1805 he served with distinction under Massena, and in 1806 was engaged in the campaign in southern Italy. He took part in the Prussian and Polish campaigns of 1807, and in 1808, in which year he was made a count, he commanded an army corps in Catalonia; but, not wishing to comply with certain orders he received from Paris (for which see Oman, _Peninsular War_, vol. iii.), he resigned his command and remained in disgrace till 1811. He was still a general of division, having been excluded from the first list of marshals owing to his action in refusing to influence the troops in favour of the establishment of the Empire. On the opening of the Russian campaign he received command of an army corps, and on the 18th of August 1812 obtained a victory over the Russians at Polotsk, in recognition of which he was created a marshal of France. He received a severe wound in one of the actions during the general retreat. St-Cyr distinguished himself at the battle of Dresden (August 26-27, 1813), and in the defence of that place against the Allies after the battle of Leipzig, capitulating only on the 11th of November, when Napoleon had retreated to the Rhine. On the restoration of the Bourbons he was created a peer of France, and in July 1815 was appointed war minister, but resigned his office in the November following. In June 1817 he was appointed minister of marine, and in September following again resumed the duties of war minister, which he continued to discharge till November 1819. During this time he effected many reforms, particularly in respect of measures tending to make the army a national rather than a dynastic force. He exerted himself also to safeguard the rights of the old soldiers of the Empire, organized the general staff and revised the code of military law and the pension regulations. He was made a marquess in 1817. He died at Hyeres (Var) on the 17th of March 1830. Gouvion St-Cyr would doubtless have obtained better opportunities of acquiring distinction had he shown himself more blindly devoted to the interests of Napoleon, but Napoleon paid him the high compliment of referring to his "military genius," and entrusted him with independent commands in secondary theatres of war. It is doubtful, however, if he possessed energy commensurate with his skill, and in Napoleon's modern conception of war, as three parts moral to one technical, there was more need for the services of a bold leader of troops whose "doctrine"--to use the modern phrase--predisposed him to self-sacrificing and vigorous action, than for a _savant_ in the art of war of the type of St-Cyr. Contemporary opinion, as reflected by Marbot, did justice to his "commanding talents," but remarked the indolence which was the outward sign of the vague complexity of a mind that had passed beyond the simplicity of mediocrity without attaining the simplicity of genius.

He was the author of the following works, all of the highest value: _Journal des operations de l'armee de Catalogne en 1808 et 1809_ (Paris, 1821); _Memoires sur les campagnes des armees de Rhin et de Rhin-et-Moselle de 1794 a 1797_ (Paris, 1829); and _Memoires pour servir a l'histoire militaire sous le Directoire, le Consulat, et l'Empire_ (1831).

See Gay de Vernon's _Vie de Gouvion Saint-Cyr_ (1857).

GOVAN, a municipal and police burgh of Lanarkshire, Scotland. It lies on the south bank of the Clyde in actual contact with Glasgow, and in a parish of the same name which includes a large part of the city on both sides of the river. Pop. (1891) 61,589; (1901) 76,532. Govan remained little more than a village till 1860, when the growth of shipbuilding and allied trades gave its development an enormous impetus. Among its public buildings are the municipal chambers, combination fever hospital, Samaritan hospital and reception houses for the poor. Elder Park (40 acres) presented to the burgh in 1885 contains a statue of John Elder (1824-1869), the pioneer shipbuilder, the husband of the donor. A statue of Sir William Pearce (1833-1888), another well-known Govan shipbuilder, once M.P. for the burgh, stands at Govan Cross. The Govan lunacy board opened in 1896 an asylum near Paisley. Govan is supplied with Glasgow gas and water, and its tramways are leased by the Glasgow corporation; but it has an electric light installation of its own, and performs all other municipal functions quite independently of the city, annexation to which it has always strenuously resisted. Prince's Dock lies within its bounds and the shipbuilding yards have turned out many famous ironclads and liners. Besides shipbuilding its other industries are match-making, silk-weaving, hair-working, copper-working, tube-making, weaving, and the manufacture of locomotives and electrical apparatus. The town forms the greater part of the Govan division of Lanarkshire, which returns one member to parliament.

GOVERNMENT (O. Fr. _governement_, mod. _gouvernement_, O. Fr. _governer_, mod. _gouverner_, from Lat. _gubernare_, to steer a ship, guide, rule; cf. Gr. [Greek: kubernan]), in its widest sense, the ruling power in a political society. In every society of men there is a determinate body (whether consisting of one individual or a few or many individuals) whose commands the rest of the community are bound to obey. This sovereign body is what in more popular phrase is termed the government of the country, and the varieties which may exist in its constitution are known as forms of government. For the opposite theory of a community with "no government," see ANARCHISM.

How did government come into existence? Various answers to this question have at times been given, which may be distinguished broadly into three classes. The first class would comprehend the legendary accounts which nations have given in primitive times of their own forms of government. These are always attributed to the mind of a single lawgiver. The government of Sparta was the invention of Lycurgus. Solon, Moses, Numa and Alfred in like manner shaped the government of their respective nations. There was no curiosity about the institutions of other nations--about the origin of governments in general; and each nation was perfectly ready to accept the traditional [Greek: nomothetai] of any other.

The second may be called the logical or metaphysical account of the origin of government. It contained no overt reference to any particular form of government, whatever its covert references may have been. It answered the question, how government in general came into existence; and it answered it by a logical analysis of the elements of society. The phenomenon to be accounted for being government and laws, it abstracted government and laws, and contemplated mankind as existing without them. The characteristic feature of this kind of speculation is that it reflects how contemporary men would behave if all government were removed, and infers that men must have behaved so before government came into existence. Society without government resolves itself into a number of individuals each following his own aims, and therefore, in the days before government, each man followed his own aims. It is easy to see how this kind of reasoning should lead to very different views of the nature of the supposed original state. With Hobbes, it is a state of war, and government is the result of an agreement among men to keep the peace. With Locke, it is a state of liberty and equality,--it is not a state of war; it is governed by its own law,--the law of nature, which is the same thing as the law of reason. The state of nature is brought to an end by the voluntary agreement of individuals to surrender their natural liberty and submit themselves to one supreme government. In the words of Locke, "Men being by nature all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent. The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the _bonds of civil society_, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community" (_On Civil Government_, c. viii.). Locke boldly defends his theory as founded on historical fact, and it is amusing to compare his demonstration of the baselessness of Sir R. Filmer's speculations with the scanty and doubtful examples which he accepts as the foundation of his own. But in general the various forms of the hypothesis eliminate the question of time altogether. The original contract from which government sprang is likewise the subsisting contract on which civil society continues to be based. The historical weakness of the theory was probably always recognized. Its logical inadequacy was conclusively demonstrated by John Austin. But it still clings to speculations on the principles of government.

The "social compact" (see ROUSSEAU) is the most famous of the metaphysical explanations of government. It has had the largest history, the widest influence and the most complete development. To the same class belong the various forms of the theory that governments exist by divine appointment. Of all that has been written about the divine right of kings, a great deal must be set down to the mere flatteries of courtiers and ecclesiastics. But there remains a genuine belief that men are bound to obey their rulers because their rulers have been appointed by God. Like the social compact, the theory of divine appointment avoided the question of historical fact.

The application of the historical method to the phenomena of society has changed the aspect of the question and robbed it of its political interest. The student of the history of society has no formula to express the law by which government is born. All that he can do is to trace governmental forms through various stages of social development. The more complex and the larger the society, the more distinct is the separation between the governing part and the rest, and the more elaborate is the subdivision of functions in the government. The primitive type of ruler is king, judge, priest and general. At the same time, his way of life differs little from that of his followers and subjects. The metaphysical theories were so far right in imputing greater equality of social conditions to more primitive times. Increase of bulk brings with it a more complex social organization. War tends to develop the strength of the governmental organization; peace relaxes it. All societies of men exhibit the germs of government; but there would appear to be races of men so low that they cannot be said to live together in society at all. Modern investigations have illustrated very fully the importance of the family (q.v.) in primitive societies, and the belief in a common descent has much to do with the social cohesion of a tribe. The government of a tribe resembles the government of a household; the head of the family is the ruler. But we cannot affirm that political government has its origin in family government, or that there may not have been states of society in which government of some sort existed while the family did not.

I. FORMS OF GOVERNMENT

_Three Standard Forms._--Political writers from the time of Aristotle have been singularly unanimous in their classification of the forms of government. There are three ways in which states may be governed. They may be governed by one man, or by a number of men, small in proportion to the whole number of men in the state, or by a number large in proportion to the whole number of men in the state. The government may be a monarchy, an aristocracy or a democracy. The same terms are used by John Austin as were used by Aristotle, and in very nearly the same sense. The determining quality in governments in both writers, and it may safely be said in all intermediate writers, is the numerical relation between the constituent members of the government and the population of the state. There were, of course, enormous differences between the state-systems present to the mind of the Greek philosopher and the English jurist. Aristotle was thinking of the small independent states of Greece, Austin of the great peoples of modern Europe. The unit of government in the one case was a city, in the other a nation. This difference is of itself enough to invalidate all generalization founded on the common terminology. But on one point there is a complete parallel between the politics of Aristotle and the politics of Austin. The Greek cities were to the rest of the world very much what European nations and European colonies are to the rest of the world now. They were the only communities in which the governed visibly took some share in the work of government. Outside the European system, as outside the Greek system, we have only the stereotyped uniformity of despotism, whether savage or civilized. The question of forms of government, therefore, belongs characteristically to the European races. The virtues and defects of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy are the virtues and defects manifested by the historical governments of Europe. The generality of the language used by political writers must not blind us to the fact that they are thinking only of a comparatively small portion of mankind.

_Greek Politics._--Aristotle divides governments according to two principles. In all states the governing power seeks either its own advantage or the advantage of the whole state, and the government is bad or good accordingly. In all states the governing power is one man, or a few men or many men. Hence six varieties of government, three of which are bad and three good. Each excellent form has a corresponding depraved form, thus:--

The good government of one (Monarchy) corresponds to the depraved form (Tyranny).

The good government of few (Aristocracy) corresponds to the depraved form (Oligarchy).

The good government of many (Commonwealth) corresponds to the depraved form (Democracy).

The fault of the depraved forms is that the governors act unjustly where their own interests are concerned. The worst of the depraved forms is tyranny, the next oligarchy and the least bad democracy.[1] Each of the three leading types exhibits a number of varieties. Thus in monarchy we have the heroic, the barbaric, the elective dictatorship, the Lacedemonian (hereditary generalship, [Greek: strategia]), and absolute monarchy. So democracy and oligarchy exhibit four corresponding varieties. The best type of democracy is that of a community mainly agricultural, whose citizens, therefore, have not leisure for political affairs, and allow the law to rule. The best oligarchy is that in which a considerable number of small proprietors have the power; here, too, the laws prevail. The worst democracy consists of a larger citizen class having leisure for politics; and the worst oligarchy is that of a small number of very rich and influential men. In both the sphere of law is reduced to a minimum. A good government is one in which as much as possible is left to the laws, and as little as possible to the will of the governor.

The _Politics_ of Aristotle, from which these principles are taken, presents a striking picture of the variety and activity of political life in the free communities of Greece. The king and council of heroic times had disappeared, and self-government in some form or other was the general rule. It is to be noticed, however, that the governments of Greece were essentially unstable. The political philosophers could lay down the law of development by which one form of government gives birth to another. Aristotle devotes a large portion of his work to the consideration of the causes of revolutions. The dread of tyranny was kept alive by the facility with which an over-powerful and unscrupulous citizen could seize the whole machinery of government. Communities oscillated between some form of oligarchy and some form of democracy. The security of each was constantly imperilled by the conspiracies of the opposing factions. Hence, although political life exhibits that exuberant variety of form and expression which characterizes all the intellectual products of Greece, it lacks the quality of persistent progress. Then there was no approximation to a national government, even of the federal type. The varying confederacies and hegemonies are the nearest approach to anything of the kind. What kind of national government would ultimately have arisen if Greece had not been crushed it is needless to conjecture; the true interest of Greek politics lies in the fact that the free citizens were, in the strictest sense of the word, self-governed. Each citizen took his turn at the common business of the state. He spoke his own views in the agora, and from time to time in his own person acted as magistrate or judge. Citizenship in Athens was a liberal education, such as it never can be made under any representative system.