Their authority at all times was keyed up to the pitch of a great emergency.
It was supposed to be the immediate expression of the common weal.

The common weal was identified with the security of society and the state.
The security of the state dictated the supreme law.

The very authority, consequently, which was created to preserve order and the Balance of Power gradually became an effective cause of internal and external disorder.

It became a source not of security, but of individual and social insecurity, because a properly organized machinery for exercising such a power and redeeming such a vast responsibility had not as yet been wrought.
The rulers of the continental states in the eighteenth century explained and excused every important action they took by what was called "La Raison d'Etat"-- that is, by reasons connected with the public safety which justified absolute authority and extreme measures.

But as a matter of fact this absolute authority, instead of being confined in its exercise to matters in which the public safety was really concerned, was wasted and compromised chiefly for the benefit of a trivial domestic policy and a merely dynastic foreign policy.