NOTES AND REFERENCES

1.  The Pharos of Egypt, Alexander the Great, the pagan Roman emperors and the emperors of Japan are some instances. Victory in combat or war has generally been regarded as a sign of Divine Favor, though not a certain index. The forces of evil symbolized by the Devil are deemed to be in perpetual conflict with the good and powerful God whose wisdom is inscrutable. Evil sometimes triumphs over good, but these reverses are transient and are meant to test the patience of the faithful. In some cases such reverses are a Divine punishment for the human lapses of the faithful.

2.  King Charles I was executed in 1659, and Cromwell, later on, became the Protector of the Commonwealth. The restoration of Charles II took place in 1650. His brother, James II, was overthrown in the Glorious Revolution of 1688—a turning point in British and world history.

3. Parliamentary and electoral reforms were introduced very gradually in Britain. The Reform Act of 1832 first gave the right of vote to the urban middle class males. The second Reform Act of 1867 extended the franchise to the lower middle class males in both urban and rural sectors, and also practically the entire urban labour Class, The third Reform Act of 1884 further extended the franchise to agricultural labour, thus establishing adult male franchise in Britain. The Act of 1911 merely ensured the supremacy of the House of Commons over the House of Lords. Women got the right of vote partially in 1918 fully in 1928.

4. The Magna Carta is the first and fundamental charter of the demand for the rule of law ever made in world history by the subjects of a monarch. The provisions of the charter aimed at controlling the arbitrary powers of the monarch—religious, executive and judicial, and giving to all subjects a sense of freedom and security within the bounds of law.

5. Jeremy Bentham (d.1832) was a distinguished English thinker, reformer and statesman who is regarded as the father of the ethical and political philosophy termed 'Utilitarianism'. John Stuart Mill (d.1873) made important contributions to this movement of thought and reform. Utilitarianism aimed at emancipating the human mind from the grip of fixed ideas of right and wrong rooted in blind faith or intuition. These two thinkers made the observed consequences of human acts the final test of right and wrong in ethics, politics and religion.

6. Karl Marx (d.1883) also stressed consequences of ideas as the real criterion of their validity or acceptability. Marx also championed people's power, but he thought that it would never accrue to the people in the real sense without violent revolution against the establishment. He further thought that people's welfare was not possible without state ownership and control of the entire means of production. The last two claims are far from being evident.

7. History abounds in instance after instance of this crucial truth. Thus the institutionalization of authoritarianism is fatal. No matter how good and sincere a person might be, to begin with, the exercise of power over a long period will have a corrupting influence. Lord Acton's famous dictum, ‘Power tends to corrupt, and ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely', deserves the wide acclaim it has come to enjoy.

7(a)This is the near normal position in politics. Very rarely the choice in politics lies between absolute good or evil.