Davidic monarchy

“ While in London he wrote a “Defence of the American Constitution,” which proved to be a laudation of the British form of government rather than that of the United States. In his “Discourses on Davilla,” he advocated a powerful centralized executive and a system of titles. He was frequently charged with favoring a monarchy and a hereditary legislature like the House of Lords. His political opponents nicknamed him “the Duke of Braintree”—Braintree being the Massachusetts town where he lived. ”

“ But though he retained the right of deciding in the last instance, David seems to have appointed the princes and judges of the tribes; he charged certain of his adherents with the duty of giving justice to the tribes and communities, although, of course, every man had the right of appeal from his decision to the decision of the king. Jurisdiction and administration not yet being separated, we may suppose that a regular government, which secured to the throne the execution of its will and of the orders given, was established by this means already in David's reign. ”

“ Diocletian appreciated this disadvantage himself, and remarked that the sovereign, shut up in his palace, cannot know the truth, but must rely on what his attendants and officers tell him. We may also remark that absolute monarchy, by its very nature, tends in this direction; for absolute monarchy naturally tends to a dynasty, and a dynasty implies that there must sooner or later come to the throne weak men, inexperienced in public affairs, reared up in an atmosphere of flattery and illusion, easily guided by intriguing chamberlains and eunuchs. ”

“ Enthusiasm for a benevolent despot is mostly confined to those who have not enjoyed the privilege of living under such autocratic government.
On the other hand, there was no temptation to flatter any living Davidic king, so that the semi-Divine character of the kingship of David is not set forth after the gross and almost blasphemous style of Roman emperors or Turkish sultans. It is indeed said that the people worshipped Jehovah and the king; but the essential character of Jewish thought made it impossible that the ideal king should sit “in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God.” ”

“ But when thou comest to thy crown and throne thou needest not got forth alone upon thy birth-night, but send out thy gifts with love and plenty."
"I know not, my mother."
"But all will be thine? What said the angel: 'The Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David; and of his kingdom there shall be no end!' It may be soon, we know not, for lo! King David was but a boy, and at his daily toil, when he was called to reign over the house of Jacob. Forget not, thou art born the King." ”

“ For our laws may be undermined, but can never be openly overturned. Almost every tyrant, that sat on the English throne has fallen by that very constitution he laboured to destroy. And it would greatly conduce to the preservation of our liberties, were the people as jealous of the proceedings of their Judges, as of the prerogatives of their Princes. It is not the throne alone, but the woolsack that we must watch. Our Monarchs direct the limbs, our Parliaments the head, but our Judges are entrusted with the heart itself of the Constitution, the Law. ”

“ Herbert, while alluding to the actual occupant of the throne with all the superstitious reverence which a degraded public opinion could possibly exact, had yet the manhood to affirm his conviction that a republic is preferable to a monarchy in a community such as ours. ”

“ Such was the political education of this queen, who saw in the cabinet of the king of France the same errors committed as in the house of the Medici. The dauphin opposed his father in everything; he was a bad son. He forgot the cruel but most vital maxim of royalty, namely, that thrones need solidarity; and that a son who creates opposition during the lifetime of his father must follow that father’s policy when he mounts the throne. ”

“ Throughout Southern, Central and Southwestern Europe, republicanism impatiently awaits the time to burst forth, and sweep among the debris of the past all traces of monarchy. The country over which the Roman eagles triumphed will again be under a republican form of government, improved upon that of Rome by 2,000 years of successful experiment. Russia will then occupy a central position between the republics of Europe and Asia, and its emperors be the last to yield their crowns. ”

“ From David to our time, the kings have been called: the vocation of the peoples is commencing. The brief and small exceptions of the Greek, Carthaginian, Roman Republics, with slaves, do not take away the fact that, in antiquity, the monarchic state was the normal state of the globe. The whole of modern society, since the banner of the French kings has ceased to exist, is laying aside the monarchy. ”

“ These words appear in Chapter XXVI., in the Second Part:
"It passes as unquestionable, in a certain party, that a revolution of the nature of our own can end only by a change of dynasty; others, more moderate, say by a change in the order of right of succession to the Crown."
As I was finishing my work, appeared the ordinance of [Pg 7] the 5th of September 1816 [11] : this measure dispersed the few Royalists assembled to reconstruct the Legitimate Monarchy. ”

“ One uniform method characterized the change from monarchy to democracy. An oligarchy of nobles would overthrow the monarchy, and then some one noble would overthrow the oligarchy and establish the cause of the people. ”

“ It was also thought that if a monarchy were to be established it would have a better chance of enduring if the dynasty postponed its accession until the wounds from which the country was suffering should begin to heal, and that the all-important choice of a sovereign should be postponed to a calmer period. ”

“ Now I shall refer to the manner in which we will strengthen the dynastic roots of King David so as to cause this dynasty to endure until the last day. This method will consist chiefly of the same principles which enabled our Wise Men to conserve their power to cope with universal problems and to guide the education of the thoughts of humanity at large. ”

“ Nor, while the establishment of the crown itself is built upon the legal constitution of this nation, can it be otherwise here: that prince that governs here and not by law, may be said rather to oppress than to govern; rather to overrule, than to rule over his people. Now it cannot without great and unjustifiable violence to her majesty's just government, be suggested, that we are in any danger of oppression during the righteous administration of her majesty's reign. ”

“ Now, of course, in the narrowly limited domain of that strange creation, a constitutional monarchy, there is far less opportunity for the Sovereign's direct influence on the Subject than there was in the ancient kingdoms of which David was thinking in his psalm. The marvellous progress of Britain during these sixty years is due, not to our Sovereign, but to a multitude of strenuous workers and earnest thinkers in a hundred different departments, as well as to the evolution of the gifts that come down to us from our ancient inheritance of freedom. ”

“ CHAPTER XXVI.—A new Prince in a City or Province of which he has taken Possession, ought to make Everything new.
Whosoever becomes prince of a city or State, more especially if his position be so insecure that he cannot resort to constitutional government either in the form of a republic or a monarchy, will find that the best way to preserve his princedom is to renew the whole institutions of that State; that is to say, to create new magistracies with new names, confer new powers, and employ new men, and like David when he became king, exalt the humble and depress the great, ”

“ The envoys of the people thronged about the little Dauphin to offer him their loyalty and homage, which the Prince received with such grace and childish dignity that the enthusiasm broke out afresh, and thousands of hearts vowed unswerving allegiance to this child whose innocent breast seemed to harbor no thoughts but those of peace and good-will to men. The King and Queen embraced each other, many eyes were filled with tears, and a general reconciliation seemed to have closed forever the abyss of the Revolution which had threatened to engulf unhappy France. ”

“ The God who works in unbroken time cycles, though men remit their tasks at the beck of sleep or death, pushes forth His forceful, faultless projects with a tireless consistency that knows no cross purposes. A real and present kingdom is that with which this Pentecost we have to do. We are not, at that time when they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah and spread them before the sun. David’s throne is a verity, though long incrusted with neglects; it is a symbol of power in a dynasty that is ordained to overspread the earth. ”

“ This conception could only have arisen after the founding of the monarchy and only when the real David had faded far enough into the past to be idealised. It was in their experience of the imperfection of the Kings of Israel and Judah that the Prophets saw the need for a true kingly head; and in the oppression of military kingdoms, the need for a mighty warrior. And yet it is not a king who fills the picture of the future, so much as a kingdom. ”

“ On the Continent, in first-class countries, constitutional royalty has never lasted out of one generation. Louis Philippe, Victor Emmanuel, and Leopold are the founders of their dynasties; we must not reckon in constitutional monarchy any more than in despotic monarchy on the permanence in the descendants of the peculiar genius which founded the race. As far as experience goes, there is no reason to expect an hereditary series of useful limited monarchs.
If we look to theory, there is even less reason to expect it. ”

“ When in that year some of the great families raised the Duchess of Courland to the throne on condition of her ceding part of her power to a supreme council, the lower ranks of the Noblesse compelled her to tear up the constitution which she had signed! Those who dislike the autocratic power dislike the idea of an aristocratic oligarchy infinitely more. Nobles and people alike seem to hold instinctively the creed of the French philosopher, who thought it better to be governed by a lion of good family than by a hundred rats of his own species. ”

“ The government of Russia is an absolute hereditary monarchy; in other words, the Czar or Emperor, is the legislative, executive, and judicial power of the empire, which is the same thing as saying that his will is the law of the land. But it ought to be added, that certain traditions and rules are considered of binding force by the sovereigns; as the [149] law of succession to the crown, established by the Emperor Paul; otherwise the Czar might select the next ruler; every sovereign, his wife and children, must be of the Greek church. ”

“ His reign will be like the radiant dawn of a cloudless day, and his land like the spring pastures when the fresh, green grass is wooed out of the baked earth by the combined influence of rain and sunshine. David's little kingdom was surrounded by giant empires, in which brute force, wielded by despotic will, ground men down, or squandered their lives recklessly. But the King of Israel had learned, partly by the experience of his own reign, and partly by divine inspiration, that such rulers are not true types of a monarch after God's own heart. This ideal king is neither a warrior nor a despot. ”

“ But if the citizen of Geneva drew his prediction of the extinction of monarchy in Europe from that predilection for democracy which assumes that a republic must necessarily produce more happiness to the people than a monarchy, then 273 we say that the fatal experiment was again repeated since the prediction, and the fact proved not true! The excess of democracy inevitably terminates in a monarchical state; and were all the monarchies in Europe at present republics, a philosopher might safely predict the restoration of monarchy! ”

“ In the circle of his friends Charles was called King David; when compared with his imperial predecessors he must be placed not beside the Julians or the Flavians, but beside Constantine or Theodosius, the founders of the Roman state church. Thus the ideal of the new imperial state is nothing less than the kingdom of God on earth, in which the emperor is appointed by God himself as his lieutenant, in order that he may, in accordance with the divine intentions, guide and govern the people. ”

“ The Dauphin thanked them! If the King of England could play the hunter, Charles of Valois could play the fox; et voilà tout! "I appeal," said the Dauphin, "to the sharp end of my sword!" Thereupon he was denounced as a treacherous assassin, to be deprived of all rights to the Crown and of all property. The confiscation extended to his followers, and to all the Armagnac party, living or dead; and the good citizens of Paris, fleeced to the bare skin, helped themselves as best they might from the [Pg 31] possessions of the outlawed Prince and his recreant nobles. ”

“ Thank God that the right of the British Sovereign to his illustrious throne rests on a firmer basis than the fictitious genealogies made out by Anglo-Israelites.
IV. The same Scriptures, which speak of the perpetuity of the Davidic seed and throne, speak also of the unceasing continuance of the priesthood. "Thus saith Jehovah, David shall never want a man to sit upon the throne of the House of Israel; neither shall the priests the Levites want a man before Me to offer burnt-offerings and to burn oblations, and to do sacrifice continually.... ”