Fifth Monarchy Men

“ We need not include hot-blooded nations of the South in order to define it as one characteristic of modern Monarchy. You may trace it in the Kings of France, Francis I., Charles IX., Henry III., Lewis XIII., Lewis XIV., in the Emperors Ferdinand I. and II., in Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart, in James and William. Still more if you consider a class of men, not much worse, according to general estimate, than their neighbours, that is, the historians. They have praise and hero-worship for nearly every one of these anointed culprits. ”

“ In reference to the subject of this work, we are told: "Monarchy is impossible and hopeless in France!" "All will be social and political changes, no guarantees of good government, stagnant politics!" "The Monarchical party is not a formidable set of men pitted against the Liberal propensities of thousands of Frenchmen!" "Their remaining true to tradition is as little likely to restore a King to the throne of France, as the Stuarts were to oust the Hanoverians!" "Men indifferent alike to the principles they profess to believe and the interests which they certainly value!" ”

“ This view of the unimportance of the Monarchy will now be held by few really intelligent men. Those take but a false and narrow view of human affairs who fail to realise the part which sentiment and enthusiasm play in the government of men; and no one who knows England will question that the throne is the centre of a great strength of personal attachment which is wholly different from any attachment to a party or a parliament. ”

“ Impartial as fate, with no loves, no hatreds, Catholics, Protestants, nobles, Parliaments, one after another were borne down before his determination to make the King, what he had not been since Charlemagne, supreme in France.
The will of the great minister mowed down like a scythe. The power of the grandees, that last remnant of feudalism, and a perpetual menace to monarchy, was swept away. One great noble after another was humiliated and shorn of his privileges, if not of his head. ”

“ I am seeking to rally round the ancient throne those modern ideas which, from being hostile, become friendly in passing through my loyalty. If the liberal opinions which abound ceased to be diverted to the profit of the reconstructed Legitimate Monarchy, Monarchical Europe would perish. ”

“ Men who had been accustomed from their childhood to regard the Monarchy of France as the type of a splendid, powerful, and enduring polity now saw a National Army constituted in complete independence of the Crown; a Representative Body assuming absolute power and denying the King's right to dissolve; the summary abrogation of the whole feudal system, which a year before had seemed endowed with perpetual vigour ”

“ It is ridiculous that nations are to wait and government be interrupted till boys grow to be men.
Whether I have too little sense to see, or too much to be imposed upon; whether I have too much or too little pride, or of anything else, I leave out of the question; but certain it is, that what is called monarchy, always appears to me a silly, contemptible thing. I compare it to something kept behind a curtain, about which there is a great deal of bustle and fuss, and a wonderful air of seeming solemnity; ”

“ Monarchy originates from the family principle, which is an eternal principle. The true king is a father. Monarchy may be reborn in Germany and elsewhere, but its powers will be modified and restricted by the times. As it existed in Germany it has been condemned to extinction by reason of its archaism.
The Church alone has the privilege of not becoming obsolete, by the constant return of mankind to an immutable doctrine. Monarchies become obsolete owing to men of the same blood, the same name and the same race who aspire to exist uninfluenced by the constant changes of the conditions of life. ”

“ The facts of the reign are few and in themselves unimportant. To the growth of the constitution it added nothing. It is nevertheless interesting as exhibiting the effects of unbridled feudalism, and as preparing the way for the great work of consolidation perfected by Henry II.; on the one hand by the misery and disgust excited by the lawless outrages of the barons; on the other by the overwhelming power thrown into the hands of the Church, which could not co-exist with any true national monarchy. ”

“ How has the Crown become such an important factor in the modern development of British peoples? The answer is not found altogether in personal considerations nor even in those of loyalty to somewhat vague and undefined principles of government. These considerations have had great weight but so also has the traditional and actual power of the Monarchy in moulding institutions and ideas during a thousand years of history. To a much greater extent than is generally understood in these democratic days has this latter influence been a factor. ”

“ All that she has suffered is forgotten. The sacrifice of individual and local liberty is hardly felt. In the splendour and power of the monarchy the nation sees its aspirations realised. Nobility, clergy, commons, abandon their old ideals, and are content that their will should be expressed, their being absorbed, their energy manifested in the will and being and operations of the King.
Institutions of independent origin give up their strength to feed his power, and exist if at all only by his sufferance. ”

“ Now Monarchy is the most universal cause of men living well, for other princes work only through the Monarch, as we have said; and it therefore follows that it is the Monarch who will most chiefly love the good of men. But that in practice the Monarch is most disposed to work Justice, who can doubt, except indeed a man-198- who understands not the meaning of the word? for if he be really a Monarch he cannot have enemies.
The principle assumed being therefore sufficiently explained, the conclusion is certain, to wit, that a Monarch is necessary that the world may be ordered for the best. ”

“ The power of the King was always maintained and the power of the barons suppressed, while room was left under the shadow of a strong monarchy for the growth of the lower classes of the nation. In the [xxxvi] same way, the Church was always kept from assuming a position of supremacy, and its subordinate relations to the State maintained. The establishment of this new form of government may be held to occupy the first period of our history since the Conquest, lasting till the reign of John. ”

“ Glancing backwards, we find that the feudal order of the Middle Ages, with its graduated authority—vested in the hands of successive orders of agricultural and military chiefs, subordinated in their turn to one supreme chief, the Sovereign of the realm—had gradually become absorbed in an absolute monarchy. ”

“ No State, however, strives to maintain this Balance of Power in the European Republic of Nations, except on account of its being unable to attain something still more desirable; and because it cannot yet realize the purpose of its individual aggrandizement, and the idea of Universal Monarchy which lies at the foundation of that purpose:—whenever it becomes more powerful it surely embraces this design. ”

“ In consequence the sovereigns of these states were obliged to govern by the help of aristocratic factions; to purchase recognition by the grant of larger and larger privileges; and for the sake of power to strip themselves of the resources which alone could give their power any meaning. But good government in the Middle Ages was only another name for a public-spirited and powerful monarchy. ”

“ Either he will or he will not be a Monarch. If he is, we have what we sought; if not, then this one again will have an equal, who is not subject to his jurisdiction, and then again we have need of a third. And so we must either go on to infinity, which is impossible, or we must come to that judge who is first and highest; by whose judgment all controversies shall be either directly or indirectly decided; and he will be Monarch or Emperor. Monarchy is therefore necessary to the world, and this the Philosopher saw when he said: "The world is not intended to be disposed in evil order ”

“ Terrified by these dangers, and unable to conceive the excellence of any government unlike our own, which was at that time a highly aristocratic limited monarchy, he did not see the truths which the French Revolution embodied, and which, had they been wisely directed and not rudely assailed, would have allowed Europe to pass into the new and inevitable phase of progress for which it is still struggling, without the constant outbreaks of passion on one side or the other which have marked the last seventy years. ”

“ With such elements how would it be possible to found a monarchy surrounded with an aristocracy? How can one speak of a balance of powers, where there are but two forces—foreign absolutism, and the people? How could one organize a constitutional monarchy where the aristocracy is without a past, and where royalty inspires neither affection nor respect? ”

“ Since then to divide the Empire would be to destroy it, because the Empire consists in one single universal Monarchy, it is manifest that he who exercises the authority of the Empire may not destroy it, and from what we have said before, it is manifest that to destroy the Empire is contrary to human right. ”

“ It was the age of what may be called the Repentance of Monarchy. That which had been selfish, oppressive, and cruel became impersonal, philanthropic, and beneficent. The strong current of eighteenth-century opinion left the State omnipotent, but obliged it to take account of public, as distinct from dynastic, interests. It was employed more or less intelligently, for the good of the people. Humanity contended for the mastery with ambition. ”

“ Even in case of such an union, as the nobles have lost the affection and attachment of their peasants, what could they do in opposition to a standing army of [152] thirty thousand men, entirely devoted to the Crown? The establishment of standing armies has universally given stability to the power of the prince, and ruined that of the great lords. No nobility in Europe can now be said to inherit political importance, or to act independent of, or in opposition to, the influence of the crown; except the temporal peers of that part of Great Britain called England. ”

“ The transition to democratic government was not easy in an old country like France, where the monarchy, in such comparatively recent times as those of Louis XIV., had been the strongest and most splendid monarchy in the world, the realisation of that ideal monarchy in which the king is not simply a figure-head, but a governor whom all in his realm obey, they being his real, not nominal, subjects, thrown under his feet by a destiny outside of choice. ”

“ But our meaning is that it is in those matters which are common to all men, that men should be ruled by one Monarch, and be governed by a rule common to them all, with a view to their peace. And the individual princes must receive this rule of life or law from him, just as the practical intellect receives its major premiss from the speculative intellect, under which it places its own particular premiss, and then draws its particular-206- conclusion, with a view to action. And it is not only possible for one man to act as we have described ”

“ He believes that France is entirely monarchical: but it will probably require great sufferings and an exhaustion of the country for the monarchy to return. The obstacle is, that the middle classes, the bourgeoisie, who now reign, dread with the monarchy a cortége of noblesse and clergy. Could they be fully persuaded that all ranks would share alike, and that no attempt would be made to revive old privileges, they would be for the monarchy; for they want trade, confidence, and a firm government, and this the republic cannot give. ”

“ 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, ”

“ Sir, I did not ascend the throne by hurling another from it; I found the crown; I picked it up out 234of the kennel, and the nation placed it on my head: respect the nation’s act. To submit facts that have so recently occurred to public discussion in the present circumstances, is to court fresh convulsions, and be an enemy to the public tranquillity. The restoration of monarchy is veiled in mystery, and must remain so; wherefore then, I pray, this new proposed proscription of conventionalists and regicides? Why are subjects of so delicate a nature again brought to light? ”

“ It is easy to conceive that a band of interested men, such as Placemen, Pensioners, Lords of the bed-chamber, Lords of the kitchen, Lords of the necessary-house, and the Lord knows what besides, can find as many reasons for monarchy as their salaries, paid at the expense of the country, amount to; but if I ask the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and down through all the occupations of life to the common labourer, what service monarchy is to him? he can give me no answer. If I ask him what monarchy is, he believes it is something like a sinecure. ”