Monarchy Quotes - page 8
In all ages, whatever the form and name of government, be it monarchy, republic, or democracy, an oligarchy lurks behind the façade; and Roman history, Republican or Imperial, is the history of the governing class. The marshals, diplomats, and financiers of the Revolution may be discerned again in the Republic of Augustus as the ministers and agents of power, the same men but in different garb. They are the government of the New State.
Ronald Syme
We know well that the Primitive Church in her greatest purity were but voluntary congregations of believers, submitting themselves to the Apostles, and after to other Pastors, to whom they did minister of their Temporals, as God did move them. So as Ecclesiasticus, cap. 17, says, God appointed a Ruler over every people, when he divided nations of the whole Earth. And therefore if a people will refuse all government, it were against the law of God; and yet if a popular State will receive a Monarchy it stands well with the Law of God.
Sir Henry Hobart, 1st Baronet
Of these denials of European tradition one is especially important: that is the refutation of the demand that the political and social order and the authority set up under it have to justify themselves as benefiting their subjects. Hardly any other concept or idea of our past is held up to so much ridicule by fascism as that of the justification of power. ‘Power is its own justification' is regarded as self-evident. Nothing shows better how far the totalitarian revolution has already gone than the general acceptance of this new maxim throughout Europe as a matter of course... Not even the most fanatical advocates of absolute monarchy would have dared to justify the sovereign otherwise.
Peter Drucker
The interests of the state alone have guided me, and it has been a calumny when publicists, even well-meaning, have accused me of having ever advocated an aristocratic system. I have never regarded birth as a substitute for want of ability; whenever I have come forward on behalf of landed property, it has not been in the interests of proprietors of my own class, but because I see in the decline of agriculture one of the greatest dangers to our permanence as a state. The ideal that has always floated before me has been a monarchy which should be so far controlled by an independent national representation-according to my notion, representing classes or callings-that monarch or parliament would not be able to alter the existing statutory position before the law separately but only communi consensu; with publicity, and public criticism, by press and Diet, of all political proceedings.
Otto von Bismarck
The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace, and it conspires against it in times of adversity. It's more despotic than monarchy. It's more insolent than autocracy. It's more selfish than bureaucracy. ... Corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow.
Abraham Lincoln
The right of parliament to legislate for us cannot be accounted for upon any reasonable grounds. The constitution of Great Britain is very properly called a limited monarchy, the people having reserved to themselves a share in the legislature, as a check upon the regal authority, to prevent its degenerating into despotism and tyranny. The very aim and intention of the democratical part, or the house of commons, is to secure the rights of the people. Its very being depends upon those rights. Its whole power is derived from them, and must be terminated by them.
Alexander Hamilton
America has been conquered in Germany, where Prince Ferdinand's victories have shattered the whole military power of that great military monarchy, France. Recall the troops from Germany, and I should be robbed of my honour, while England, by deserting her allies, would be deserted by God and man. And, honour apart, nothing but that spectre of an invasion which the Ministry of 1755 had not constancy enough to look at, frightened us out of Minorca. So would it be again, if the troops of France found themselves at liberty to quit Germany.
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
I know what is said by the several admirers of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, which are the rule of one, a few, and many, and are the three common ideas of government, when men discourse on the subject. But I chuse to solve the controversy with this small distinction, and it belongs to all three: Any government is free to the people under it (whatever be the frame) where the law rules, and the people are a party to those laws, and more than this is tyranny, oligarchy, or confusion.
William Penn
As long as the aristocracy is healthy, the name of the sovereign sacred to it, and it loves the monarchy passionately, the State is unshakeable, whatever be the qualities of the king. But once it loses its greatness, its pride, its energy, its faith, the spirit withdraws, the monarchy is dead, and its cadaver is left to the worms.
Joseph de Maistre
It seems to me, upon the whole matter, that to save or redeem a nation under such circumstances from perdition, nothing less is necessary than some great, some extraordinary conjuncture of ill fortune, or of good, which may purge, yet so as by fire. Distress from abroad, bankruptcy at home, and other circumstances of like nature and tendency, may beget universal confusion. Out of confusion order may arise: but it may be the order of a wicked tyranny, instead of the order of a just monarchy. Either may happen: and such an alternative, at the disposition of fortune, is sufficient to make a stoic tremble! We may be saved indeed by means of a very different kind; but these means will not offer themselves, this way of salvation will not be opened to us, without the concurrence, and the influence of a P.
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
It follows, therefore, that he who breaks the laws of his country resists the ordinance of God, that is, the law of his nature. God has instituted neither monarchy, nor aristocracy, nor democracy, nor mixed government: but tho God has instituted no particular form of government among men, yet by the general laws of his kingdom, he exacts our obedience to the laws of those communities to which each of us is attached by birth, or to which we may be attached by a subsequent and lawful engagement.
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
Among many reasons which determine me to prefer monarchy to every form of government, this is a principal one. When monarchy is the essential form, it may be more easily and more usefully tempered with aristocracy or democracy, or both, than either of them, when they are the essential forms, can be tempered with monarchy. It seems to me, that the introduction of a real permanent monarchical power, or any thing more than the pageantry of it, into either of these, must destroy them and extinguish them, as a great light extinguishes a less. Where it may easily be shewn, and the true form of our government will demonstrate, without seeking any other example, that very considerable aristocratical and democratical powers may be grafted on a monarchical stock, without diminishing the lustre, or restraining the power and authority of the prince, enough to alter in any degree the essential form.
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
Through my childhood and adolescence the land and the buildings of England and Wales were perceived by me always somehow in a fourth dimension, the dimension of time, as if they were the stage and scenery of the long epic of the English kings. The predominant role of the monarchy and its bearers was as unifiers: they seemed to be the nation-creators, and later the empire-creators, both actively, by force and policy, and passively, as the unifying focus of sentiment and the source of lawful authority.
Enoch Powell
Speaking generally, he holds dominion, to whom are entrusted by common consent affairs of state - such as the laying down, interpretation, and abrogation of laws, the fortification of cities, deciding on war and peace, &c. But if this charge belong to a council, composed of the general multitude, then the dominion is called a democracy; if the council be composed of certain chosen persons, then it is an aristocracy ; and, if, lastly, the care of affairs of state, and, consequently, the dominion rest with one man, then it has the name of monarchy.
Baruch Spinoza
I do not look upon the French Revolution as a question subject to the ordinary calculation of politics; it is a thing which is to be; and, as all human experience has verified that the new doctrine ever finally subverts the old, as the Mosaic law subverted idolatry, as Christianity subverted the Jewish dispensation, as the Reformation subverted popery, so, I am firmly convinced, the doctrine of republicanism will finally subvert that of monarchy and establish a system of just and rational liberty on the ruins of the thrones of the despots of Europe.
Theobald Wolfe Tone
I would therefore abolish the monarchy and House of Lords, dispossess ... the public schools and Oxford and Cambridge; end the regimental system in the army ... disestablish the Church; replace the Inns of Court ... abolish the Honours List. What is more, we should take the offensive on all these fronts simultaneously: for if the apostles of social change eschew violence, they must embrace speed. Our society is a many-headed hydra: it is no use chopping off the heads singly, for while you are dealing with the second or third, the first will grow again.
Paul Johnson
