IS MONARCHY AN ANACHRONISM?

Evening Star, Issue 4063, 4 March 1876, Page 2 (Supplement)

IS MONARCHY AN ANACHRONISM?

The following is the * Queenslander’s ’ review of the article in ‘Fraser,’ headed as above, the authorship of which was erroneously ascribed to Sir Julius Vogel Such is''the heading of a very able article in the October number of ‘Fraser’s Magazine.’ The letters “ J.V.” are attached to it. It is not very long ago since President Grant led us to infer, from some utterances of his in “Messages" to Congress, that the whole world was going very soon to become one vast Republic, after the model of the United States. Ibis, perhaps, scarcely necessary to remark that this is not an opinion universally entertained by intelligent persons, even on the United States side of the Atlantic ; much less is it held by experienced politicians in Europe, or even, as we now see, by one of the most distinguished politicians of the new Pacific States. That the old idea of monarchy based upon the divine right of kings, and resting on the authority of the Church, is clean gone for ever, no sensible man of experience will deny. But, between this idea of a monarchy and the Republic of Plato, or any other philosopher, there are now such varieties of mixed monarchies and mixed republics, that we are not at all surprised at the fact that the writer hesitated before committing himself to the task of overthrowing the monarchy He has a theory that many—indeed that most- thoughtful young men in the United Kingdom between eighteen and four-and-twenty are at heart Republicans ; that they then begin to think of marrying, and possibly do many; and that when between the age of thirty and forty they settle down complacently to accept the monarchial institutions under which they live as, on the whole, preferable to any possible republic which might with infinite risk be created. John Bright at thirty is, ■ of course, a different man to John Bright at Sixty. It is probably a happy thing for’ the world that everybody is not a young John Bright or an old John Bright. We thus arrive at a compromise which produces a more harmonious whole; and there is more harmony, perhaps, because a wider spirit of compromise is supposed to be possible under a monarchy than under a republic. He is not content with looking at tfie question from the mere conservative point of view, as a thing which is, and that, therefore, whatever is is best, as the optimist say. .He is not so lazy as all that. Indeed, he admits that, if it could be' proved that a republic was likely to be more pacific (soenamqred is he of peqce), he would- declare for a republic ; but on this ground, as well as on others, he prefers a monarchy for 7 its own sake and states his reasons for doing so. Qne leading line of the argument adopted refers to the superior applicability of a monarchy to what are called complex states of society. Republican Government is held to be that which i$ suited for a people njainly of one soft. “Wherever,” it is said, “ there exists a free commercial city, a free colony, a body of Nonconformist settlers, or a gold diggers’ camp, you may expect to have a Republic established. Qn the other hand, where you have a large complex society, composed of persons of different races and creeds, and very various tastes and degrees of culture, of Conservative and progressive parties, of agricultural, manufacturing, and trading interests, of provident and improvident, moral, immoral, and criminal classes, the whole can only be effectively bound together by the strong mediating and balancing government which we call a monarchy.’’ But societies, whether religious pr political, however simple in their primitive origin—and republicanism is admitted to be the. primitive, unconstrained form—are sure, the writer admits, to become mpre complex,.and organic. “This,” he says, “has plainly been the case with the various States of the American Union; the first settlers, both in the older and newer States, were fpr the most part small cultivators, people of one class, and well suited, by a similarity of habits, feelings, and interests, tp live together peaceably, and settle their public business by a democratic convention. All this, however, is now changed. The rich are the richer, the poor are the poorer; there are criminal , classes, requiring strong repression; there are powerful religious parties, antagonistic to one another; there are rival races jealousy between the agricultural, manufacturing, and railway interests. The States are less, the Union is more. The nation itself is naturally becoming more national; it is being welded into, one, like a European power, and thus the. States are forming together a great -sum of social complexity which only the machinery l of a monarchial Government can effectually -balance and 'control. The late fratricidal struggle, in which the Southern rod of ■ hickory was broken by tho Northern rod of iron, proves

as clearly as the civil war in La Vendee, the utter unfitness of a republican system of government to maintain harmony in a great complex community ; the contiuance of that system for a much longer period in the United States is- impossible, the return to the political arrangements of the older nations of the world inevitable.” This is, of course, a very different version of the future than that forecast by President Grant, but it is a forecast made by a elf-made man—one who is, in his way, quite as much a product of the popular will as the great j Ulysses himself. According to De Tocque- ; ville and the political philosophers of the last the world is marching on to ; democracy, and in each community the rate of progression is in accordance with the growth of popular enlightenment. The writer, on the other hand, fresh from the antipodes, “a captain of industry,” as we suppose he might not unworthily style himself, takes an entirely different view of political tendencies. “Communities,” he says, “do not really become democratic according as they advance in civilisation, but as circumstances permit them to live in ‘an unorganised condition.” Hence he infers that the Americans are more democratic than the Germans, not because they are more intelligent or cultivated, blit because j they have the undisturbed run of a whole continent, and are perfectly secure from ini vasion. Change the conditions under which they exist, and the whole of their politics would be changed.