Monarchy

"Sovereignty and kingship are never decided by academic debate. They are seized by force. The Ottoman dynasty appropriated by force the government of the Turks, and reigned over them for six centuries. Now the Turkish nation has effectively gained possession of its sovereignty… This is an accomplished fact… If those assembled here … see the matter in its natural light, we shall all agree. Otherwise, facts will still prevail, but some heads may roll."

"Royalty is a Government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. A Republic is a Government in which that attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting things."

"As long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffuse feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to the understanding."

"Monarchy is based on a divine institution: the family. What is a family if not a small monarchy? The father is the king, the mother the queen, and the children are the faithful subjects. This structure provides stability. A king is not a tyrant but a guide who encourages the qualities of the people, restrains their faults, and leads them toward a common goal – just as a good father nurtures his children."

"MONARCH, n. A person engaged in reigning. Formerly the monarch ruled, as the derivation of the word attests, and as many subjects have had occasion to learn. In Russia and the Orient the monarch has still a considerable influence in public affairs and in the disposition of the human head, but in western Europe political administration is mostly entrusted to his ministers, he being somewhat preoccupied with reflections relating to the status of his own head."

"I esteem monarchy above any other form of government, and hereditary monarchy above elective. I reverence kings, their office, their rights, their persons; and it will never be owing to the principles I am going to establish, because the character and government of a patriot king can be established on no other, if their office and their right are not always held divine, and their persons always sacred."

"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."

"It's a sign of the tragic immaturity of Britain as a nation that we should be obsessed in the year 2000 with a reactionary old woman who has never done anything except act as a parasite on the body politic."

"Many a crown Covers bald foreheads."

"Bolingbroke has one observation, which in my opinion, is not without depth and solidity. He says, that he prefers a monarchy to other governments; because you can better ingraft any description of republic on a monarchy than any thing of monarchy upon the republican forms. I think him perfectly in the right."

"The chief glory of Princes, and the chief of their Titles...is, That they are God's Deputies and Vicegerents here on earth; that they re­present him, and by consequence, that they ought to resemble him. The outward respect paid them, carries a proportion to that Character of Divinity which is on them, and that supposes an imitation of the Divine Perfections in them."

"Britain is fortunate indeed in having a breed of distinguished people ...whom people come from all over the world to see. It would be an act of cruelty to impose that function of royalty on any normal family of citizens, but seeing that there is a family which is born to it as the fruit of a long historical evolution it would be an act of great political folly to establish a Presidency...I have such a strong sense of the political usefulness of British royalty to substantial and competent progressive forces in the society."

"Excepting those who see only a boisterous celebration, this macabre work [El entierro de la sardina] makes people uncomfortable. Malraux comments that the figures are not men and women in fancy dress, they are butterflies hatched for one brief moment from a larvel world, the revelation of freedom. Goya's picture therefore symbolizes not a dream fulfilled so much as a desire to be free. You might think ironsmiths, bricklayers, stable hands, knife grinders, peasants, chambermaids, and others with little to lose would protest the heavy hand of El Deseado. Wrong. Spaniards trapped at birth at the bottom of the heap were fiercely conservative. As Klingender explains, the more these people suffered, "the more fanatical did they become in their loyalty to Church and crown, which they associated with their memories of a better life in the past." They saw in Ferdinand the restoration of Spanish values."

"Unreasonableness in royalty is a hereditary trait."

"This war [World War II] would never have come unless, under American and modernising pressure, we had driven the Habsburgs out of Austria and Hungary and the Hohenzollerns out of Germany. By making these vacuums, we gave the opening for the Hitlerite monster to crawl out of its sewer onto the vacant thrones."

"In those ancient days, when the good destinies had been decreed, and after An and Enlil had set up the divine rules of heaven and earth, then ... Enki, the master of destinies, ... founded cities and settlements throughout the earth, and made the black-headed multiply. He provided them with a king as shepherd, elevating him to sovereignty over them; the king rose as the daylight over the foreign countries."

"The tendency of an advanced civilization is in truth Monarchy. Monarchy is indeed a government which requires a high degree of civilization for its full development. . . . An educated nation recoils from the imperfect vicariate of what is called a representative government."

"Aside from Switzerland, France (after the advent of the Third Republic) and a smattering of city-states, nearly all the states of Europe between 1815 and 1917 were either empires, kingdoms, principalities or grand duchies. In all of them, the office of head of state was hereditary, not elective. Between the more or less enlightened despotism of Russia and the liberal monarchy of Norway there was a bewildering variety of constitutional forms. Yet none of these entirely deprived the hereditary sovereign of power, nor did away with that crucial institution of government, the royal court. Moreover, quite apart from their domestic political powers - which remained great in terms of patronage even if they were circumscribed in other respects - the emperors, kings, queens, princes and grand dukes had a distinctive role in the sphere of interstate relations. Despite industrialization and all the other associated phenomena of modernization, dynastic politics still mattered. Wars were fought over the successions to the dukedoms of Schleswig and Holstein and the throne of Spain – to give just two examples - not merely because they furnished ingenious statesmen with convenient pretexts for nation-building. When attention is focused on the most important of all the nineteenth-century dynasties, the Saxe-Coburgs, it becomes apparent that there was much about this supposedly modern epoch that was still distinctly early-modern."

"Constitutional monarchies, through their structure, avoid those four republican perils: excessive rigidity, as in the American system, which is reduced to near paralysis whenever the President is seriously threatened with impeachment; political conflict and competition between the Head of State, Prime Minister and Ministers, a hallmark of the French Fifth Republic (an inherently unstable model curiously followed in a number of countries); extreme instability, which often haunted the Latin versions of Westminster; and regular resort to the rule of the street to solve conflict, which permeates those systems which live under the shadow of the French revolution."

"In your opinion, India means its few princes. To me it means its teeming millions on whom depends the existence of its princes and our own. Kings will always use their kingly weapons. To use force is bred in them. They want to command, but those who have to obey commands do not want guns: and these are in a majority throughout the world."

"If instead of insisting on rights everyone does his duty, there will immediately be the rule of order established among mankind. There is no such thing as the divine right of kings to rule and the humble duty of the ryots to pay respectful obedience."

"Of the various forms of government that have prevailed in the world, a hereditary monarchy seems to present the fairest scope for ridicule."

"Americans also seem to believe that the monarchy is a kind of mediaeval hangover, encumbered by premodern notions of decorum; the reality is that the British monarchy, for good or ill, is a modern political institution — perhaps the first modern political institution."

"[[Tyranny|[T]yranny]] is a deviant form of monarchy."

"A monarch's neck should always have a noose around it. It keeps him upright."

"The British monarchy inculcates unthinking credulity and servility. It forms a heavy layer on the general encrustation of our unreformed political institutions. It is the gilded peg from which our unlovely system of social distinction and hierarchy depends. It is an obstacle to the objective public discussion of our own history. It tribalises politics. It entrenches the absurdity of the hereditary principle. It contributes to what sometimes looks like an enfeeblement of the national intelligence, drawing from our press and even from some of our poets the sort of degrading and abnegating propaganda that would arouse contempt if displayed in Zaire or Romania. It is, in short, neither dignified nor efficient."

"The first False Issue one normally encounters is the claim that it has 'no real power'. One never quite knows what 'real' is intended to mean here, but the conventions of the False Issue lead one to guess that the word is doing duty for 'formal'. Thus is the red herring introduced. A moment later, the same speaker is telling another listener of all the good things that monarchy is a 'force' for. These good things invariably turn out to be connected to power. They are things like 'stability', 'unity', 'national cohesion', 'continuity' and other things for which powerless people would find it difficult to be a force. Edmund Wilson would have had little trouble noticing, furthermore, that all the above good things are keywords for conservative and establishment values."

"We find that the presidency has become too secretive, too powerful, too trammelled, too ceremonial, too impotent or too complicated, depending on the president under discussion or the critic making the analysis. On one thing all are agreed - there is a danger of an 'imperial' or 'monarchical' presidency. An incumbent in Washington knows he is in trouble on the day that cartoonists begin to represent him as a king."

"In today's Britain, the idea that there could be a Constitution more powerful - and even sacrosanct - than any crowned head or elected politician (thus abolishing the false antithesis between hereditary monarchs and capricious presidents) is thought of as a breathtakingly new and daring idea."

"In their last ditch, the royalists object that this is all too bloodless and practical; that people need and want the element of magic and fantasy. Nobody wants life to be charmless. But the element of fantasy and magic is as primitive as it is authentic, and there are good reasons why it should not come from the state. When orchestrated and distributed in that way, it leads to disappointment and rancour, and can lead to the enthronement of sillier or nastier idols."

"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."

"Yet in fact absolute monarchy, however modernist and innovatory, found it impossible—and indeed showed few signs of wanting—to break loose from the hierarchy of landed nobles to which, after all, it belonged, whose values it symbolized and incorporated, and on whose support it largely depended. Absolute monarchy, however theoretically free to do whatever it liked, in practice belonged to the world which the enlightenment had baptized feodalite or feudalism, a term later popularized by the French Revolution. Such a monarchy was ready to use all available resources to strengthen its authority and taxable revenue within and its power outside its frontiers, and this might well lead it to foster what were in effect the forces of the rising society. It was prepared to strengthen its political hand by playing off one estate, class or province against another. Yet its horizons were those of its history, its function and its class. It hardly ever wanted, and was never able to achieve, the root-and-branch social and economic transformation which the progress of the economy required and the rising social groups called for."

"The state of Monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth; for kings are not only God's lieutenants upon earth and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself they are called gods."

"The insuperable objection to monarchy is that the king or queen is elevated, and respect is accorded, for no reason other than birth ... No one who believes either in the claims of merit or in the pursuit of equality can defend the system."

"Government by royal power is representative, and to this extent Christian. The dialectic of monarchy is world-historically both well-established and unchanging."

"Great Britain is a republic with a hereditary president, while the United States is a monarchy with an elective king."

"Monarchy was historically always the best protection against any sort of oligarchical rule and it was the historic role of monarchs to side with the lower classes against the nobility."

"One might raise the objection that monarchy is a wicked system of government because it attempts to imitate the great monarcha of the cosmos and therefore contains a certain element of blasphemy. Yet the very cell of human society, the family, in its natural form is also a patriarchal monarchy guided by the same natural-cosmic principle."

"Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe likens the democratic procedure to a small child wanting his wishes fufilled immediately, and protests in tears if there is a delay or a negative reaction. A monarch, as a member of a dynasty, can plan for the distant future, even for generations."

"From childhood, monarchs were prepared for their duties. They “inherited” their profession as traditionally as craftsmen did theirs. The son of a tailor became a tailor, and so forth. These tailors produced sometimes bad garments, occasionally excellent ones but usually passable ones. So, too, with monarchs."

"We Britons should rejoice that we have contrived to reach much legal democracy (we still need more of the economic) without losing our ceremonial Monarchy. For there, right in the midst of our lives, is that which satisfies the craving for inequality, and acts as a permanent reminder that medicine is not food. Hence a man's reaction to Monarchy is a kind of test. Monarchy can easily be "debunked", but watch the faces, mark well the accents of the debunkers. These are the men whose taproot in Eden has been cut — whom no rumor of the polyphony, the dance, can reach – men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if they desire mere equality they cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead — even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served — deny it food and it will gobble poison."

"Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their condition will allow. What are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of kingcraft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it comes from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent."

"Conservative or rightist extremist movements have arisen at different periods in modern history, ranging from the Horthyites in Hungary, the Christian Social Party of Dollfuss in Austria, Der Stahlhelm and other nationalists in pre-Hitler Germany, and Salazar in Portugal, to the pre-1966 Gaullist movements and the monarchists in contemporary France and Italy. The right extremists are conservative, not revolutionary. They seek to change political institutions in order to preserve or restore cultural and economic ones, while extremists of the centre and left seek to use political means for cultural and social revolution. The ideal of the right extremist is not a totalitarian ruler, but a monarch, or a traditionalist who acts like one. Many such movements in Spain, Austria, Hungary, Germany, and Italy have been explicitly monarchist. The supporters of these movements differ from those of the centrists, tending to be wealthier, and more religious, which is more important in terms of a potential for mass support."

"It is as if one could forget that the sovereign power resides in my person only, sovereign power of which the true nature consists of the spirit of consultation, justice, and reason; that my courts derive their existence and their authority from me alone; that the discharge of that authority, which they exercise in my name only, always remains with me and can never be employed against me; that independent and undivided legislative power belongs to me alone; that it is only by my authority that the officers of my courts proceed, not in the creation of laws, but in their registration, publication, and execution; that they are allowed to remonstrate only within the limits of their duties as good and useful councilors; that public order in its entirety emanates from me; that my people are one with me; and that the rights and interests of the nation, for which some dare to create a separate body from the monarch, are necessarily united with my rights and interests and rest only in my hands."

"Monarchy is a centralized aristocracy. At all times and in all places, the aristocracy commands. Whatever form is given to governments, birth and wealth always obtain the first rank, and nowhere do they rule more harshly than where their dominion is not founded on law. But in a monarchy, the king is the centre of this aristocracy; it is true that the aristocracy rules as elsewhere; but it rules in the king’s name, or if you will, the king is guided by the knowledge of the aristocracy."

"Monarchy is, without contradiction, the form of government that gives the most distinction to the greatest number of persons. Sovereignty in this kind of government possesses enough brilliance to be able to share a part of it, with the necessary gradations, with a crowd of its more or less distinguished agents. In a republic, sovereignty is not tangible, as it is in a monarchy; it is a purely moral concept, and its greatness is incommunicable. In addition, in republics public offices are nothing outside the capital city, and moreover, they are nothing except insofar as they are occupied by members of government. Then it is the man who honours the office, not the office that honours the man."

"Crowns do queer things to the heads beneath them."

"The Monarchy...is the secret well from which the flourishing institution of British Snobbery draws its nourishment"

"A crown Golden in show, is but a wreath of thorns. Brings dangers, troubles, cares, and sleepless nights To him who wears the regal diadem."

"The stinking puddle from which usury, thievery and robbery arises is our lords and princes. They make all creatures their property—the fish in the water, the birds in the air, the plant in the earth must all be theirs. Then they proclaim God's commandments among the poor and say, "You shall not steal.""

"[I]f we’re going to jeer at North Korea for being a de facto monarchy, we must also acknowledge the main advantage of such a system: no divisive squabbling over who has the right to rule. On my book tour for “The Cleanest Race” I used the example of my British mother: a firm supporter of the monarchy with different estimations of the various royals. She doesn’t like the idea of Charles becoming king, but accepts that it will and must happen."

"These Courts are not presumed to be the best acquainted with the rights and prerogatives of the Crown: in regard to such matters, we must look differently and respectfully to other authorities."

"The monarchy is a true system because it is bound to an absolute middle point; to an essence that belongs to humanity but not to the state."

"Whenever kingship approaches tyranny it is near its end, for by this it becomes ripe for division, change of dynasty, or total destruction, especially in a temperate climate … where men are habitually, morally and naturally free."

"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; but when, by any accident, the curtain happens to be open — and the company see what it is, they burst into laughter."

"Government by kings was first introduced into the world by the Heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom. It was the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry."

"Our Royal Family is wholesome and good, rather unimaginative Berkshire gentry...what is practised in their name is still a cult of personality, even though they are neither enriched by it or made politically powerful by it. Isn't adulation of any person, pop group, block or stone a condition we should be out of?"

"Royalty pollutes people’s minds, boy. Honest men start bowing and bobbing just because someone’s granddad was a bigger murdering bastard than theirs was."

"Royalty was like dandelions. No matter how many heads you chopped off, the roots were still there underground, waiting to spring up again."

"The monarchy is a political referee, not a political player, and there is a lot of sense in choosing the referee by a different principle from the players. It lessens the danger that the referee might try to start playing."

"There is no doubt in my mind that, from the third-person point of view, monarchy is the most reasonable form of government. By embodying the state in a fragile human person, it captures the arbitrariness and the givenness of political allegiance, and so transforms allegiance into affection."

"The gates of monarchs Are arch'd so high that giants may jet through And keep their impious turbans on."

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."

"And fearless minds climb soonest unto crowns."

"She had all the royal makings of a queen; As holy oil, Edward Confessor's crown, The rod, and bird of peace, and all such emblems Laid nobly on her."

"We are enforc'd to farm our royal realm; The revenue whereof shall furnish us For our affairs in hand."

"I give this heavy weight from off my head, And this unwieldy sceptre from my hand, The pride of kingly sway from out my heart; With mine own tears I wash away my value, With mine own hands I give away my crown, With mine own tongue deny my sacred state, With mine own breath release all duteous oaths."

"I have often thought that the case against retaining the monarchy, which I usually construct in terms of the way it institutionalises deference, can be expressed much more simply: it rots the brain."

"I believe that the royal family are a focus of patriotism, of loyalty, of affection and of esteem. That is a rare combination, and we should value it highly."

"By promoting the overthrow of the monarchy, the Allied and Associated Powers helped to destroy the political form that was most suited to the genius of the German people. A constitutional monarchy, with the color and ceremonial that are as dear to the Germans as to the English, would have given the German State a certain majesty and fascination that was denied to the Republic, largely by reason of the complete aridity of the Marxian Myth (dialectical materialism does not lend itself to picturesquely, symbolical representation). . . . The solution for Germany's internal dissentions might have been found in a popular monarchy, a Volkskaisertum. Besides, as we shall see later on, the monarchic principle was conducive to decentralization and favorable to that federal spirit which has added such variety, richness, and freedom to German life. The monarchy contained the menace of reaction, but no reaction and no despotism under a restored monarch would have been as tyrannical as the dictatorship established by the National Socialist revolution of 1933."

"This romancing about the royal family is, I fear, only a minor symptom of the softening of the brain of socialists enervated by affluence, social prestige and political power."

"I have always regarded and written of monarchy as a profoundly corrupting influence upon our national life, imposing an intricate snobbishness on our dominant classes, upon our religions, educational, military, naval and combatant services generally, burking the promotion of capable men and reserving power in the community entirely for the privileged supporters of our Hanoverian monarchy."

"Like homeopathy, most alternative therapies are closer to mysticism than to medicine. This may explain their appeal to the British royal family, whose survival depends on another irrational faith - the magic of hereditary monarchy, which was so fiercely debunked by Tom Paine and other Enlightenment pamphleteers. The Queen is said to carry homeopathic remedies with her at all times. Princess Diana was a devotee of reflexology, the belief that pressure applied to magical 'zones' in the hands and feet can heal ailments elsewhere in the body. Prince Charles has been a prominent champion of 'holistic' treatments since 1982, having been persuaded of their effectiveness by that absurd old charlatan Sir Laurens van der Post."

"...an intense propaganda by public men, in the press, and in the cinema, has been carried on day after day for years in order to establish in the people a superstitious "loyalty" towards the Royal Family...[which] makes a rational and intelligent attitude towards social problems impossible."

"Kingship, he held, demands not indolence, but manly virtue."

"In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed. And this kingdom will not be passed on to any other people. It will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, and it alone will stand forever, just as you saw that out of the mountain a stone was cut not by hands, and that it crushed the iron, the copper, the clay, the silver, and the gold. The Grand God has made known to the king what will happen in the future. The dream is true, and its interpretation is trustworthy."

"The Prussian Sovereigns are in possession of a crown not by the grace of the people, but by God's grace."

"St. George he was for England; St. Dennis was for France. Sing, "Honi soit qui mal y pense.""

"Whatever I can say or do, I'm sure not much avails; I shall still Vicar be of Bray, Whichever side prevails."

"I dare be bold, you're one of those Have took the covenant, With cavaliers are cavaliers And with the saints, a saint."

"In good King Charles's golden days When royalty no harm meant, A zealous high-churchman was I, And so I got preferment."

"Every noble crown is, and on Earth will forever be, a ."

"Fallitur egregio quisquis sub principe credet Servitutem. Nunquam libertas gratior extat Quam sub rege pio."

"'Tis a very fine thing to be father-in-law To a very magnificent three-tailed bashaw."

"La clémence est la plus belle marque Qui fasse à l'univers connaître un vrai monarque."

"I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute, From the centre all round to the sea, I am lord of the fowl and the brute."

"Der Kaiser of dis Faderland, Und Gott on high all dings commands, We two—ach! Don't you understand? Myself—und Gott."

"As yourselves your empires fall, And every kingdom hath a grave."

"Elle gouvernait, mais elle ne régnait pas."

"The Royal Crown cures not the headache."

"Quidquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi."

"On the king's gate the moss grew gray; The king came not. They call'd him dead; And made his eldest son, one day, Slave in his father's stead."

"The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth."

"'Ave you 'eard o' the Widow at Windsor With a hairy old crown on 'er 'ead? She 'as ships on the foam—she 'as millions at 'ome. An' she pays us poor beggars in red."

"La cour est comme un édifice bâti de marbre; je veux dire qu'elle est composée d'hommes fort durs mais fort polis."

"Qui ne sait dissimuler, ne sait régner."

"L'état c'est moi."

"Qui nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare."

"A crown! what is it? It is to bear the miseries of a people! To hear their murmurs, feel their discontents, And sink beneath a load of splendid care!"

"Est aliquid valida sceptra tenere manu."

"A merry monarch, scandalous and poor."

"For monarchs seldom sigh in vain."

"A king is a thing men have made for their own sakes, for quietness' sake. Just as in a Family one man is appointed to buy the meat. If every man should buy, or if there were many buyers, they would never agree; one would buy what the other liked not, or what the other had bought before, so there would be a confusion. But that charge being committed to one, he according to his discretion pleases all. If they have not what they would have one day, they shall have it the next, or something as good."

"Omnes sub regno graviore regnum est."

"Hail, glorious edifice, stupendous work! God bless the Regent, and the Duke of York!"

"Broad-based upon her people's will, And compassed by the inviolate sea."

"Titles are abolished; and the American Republic swarms with men claiming and bearing them."

"Le premier qui fut roi, fut un soldat heureux; Qui sert bien son pays, n'a pas besoin d'aïeux."

"A partial world will listen to my lays, While Anna reigns, and sets a female name Unrival'd in the glorious lists of fame."

"The King of England is one of those princes who hath an Imperial Crown; what is that? It is not to do what he will; no, but it is that he shall not be punished in his own person if he doth that which in itself is unlawful."

"God himself, with reverence be it spoken, is not an absolute but a limited monarch, limited by the rule which infinite wisdom prescribes to infinite power."

"An hiatus in government is so detested and abhorred, that the law says, "the King never dies," that there may never be a "cesser" of regal functions for a moment."

"A people whom Providence hath cast together into one island or country are in effect one great body politic, consisting of head and members, in imitation of the body natural, as is excellently set forth in the statute of appeals, made 24 H. 8, c. 12, which stiles the King the supreme head, and the people a body politic (these are the very words), compact of all sorts and degrees of men, divided into spirituality and temporality. And this body never dies."

"It is true that the King never dies; the demise is immediately followed by the succession; there is no interval: the Sovereign always exists; the person only is changed."

"All Governments rest mainly on public opinion, and to that of his own subjects every wise Sovereign will look. The opinion of his subjects will force a Sovereign to do his duty, and by that opinion will he be exalted or depressed in the politics of the world."

"The Queen is a subject."

"Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi."

"The person of the King is by law made up of two bodies: a natural body, subject to infancy, infirmity, sickness and death; and a political body, powerful, perfect and perpetual."

"The Sovereign can only act by advisers, and through the instrumentality of those who are neither infallible nor impeccable— answerable, indeed, for all that the irresponsible Sovereign may do, but liable to err through undue influence, and to be swayed by improper motives."

"The master is answerable for the negligence of his servant, because it may be considered to have arisen from his own misconduct or negligence in selecting or retaining a careless servant; that principle cannot apply to the Sovereign, to whom negligence or misconduct cannot be imputed, and for which if they occur in fact, the law affords no remedy."

"The law was the golden met-wand, and measure to try the causes of the subjects; and which protected his Majesty in safety and in peace."

"Thou settest a crown of pure gold on his head."

"And when they had platted a , they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews!"

"My crown is in my heart, not on my head; Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones, Not to be seen. My crown is called content; A crown it is that seldom kings enjoy."

"Within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court."

"In his livery Walked crowns and crownets; realms and islands were As plates dropped from his pocket."

"The fundamental article of my political creed is, that despotism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power, is the same in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical junto, and a single emperor; equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody, and in every respect diabolical."

"Down with the power of the despot, wherever his stronghold may be."

"Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so long as Individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality, is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men."

"When despotism has established itself for ages in a country, as in France, it is not in the person of the king only that it resides. It has the appearance of being so in show, and in nominal authority; but it is not so in practice and in fact. It has its standard everywhere. Every office and department has its despotism, founded upon custom and usage. Every place has its Bastille, and every Bastille its despot. The original hereditary despotism resident in the person of the king, divides and sub-divides itself into a thousand shapes and forms, till at last the whole of it is acted by deputation. This was the case in France; and against this species of despotism, proceeding on through an endless labyrinth of office till the source of it is scarcely perceptible, there is no mode of redress. It strengthens itself by assuming the appearance of duty, and tyrannises under the pretence of obeying."

"Despots themselves don't deny that freedom is a wonderful thing, they only want to limit it to themselves; they argue that everyone else is unworthy of it."

"Think'st thou there is no tyranny but that Of blood and chains? The despotism of vice— The weakness and the wickedness of luxury— The negligence—the apathy—the evils Of sensual sloth—produce ten thousand tyrants, Whose delegated cruelty surpasses The worst acts of one energetic master, However harsh and hard in his own bearing."

"Men are still men. The despot's wickedness Comes of ill teaching, and of power's excess,— Comes of the purple he from childhood wears, Slaves would be tyrants if the chance were theirs."

"ABDICATION, n. An act whereby a sovereign attests his sense of the high temperature of the throne."

"Obedience to a person, institution or power (heteronomous obedience) is submission; it implies the abdication of my autonomy and the acceptance of a foreign will of judgment in place of my own. Obedience to my own reason or conviction (autonomous obedience) is not an act of submission but one of affirmation. My conviction and my judgment, if authentically mine, are part of me. If I follow them rather than the judgment of others, I am being myself; hence the word obey can be applied only in a metaphorical sense and with a meaning which is fundamentally different from the one in the case of “heteronomous obedience.”"

"It would have been easier for me to make the great gesture of abdication. I would have been spared many a denunciation. But to leave a sinking ship, especially one that needed her captain more than ever, was a step I could not bring myself to take."

"For me, it [being Queen] is a responsibility that does not include abdication. It is a task one has been given and taken upon oneself, and one does not relinquish it because it would perhaps be convenient personally to be rid of some of it."

"No ruler is ever really dethroned by his subjects. No hand but his own ever takes the crown from his head... When he ceases to lead... the revolt which casts him from power is only the outward manifestation of his previous abdication."