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This book has its genesis
in the speeches of two debates, the first of which was held in
September 1992 in the Legislative Council Chamber of Queensland's
Old Parliament House. In that chamber, itself a dignified casualty
of misguided constitutional "reform", the author appeared
on behalf of the Queensland branch of the Royal Commonwealth
Society against members of what was then known as the Australian
Republican Party, to argue in favour of retention of the Crown.
The second debate occurred four months later in the bleak English
January of 1993, in the rooms of Wadham College, Oxford, during
the World Universities Debating Championships. There he was required
to devise a passionate defence of republicanism, and denounce
constitutional monarchy in the United Kingdom and Australia.
The unusual experience of having argued both sides of the debate,
having endeavoured to construct the strongest possible case for
each side, left him a confirmed constitutional monarchist. This
manuscript was embarked upon to explain the reasons for this. It swiftly grew to
be a more impassioned and polemical work than a mere "explanation".
The more research undertaken, the more the implications of a
republic were contemplated, the more the manuscript acquired
the nature of a vehement exposition of argument and belief, a
political manifesto advocating retention of the constitutional
monarchy. In Leviathan, the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes
once described the state of "nature", the plight of
humans without ordered society, as being a condition "where
every man is enemy to every man... continual fear, and danger
of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish and short". Yet many ordered societies create circumstances
which fulfil this description: not only the totalitarian regimes
which have disgraced the face of this earth throughout the 20th
Century, and in places like Chinese-occupied Tibet continue to
do so, but also societies under democratic constitutions. A long
walk through the streets of West South-Central Los Angeles (it
can be done, if you're as foolish as this writer in attempting
it) irresistibly summons Hobbes' description to mind. Although
the misery of South-Central and inner cities like it throughout
the United States are in large part due to the profound inequities
which exist in that society, they also owe a great deal to explicit
measures adopted in the US Constitution— measures like the
Second Amendment which, as shall be discussed, were not taken
by accident but were instead a calculated risk by its authors,
a cool-headed acknowledgment of the dangers posed by a republican
form of government. The leaders of the republican movement in
Australia are unwilling even to acknowledge such dangers, let
alone present the Australian people with attempted solutions. To write a proper work
of political philosophy is to endanger public perception of the
author's character. History remembers Machiavelli as an Italian
cad not because of anything he actually did, but because he was
astute enough to realise Italy lay in a lamentable state of disorder
and oppression and attempted to devise a theory of politics to
remedy this condition, realizing that virtues like compassion
and conscience weren't conducive to survival in the Renaissance.
For the offence of intellectual honesty, writing down his analysis
without sugaring the medicine, this scholar and diplomat has
been condemned as being as dark as the tyrants he studied. Monologue,
particularly polemical monologue, becomes rapidly a bore. Invoking
whatever occult powers of literature a writer can invoke, I have
summoned the ghost of Machiavelli to sit opposite me while I
write this manuscript: to interject from time to time, and to
keep me company while I write. His presence reminds me whenever
I stray, that lucidity of thought is a more potent weapon against
oppression than a fistful of warm fuzzy sentiment. At the moment it isn't
intellectually fashionable— particularly among the sort
of people who find nothing incongruous in the phrase "intellectually
fashionable"— to oppose republicanism. But ambiguity
dwells in the very word "republicanism", thrown about
so casually in the popular press. One must distinguish between
a republican form of government, and what might be described
as the republican ideal. The republican form of government,
so eagerly championed by the Australian Republican Movement,
is to extinguish the hereditary component of the Crown and invest
(in the minimalist model) all the powers of the Crown in a figure
elected either by Parliament or the nation. In the more radical
republican models these powers of the Crown are themselves to
be dismantled, so that the Prime Minister acquires more power.
The republican ideal (res publica , government for the
public good) on the other hand is perhaps best summed up in Abraham
Lincoln's words in his Gettysburg address as being government
"...of the people, by the people, for the people". It is this ideal which is the valuable part of the constitutional debate, for the republican form of government is only valuable if it enhances this democratic ideal in our society. The central proposition to this book is that a republican form of government imposed upon Australia will not only fail to enhance this ideal, but may very well destroy democratic government in this country as it has been destroyed in so many other countries throughout the world. Underneath this manifesto
rests the proposition that the Crown of the Westminster system,
represented in various form throughout the world, is no mere
relic imposed by history but can and should be defended in contemporary
times and terms as an intrinsically valuable component of the
parliamentary government of sovereign countries, government established
to express the will and preserve the liberties of its citizens.
This proposition becomes clearer to be seen when we look away
from the class obsessions of Britain, to other countries which
possess Queen Elizabeth II as their titular Sovereign; countries
which in their constitutions have consciously reconciled the
historical legacy of the Westminster system with the objectives
of modern government, to compose variations upon the theme of
parliamentary democracy.
This book was written
by an Australian for his fellow citizens of the Commonwealth
of Australia, yet it is hoped other citizens, other readers from
other countries shall also find something of value in this work.
In this century the word Commonwealth has acquired a new meaning,
of a free association of sovereign States who, without sacrificing
any of their sovereignty, gather in a congregation inspired not
merely by financial gain and trade but by a shared history and
a sense of community created by a common legacy. Parliamentary
democracy of the Westminster system is a potent part of that
legacy for the Commonwealth of Nations, and it is to be hoped
the debates and tensions which currently disturb Australian society
may shed some light upon the future of political institutions
in other Commonwealth countries - and indeed, communities within
those countries, such as Northern Ireland and Scotland, themselves
immersed in political debate about their constitutional future. Much attention is given
in this work to Canada and the opinions of Canadian monarchists.
It isn't startling that Canadian threads are woven so conspicuously
in this fabric of argument, when an Australian travelling beyond
his own shores witnesses another New World monarchy protecting
a parliamentary democracy, in a country holding a shared history
with his own; with a federal and provincial governments, a written
Constitution with a powerful judiciary; a country which committed
itself to multiculturalism before his own, and has apparently
undergone a more profound metamorphosis from the experience;
a country also under Queen Elizabeth II, but as Queen of Canada
wearing the Maple Crown. Despite their apparent similarities
the Crowns of Canada and Australia hold different implications,
for the constitutions (and hence the power structures which bind
citizens) of the two countries are different. In comparing political
experiences upon the soil of these sister countries both accord
and dissonance yield enlightenment, irrespective of the accents
with which we speak. A point of difference
between the three countries of the United Kingdom, Canada and
Australia lies in the power invested in their judiciaries. In
the republican debate in Australia there's a subconscious awareness
that in dismantling the powers of the Crown, some power residing
in the Crown must nonetheless be placed beyond the reach of politicians.
As a consequence, what we are actually witnessing in debate isn't
the establishment of a republican parliamentary democracy, but
a judicial aristocracy in a republic. In saying this, something
very different is meant to the figure of Lord Denning in his
wig and gown. By "judicial aristocracy" I mean a council
tenured for life, endowed with power beyond that based on their
authority in law and able to wield unaccountable political power
in an executive or legislative manner. The actions of our judges
are not hedged about with the safeguards we have placed about
our executive government, such as the responsibility of cabinet
ministers to Parliament, nor are they subject to the punishments
we impose upon our legislature, the threat of members being dragged
from their seats by an angry constituency enraged at the passage
of bad law. Nor would it be appropriate to surround judges in
their usual capacity with such constraints. Citizens' liberties
rely in large part upon the presence of competent and independent
judges, so these are appointed on the basis of legal expertise,
not popularity, and once appointed are difficult to remove; the
most important kind of judicial independence is independence
from political pressure exerted by the dominant faction in Parliament.
Those qualities required for an effective judiciary acting in
its ordinary capacity, upholding the integrity of law, render
judges totally unacceptable for extraordinary duties which would
poison ordinary judicial integrity, and hence poison the integrity
of law. To retain coherency
of argument one must adhere to a consistent world view, but such
audacity immediately carries the stigma of being an "ist"
or an "ite". I'll therefore nail my colours to the
mast right now as (for want of a better description) a "Forseyite
monarchist"— what this means shall become clear—
and shall argue as such throughout this book.The first (and I
hope, the only) casualty of this clarity shall be the opinions
of a small clique of constitutional lawyers whose opinions have
of late been remarkably fashionable in the popular Press. They
shall doubtless feel their opinions to be dreadfully neglected
by this book. I confess this was deliberate: their so-called
"modern" views are divided from those of the Forseyite
monarchists by an enormous conceptual gulf, upon the far side
of which are perched their legal opinions. In reality their doctrines
are vintage 19th Century, whereby the struggle is between an
hereditary Crown (represented by an aristocratic viceregal figure)
and elected politicians representing democratic government, so
the more progressive Constitution has the Crown more marginalised—
or deleted altogether. In contrast, the Forseyite
view is that this struggle is dead. It has been dead for almost
an entire century. The real struggle in our representative democracy
is between elected politicians and the people, and it's a struggle
in which the remaining residual powers of the Crown are of enormous
value in protecting the people and their interests, when properly
invoked. How and when these powers should be invoked is the crucial
question confronting our modern democracy.
Comprehending the role of the Crown in the Westminster system requires looking further abroad than the United Kingdom. During the twentieth century the purpose of the Crown in upholding parliamentary democracy has gained far clearer definition from the experiences of other parliaments throughout the Commonwealth than from that parliament physically residing in the Palace of Westminster. This has happened to such an extent that it can be said the role of the Crown can no longer be understood simply by looking at British experiences. An illustration of this occurred in 1950, when an argument was waged among constitutional authorities as to whether the King held the right to refuse a dissolution of the British House of Commons to his incumbent prime minister. The battlefield was the letters page of The Times; the protagonists concentrated on British events: what Asquith said early this century, what Queen Victoria was advised to do or not to do by Lord Aberdeen last century. There appears to have been no awareness among the majority of them that the most systematic and authoritative study on this question had been performed by a Canadian at Oxford in 1943, a study that required assessment of events throughout the Commonwealth realms. The exception was the most authoritative letter written; by Sir Alan Lascelles, Private Secretary to King George VI. Although not mentioning the Canadian by name, Lascelles' summary of the King's discretionary power was consonant with this study, and explicitly cited events in Canada and South Africa as illustrations.
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Madison, J. (ed.), The Debates in the Federal
Convention of 1787 Which Framed the Constitution of the United States of
America, Oxford University Press, 1920. |