Lecky and Jouvenel

The Monarchist reported previously this month on an article by Roger Scruton earlier this year, with a few quotes, which could be said to be democratism – or democracy as more or less blind faith or ideology – and its opposition in a nutshell.

This October marks the 110^th anniversary for two important critics of democracy. October 22, 1903 was the date of the passing of W.E.H. Lecky, the author of Democracy and Liberty. On the the last day of that same October 110 years ago, the French nobleman and thinker Bertrand de Jouvenel, a member of the Mont Pelerin Society, was born.

William Edward Hartpole Lecky

W.E.H. Lecky wrote of the worship of democracy:

However unscrupulous, however dishonest, may be the acts of a party or of a statesman, they are considered to be justified beyond reproach if they have been condoned or sanctioned at a general election. It has sometimes happened that a politician has been found guilty of a grave personal offence by an intelligent and impartial jury, after a minute investigation of evidence, conducted with the assistance of highly trained advocates, and under the direction of an experienced judge. He afterwards finds a constituency which will send him to Parliament, and the newspapers of his party declare that his character is now clear. He has been absolved by ‘the great voice of the people.’ Truly indeed did Carlyle say that the superstitions to be feared in the present day are much less religious than political; and all the forms of idolatry I know none more irrational and ignoble than this blind worship of mere numbers.

Of the connection between liberty and democracy, Lecky wrote:

As we have, I think, abundantly seen, a tendency to democracy does not mean a tendency to parliamentary government, or even a tendency towards greater liberty. On the contrary, strong arguments may be adduced, both from history and from the nature of things, to show that democracy may often prove the direct opposite of liberty.

He wrote this, not in this century, nor the past century, but in the century in which for the most part Queen Victoria sat on the Britannic throne.

Bertrand de Jouvenel

Bertrand de Jouvenel, the author of On Power and Sovereignty, wrote, on a similar note:

The mistake is one which was exposed in advance by Montesquieu: “As it is a feature of democracies that to all appearance the people does almost exactly as it wishes, men have supposed that democratic governments were the abiding-place of liberty: they confused the power of the people with the liberty of the people.” This confusion of thought is at the root of modern despotism.

The French nobleman goes many centuries back into history:

So said John of Salisbury in the twelfth century: “The difference between a prince and a tyrant is that the prince obeys the laws and governs his people in accordance with right.” This formula receives its full force only if it is remembered that what is here referred to is a law and a right which issue from a source higher than Power.

Also said de Jouvenel:

The adjective “absolute,” generally used today as a vague term of abuse, has in reality a well-defined meaning: it translates the phrase “legibus solutus” – freed from the laws. Now who is the more uninhibited by the rules? The man who is morally bound to observe the rules, though not subject to sanctions, or the man who is in a position to change them at any moment? Clearly the latter. For that reason the movement in time toward a sovereignty with unrestricted legislative power has been a movement toward absolutism, and the period which we call the absolutist period was in fact only that of the gestation of absolutism.

Furthermore:

[P]articipation in government (absurdly called “political liberty” when it is in reality one of the means given to the individual of safeguarding his liberty against the unending onslaught of the sovereignty) has come to seem to him more precious than liberty itself? That this participation of his in Power has sufficed to induce him to raise up and encourage state encroachments, which have, thanks to the approval of the mob, been carried to much further lengths than absolute monarchy could ever have carried them?

Another of Bertrand de Jouvenel's wisdoms:

Why does the modern state meet no organized resistance?

The ancien régime met with such resistance, which was offered it by the representatives of the various elements in the nation who fought in line against Power. But in the modern regime these elements have become Power, and the people are left in consequence without a champion. Those who are the state reserve to themselves alone the right to talk in the name of the nation; an interest of the nation as distinct from the interest of the state has no existence for them.

Yet another:

The general view in our own times is that societies have always acknowledged an authority which, as Jurieu puts it, has no need to be right for its acts to be valid – an authority which creates and destroys rights to any extent and has nothing but its own will to regulate it: sit pro ratione voluntas. Current belief is that this authority was formerly in bad hands and today rests in good hands, and to have put it in good hands is the only safeguard as to its use which can be given to the citizens. But it is a mistake to suppose that over time Sovereignty has merely changed masters. More than anything else, history records the actual erection of this boundless and unregulated Sovereignty of today, of which our ancestors had no conception.

And further:

The only effect of the proclamation of the sovereignty of the people was to substitute for a king of flesh and blood that hypostasized queen, the general will, whose nature is always to be adolescent and incapable of personal rule; the occasional inconveniences which arise in a monarchy during the minority or mental incapacity of the sovereign being now permanently present, the aforesaid queen boldly entrusted her person to a succession of favourites, who abused their position the more freely the less she became an object of controversy. The only possible safeguard was in the sense and morals of that regency council, the sovereign assembly.

The frenchman nobleman said elsewhere:

What in fact happened was that the laws came to be looked on as mere regulations which were always open to criticism and revision.

[...]

The life of democracies has been marked by a growth in the precariousness of laws. Kings, chambers of peers, senates, anything that might have checked the immediate translation into law of whatever opinion was in vogue, have everywhere been swept away or rendered powerless. The law is no longer like some higher necessity presiding over the life of the country: it has become the expression of the passions of the moment.

And also:

The legislative authority, now regarded as the expression of the will of all, or, more accurately, of the whole, exercises a total sovereignty. Who dares hinder it?

Moreover, the French nobleman wisely said:

It is possible, with the help of prudently balanced institutions, to provide everyone with effective safeguards against Power. But there are no institutions on earth which enable each separate person to have a hand in the exercise of Power, for Power is command, and everyone cannot command. Sovereignty of the people is, therefore, nothing but a fiction, and one which must in the long run prove destructive of individual liberties.

And our final quote:

[Authoritarianism] could, no doubt, have been avoided if there had been a stable, vigorous, and unified executive to which the legislature acted merely as limitary principle. But in fact, as we have seen, the contrary happened: the legislature made itself the ruling sovereign.

More wisdom and reflection like this can be found in the works of these two fine late gentlemen.

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Scruton on Democracy

Over at BBC News Magazine, writes Dr. Roger Scruton:

In my view, the idea that there is a single, one-size-fits-all solution to social and political conflict around the world, and that democracy is the name of it, is based on a disregard of historical and cultural conditions, and a failure to see that democracy is only made possible by other and more deeply hidden institutions. And while we are willing to accept that democracy goes hand in hand with individual freedom and the protection of human rights, we often fail to realise that these three things are three things, not one, and that it is only under certain conditions that they coincide.

Democracy was introduced into Russia without any adequate protection for human rights. And many human rights were protected in 19th Century Britain long before the emergence of anything that we would call democracy. In the Middle East today, we find parties standing for election, like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which regards an electoral victory as the opportunity to crush dissent and impose a way of life that for many citizens is simply unacceptable. In such circumstances democracy is a threat to human rights and not a way of protecting them.

Furthermore:

The totalitarian system, I learned, endures not simply by getting rid of democratic elections and imposing a one-party state. It endures by abolishing the distinction between civil society and the state, and by allowing nothing significant to occur which is not controlled by the Party. By studying the situation in Eastern Europe, I came quickly to see that political freedom depends upon a delicate network of institutions, which my friends were striving to understand and if possible to resuscitate.

Cross-posted at Wilson Revolution Unplugged.

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The Lord Halsbury

Hardinge Stanley Giffard, 1^st Earl of Halsbury PC, QC (1823-1921)
Today is the 190^th birthday of Hardinge Stanley Giffard, the 1^st Earl of Halsbury.

A biography has been written by a John Hostettler:

Those who have used the serried ranks of volumes of Halsbury in the course of their professional work may, perhaps, have regarded Halsbury the man as almost a mythical figure – a man so much overshadowed by the work which bears his name that he himself has been hidden from public view. John Hostettler in this volume brings him triumphantly to life. Although the many years of his life belonged to the 19th century and to the Victorian era, the later part of his life proved to be the most productive. And what a period tha was : the tumultuous history of the early days of this century, with the social revolution following the end of the Victorian reign, the Lloyd George "Peoples's Budget", the Easter Rising in Ireland, the Taff Vale case, and with the [approach] of the Great War as a dark and terrifying backdrop. John Hostettler has written a biography which is a fully rounded portrait of Halsbury – Halsbury the Barrister; Halsbury the politician, Halsbury the Lord [Chancellor], Halsbury the Judge, and Halsbury as the progenitor of that remarkable [exposition] on the Common Law which bears his name so proudly as a great jurist.

During the crisis over the bill that became the Parliament Act of 1911, Lord Halsbury was one of the principal leaders – if not the principal leader – of the rebel faction of Tory peers that resolved on all out opposition to the government's bill.

Lord Halsbury is known to have said at a meeting of Conservative peers on the 21 July 1911: "I will divide even if I am alone."

On August 8th of that year, the House of Lords resolved:

That in the opinion of this House, the advice given to His Majesty by His Majesty’s Ministers, whereby they obtained from His Majesty a pledge that a sufficient number of Peers would be created to pass The Parliament Bill in the shape in which it left the House of Commons, is a gross violation of constitutional liberty, whereby, among many other evil consequences, the people will be precluded from again pronouncing upon the policy of Home Rule.

Two days later Their Lordships yielded with a dissentient, the dissentient having the following justification:

1. Because it destroys the balance of the Constitution itself.
2. Because it deals with the problem of Constitutional responsibility, but as a party measure.
3. Because it is destructive and not constructive.
4. Because it abrogates the authority of the House of Lords without substituting anything for it.
5. Because it releases the House of Commons from all substantial control.
6. Because it thus establishes in these realms, contrary to all the traditions of this country and the experience of all great Constitutional Powers, a Single-Chamber Government.
7. Because it preserves this House in a nominal existence so as to obscure from the people of this country the absolute and unrestrained power of the House of Commons.
8. Because it is avowedly brought forward as a means of carrying a further Constitutional measure of the first importance without referring that measure to the people of the United Kingdom, who have twice expressed their repugnance to it.
9. Because the method of carrying it is almost as great a strain on the Constitution as the measure itself.
10. Because the whole transaction tends to bring discredit on our country and its institutions.

We salute Lord Halsbury on this his birthday – September 3.


BTW, Lord Halsbury was born on the 40^th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the American War of Independence.

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George Wyndham at 150

George Wyndham was born a century and a half ago today – on August 29, 1863. He later served as a Member of Parliament from Dover from July 12, 1889 until his sudden, untimely death from a heart attack in his 50^th year on June 8, 1913. This year, hence, we also mark the centennial of his passing.

The Right Honourable George Wyndham PC

The Right Honourable George Wyndham PC was the leader in the House of Commons of the die-hard opponents of the Parliament Bill that became Parliament Act 1911.

On February 22, 1911 he spoke before the House of Commons:

When the Prime Minister [Asquith] comes to the most formidable obstacle in his course he always develops a most impressive manner and endeavours to dismiss from the minds of those who differ from him all fears which they may entertain. When he came to this point in his speech yesterday he was kind enough to say that he did not challenge the sincerity of those who believe—as we do sincerely believe—that this measure will erect a despotic Single Chamber rule, and becoming more and more impressive in his manner he wound up that portion of his speech by saying that this was the most unsubstantial nightmare that had ever affected the imagination. As his manner became more and more impressive so did the matter which he was unfolding become less and less convincing.

Indeed! The ever more absolute representative democracy has not delivered on its promise of more liberty...

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Peter Hitchens: Restraints on Democracy

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'Captain Coward'

Not exactly a piece of pure and exalted manhood. That's a long way down indeed.

The survivor statistics tell the tale. More women from third class — deep in the bowels of the ship, where it was hard to escape and instructions were vague or nonexistent — survived than men from first class. Almost all of the women from first class (97 percent) and second class (84 percent) made it. As Butler notes, the men from first class who were lost stayed behind voluntarily, true to their Edwardian ideals.

They can look faintly ridiculous from our vantage point. Benjamin Guggenheim changed into his evening clothes that night: “We’ve dressed in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.” Whom would you rather have around your wife or daughter, though, when there is only one slot left on the lifeboat? Old Guggenheim in his white tie and tails, or the contemporary slob in his Bermuda shorts and flip-flops?

The Titanic went down, they say, to the strains of the hymn “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” as the band courageously played on. It lent a final grace note to the tragedy. Today, we don’t do grace notes. We’ve gone from “Women and children, first,” to “Dude, where’s my lifeboat?” As the women of the Costa Concordia can testify, that’s a long way down.

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Hardinge Giffard, 1st Earl of Halsbury

Hardinge Giffard, 1^st Earl of Halsbury

Hardinge Giffard was born on September 23, 1823 – in the reign of George IV. He passed on, 98 years old, 90 years ago today – on December 11, 1921. Lord Halsbury was the most prominent opponent in the House of Lords of what was to become the Parliament Act 1911, whose centenary is marked this year.

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Parliament Act 1911

Samuel Begg: Passing of the Parliament Bill in the House of Lords, 1911

A century ago today, His Britannic Majesty George V gave Royal Assent to what was to be known as Parliament Act 1911.

With this act the power of the House of Lords were essentially reduced to that of suspensive veto, with the exception of a bill to extend the life of Parliament.

The leaders of the opposisition to the bill in the House of Lords and the House of Commons were the 1^st Earl of Halsbury and George Wyndham respectively.

Hardinge Stanley Giffard, 1^st Earl of Halsbury PC, QC (1823-1921)

The Right Honourable George Wyndham PC (1863-1913)

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Imperial Officer

English Officer in British India in 1912 with his men, members of the Frontier Constabulary, a paramilitary force which patrolled part of the Indian Northwest Frontier. Photograph courtesy of the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge. (h/t Admiral Cod)

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Landed Gentry

What I would wear if I could fling care to the Devil for one merry day!

Hat tip: Admiral Cod

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Edward Charles Morris Fox

The actor whom perhaps more than anyone is etched in the popular imagination of the quintessential upper class English gentleman. His big breakthrough film was Day of the Jackal in 1973, but he also starred in Battle of Britain, A Bridge Too Far, Bounty, The Shooting Party and is famous for his portrayal of Edward VIII in the television serial Edward and Mrs Simpson (1978).

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The Right Honourable George Wyndham

George Wyndham was a Member of Parliament from Dover from July 12, 1889 until his sudden, untimely death from a heart attack in his 50^th year on June 8, 1913.

The Right Honourable George Wyndham PC was the leader in the House of Commons of the die-hard opponents of the Parliament Bill that became Parliament Act 1911.

On February 22, 1911 he spoke before the House of Commons:

When the Prime Minister [Asquith] comes to the most formidable obstacle in his course he always develops a most impressive manner and endeavours to dismiss from the minds of those who differ from him all fears which they may entertain. When he came to this point in his speech yesterday he was kind enough to say that he did not challenge the sincerity of those who believe—as we do sincerely believe—that this measure will erect a despotic Single Chamber rule, and becoming more and more impressive in his manner he wound up that portion of his speech by saying that this was the most unsubstantial nightmare that had ever affected the imagination. As his manner became more and more impressive so did the matter which he was unfolding become less and less convincing.

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Add a little swagger to your step!

As English as the Eton collar, and as iconic as the bowler, gentlemen are encouraged to get their sticks and canes at Swaine Adeney Brigg.


The Royals above and below demonstrate the continuity of monarchy.

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Bowler Hat Day

As should be obvious to any of our readers, The Monarchist suffers from an advanced case of Anglophilia (some might even call it Anglomania). And while the roots of this affliction go far back, there are certain milestones that can be ascertained. One of the earliest was discovering the noble and romantic concept of a gentleman (a most English invention) at a very tender age, the realisation that there once existed a certain superior standard of conduct that reached its high temple moment around the time the bowler hat came into style.

And here I must apologize to our readers for missing Bowler Hat Day, which took place on February 11th. For those who don't know, the bowler was devised in 1849 by the London hatmakers Thomas and William Bowler, who were commissioned to design a close-fitting, low-crowned hat to protect gamekeepers' heads from low-hanging branches while on horseback. The keepers had previously worn top hats, which were easily knocked off and damaged. It was also hoped that the new style of hat would protect the keepers if they were attacked by poachers.

Contrary to popular belief, it was the bowler and not the cowboy hat that was the most popular hat in the American West, prompting Lucius Beebe to call it "the hat that won the West." Source: Wikipedia

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Who Needs the House of Commons?

Thus asks the High Tory Gerald Warner of Scotland on Sunday.

For generations, British schoolchildren were educated – or brainwashed – into an exaggerated respect for parliament and its associated institutions. Even as the British Empire went into receivership, imitation chambers emerged in former colonies, with Speakers and clerks decked out in the horsehair wigs that replicated the supposed gravitas of the circus on the Thames. Reinforcing this spurious deference was the Whig interpretation of history, which attempted to imbue an infamous gang of self-serving bandits and tyrants with a "democratic" veneer and an invented romance.

Mr. Warner concludes:

Now, the challenge is to explore all our existing resources, as is the British way, to replace this failed legislature. We must be the only tribe in the world to have a council of elders that we relegate to ceremonial duties: time to make more use of the Privy Council. An executive monarch, too, curbing the power of a prime minister, was until recently unthinkable; but, considering the record of recent prime ministers, it now seems a positive alternative. Undemocratic? Technically, yes – but how far have our pseudo-democratic institutions recently reflected the public will, whether on war in Iraq or any other topic? Think about it.

Wrote Gerald Warner eight months ago:

The constitutional principle is this: dismissal of a government by Royal prerogative is not undemocratic, provided it is immediately followed by a general election, giving the electorate the right to choose the government it wants. In the present circumstances, with a revolving-door Cabinet, more and more unelected ministers being drafted in via the House of Lords and election results pouring in that show the electorate's overwhelming rejection of the government, a compulsory dissolution would be perfectly justified.

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"I am writing a very beautiful book..."

Knowing Waugh, he was probably being a wee bit ironic. Yet he did write "a very beautiful book."

On March 13, 1944, Evelyn Waugh informed his friend Lady Dorothy Lygon: “I am writing a very beautiful book, to bring tears, about very rich people, beautiful, high born people who live in palaces and have no troubles except what they make themselves and those are mainly the demons of sex and drink which after all are easy to bear as troubles go nowadays”. This book would be published the following year as Brideshead Revisited, and would portray a family not unlike the Lygons of Madresfield Court in Worcestershire, who were indeed rich, (mostly) beautiful, high born and had more than their fair share of troubles with sex and drink, which they in fact found quite hard to bear. Paula Byrne’s object in writing Mad World was “to find the hidden key to Waugh’s great novel, to unlock for the first time the full extent to which Brideshead encodes and subtly transforms the author’s own experience”.

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The Gentleman's Motor Car

Anyone who has visited or lived in Los Angeles or Toronto, the two most hideously sprawling megaloposis's in North America (where car ownership exceeds 600 per 1000 people), will agree with Russell Kirk that the automobile is a village destroying mechanical Jacobin.

I don't own one myself (they don't make me happy), because I find it more convenient to rent. However, if I were in the market to buy, I would keep my eye open for a vintage marques, something Morgan, Bentley or Aston Martin, not so much a car as a frame of mind.

Worthy of a Monarch's telegram, the Morgan Motor Company is celebrating its hundredth birthday this year, incredibly still running as a family-owned business by Mr. Morgan himself, whose paternal grandfather founded the company in 1909. The company employs only 163 people, still assembles their cars by hand, and fills orders on a two year waiting list.

Incidentally, the Royal Automobile Club, which received its royal patronage by King Edward VII (Old Bertie was a motor car enthusiast), is arguably the grandest of all the gentlemen clubs in London. With Victorian Turkish baths, Italian marble swimming pools, I think I will stop by next time I'm in old Londontown.

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Don't confuse a dandy with a metrosexual

I have long believed that there is a strong symbiosis between monarchy and manners. It is why when one looks at the prevailing negative attitude towards the monarchy in contemporary society, one notices a corresponding lack of gentlemanly virtue and refinement.

Portrait of a Dandy: Considered an outstanding conductor and interpreter of the music of Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Liszt, Arthur Nikisch (1855-1922) knew a thing or two about classical and masculine refinement.

Consider the difference between the dandy of yesterday and the metrosexual of today:

Today, metrosexual is used to describe an urban heterosexual male in touch with his inner Carrie Bradshaw. But don't confuse him with a dandy. Created by advertising execs, consumed by consumption, he is a gay stereotype trapped in a straight cliché, sipping crantinis in between shopping, the gym, and laser hair-removal appointments. Contrary to popular belief, not all gay men were born with the Manolo-detection gene any more than all straight men were born scratching their crotches.

Once upon a time, after the fops and before the metrosexuals, dandy referred to a well-mannered fellow who dressed with flair and knew a thing or two about art, literature, gentlemanly sports, and the finer things in life. He was just as likely to fancy the ladies as the lads. The dandy did not follow trends; he set standards. The metrosexual is his flickering holograph.

At a cocktail party, you'd be well-advised to skirt around the metrosexual and sidle up to the dandy, if you can find one. The metrosexual would be the clotheshorse checking out his freshly dermabraded complexion in the mirror over the mantelpiece. A dandy never consults the looking glass in public because he is confident. This frees him up to show off the dandy's must-have accessory: a keen, sly wit.

"Dandy isn't a fashion slave but a well-dressed philosopher. I don't think too many metrosexuals can quote Alexander Pope." Read on about the difference between dandies and metrosexuals.

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The Lord Earl of Halsbury

Hardinge Stanley Giffard, 1^st Earl of Halsbury PC, QC (1823-1921)
During the crisis over the bill that became the Parliament Act of 1911, Lord Halsbury was one of the principal leaders – if not the principal leader – of the rebel faction of Tory peers that resolved on all out opposition to the government's bill.

Lord Halsbury is known to have said at a meeting of Conservative peers on the 21 July 1911: "I will divide even if I am alone."

On August 8th of that year, the House of Lords resolved:

That in the opinion of this House, the advice given to His Majesty by His Majesty’s Ministers, whereby they obtained from His Majesty a pledge that a sufficient number of Peers would be created to pass The Parliament Bill in the shape in which it left the House of Commons, is a gross violation of constitutional liberty, whereby, among many other evil consequences, the people will be precluded from again pronouncing upon the policy of Home Rule.

Two days later Their Lordships yielded with a dissentient, the dissentient having the following justification:

1. Because it destroys the balance of the Constitution itself.
2. Because it deals with the problem of Constitutional responsibility, but as a party measure.
3. Because it is destructive and not constructive.
4. Because it abrogates the authority of the House of Lords without substituting anything for it.
5. Because it releases the House of Commons from all substantial control.
6. Because it thus establishes in these realms, contrary to all the traditions of this country and the experience of all great Constitutional Powers, a Single-Chamber Government.
7. Because it preserves this House in a nominal existence so as to obscure from the people of this country the absolute and unrestrained power of the House of Commons.
8. Because it is avowedly brought forward as a means of carrying a further Constitutional measure of the first importance without referring that measure to the people of the United Kingdom, who have twice expressed their repugnance to it.
9. Because the method of carrying it is almost as great a strain on the Constitution as the measure itself.
10. Because the whole transaction tends to bring discredit on our country and its institutions.

We salute Lord Halsbury on this his birthday – September 3.

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Portrait of a Gentleman

Portrait of a Gentleman c.1805
Sir Thomas Lawrence 1769-1830
Oil on Canvas 24 x 20 inches; 61 x 50.8 cm
Provenance: Marguerite Singer Smith, Connecticut, USA
© Philip Mould Fine Paintings

SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE "is known today as the last of the great English portraitists. He was a child prodigy who not only became the leading English artist of his age, but also one of the most renowned in Europe. His depiction of the Regency generation, in all its gauche excessiveness, remains a dazzling highlight of English art compared to the sober veneration of his Victorian followers. His death in 1830, the same year as that of George IV, coincided with society’s recoil from the ‘vulgarity’ of the late Georgian era, and its transformation, with hallowed austerity, into the earnest gloom of Victorians. And so the patrons of Lawrence’s successors began to demand portraits befitting the builders of a new empire; out went the swirling dramatism of Lawrence, and in came uprightness, black coats, and beards." More here.

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