Note (51) — Chapter III

It is simply frivolous in the present state of England to discuss the comparative merits of commonwealths and constitutional monarchies with any practical object. Constitutional monarchy is not only firmly fixed in the hearts of the people, but it has some distinct advantages over republican forms of government, just as republican forms of government have some advantages over it. It may be doubted whether the people have not a more real control over the Executive, when the House of Commons, or, in the last resort, the people itself in the polling-booths (as in 1868), can displace a Government at any moment, than they have in constitutions in which an Executive, however much it may have disappointed the hopes of those who chose it, cannot be removed before the end of its term of office, except on the legal proof of some definite crime. But in itself, there really seems no reason why the form of the Executive Government should not be held to be as lawful a subject for discussion as the House of Lords, the Established Church, the standing army, or anything else. It shows simple ignorance, if it does not show something worse, when the word “republican” is used as synonymous with cut-throat or pickpocket. I do not find that in republican countries this kind of language is applied to the admirers of monarchy; but the people who talk in this way are just those who have no knowledge of republics either in past history or in present times. They may very likely have climbed a Swiss mountain, but they have taken care not to ask what was the constitution of the country at its foot. They may even have learned to write Greek iambics and to discuss Greek particles; but they have learned nothing from the treasures of wisdom taught by Grecian history from Herodotus to Polybios.

I have discussed the three chief forms of executive government, the constitutional King and his Ministry, the President, and the Executive Council, in the last of my first series of Historical Essays.