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AUSTRALIA AND THE
FOURTH OF JULY
By Charles A. Coulombe
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Two occurrences are foremost in my mind right now. The
one is my country's upcoming (as these lines are written)
celebration of Independence Day on 4 July. The other is
an article I read about the decision of the government
of the state of Queensland in Australia to remove all
references to the Queen and the Crown from oaths and legislation
(I should think that the state name would be changed too,
to "Keatingland" or some such, but no one has
broached it). The officer responsible explained the move
by saying "It's time we stood on our own feet."
The latter episode in the light of the former is, to this
Yank, laughable. The arguments against the Monarchy in
Australia are threefold. The first two are common to Britain
also, viz: a) the Monarchy is undemocratic, and b) that
the Queen's offspring are behaving in a feckless and immoral
manner. The third is peculiar to countries who share the
Monarchy, like Canada, New Zealand, Jamaica, and so on:
the Crown is a colonial institution, and an insult to
our nationhood.
These notions are easily exploded by the experience of
the United States. First, there is the notion that a republic
is a guarantee of popular freedom, or as it is mis-named,
"Democracy." But who are the sorts of individuals
who generally bring about the conversion of Monarchies
into republics? Whether we wish to speak of the Afrikaaner
Nationalists in South Africa, or Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana,
or Robespierre in France or... the list is endless. But
were any of these the kind of folk to whom a sane individual
would wish to entrust his fate? "Ah," one might
ask, "but what of the founders of your own glorious
republic, whose Independence you will celebrate with fireworks
(if local authorities graciously permit you to use them)?"
What indeed? Let us consult historian Norman Gelb:
Liberty is always among the first casualties of war, even
of wars fought to defend freedom. But its demise in revolutionary
America, even before independence was proclaimed and before
loyalists could be said to be lending aid and comfort
to the enemy, showed liberty to be merely an empty catch
phrase for many of the people aroused to action in its
name. Not only was the liberty of individual dissidents
suppressed with unseemly haste and unwarranted vigour,
but freedom of the press, so proudly attained under British
rule, quickly became a dead letter. As the orators of
the Revolution thundered on about individual rights, individuals
who dared to publish sentiments opposing their conemnation
of Britain and their call to arms were subjected to indignities,
penalties, and the forced closure of their journals....(Less
Than Glory, p. 159).
In the opening stages of the revolution---indeed, even
before hostilities broke out, Loyalists throughout the
13 colonies were harassed and intimidated by the "Sons
of Liberty, which group every American schoolchild is
taught to revere, and of whom Jay Stevens wrote (Yankee
Magazine, July 1993, p. 56): "With their constant
marching, their badges, their passwords, their numerous
feasts and festivals...the Sons of Liberty bear an uncomfortable
resemblance to the Brownshirts of our own century. Composed
in part of dockworkers, apprentices, and street toughs,
they enforced the boycotts, harassed the aristocracy,
taunted the British officers, beat up the British officials,
and tarred and feathered Tory sympathizers and informants."
When the war was over, 100, 000 people were forced to
leave, the equivalent proportionately to-day of 12,000,000.
Three years after a war fought alledgedly to end unjust
taxation had ended, the farmers of Massachussetts rose
up against the new State government because of heavy taxation---unlike
any in the time of King George.
Still, in the English-speaking world (save, alas, for
Ireland), the day when men believed strongly enough in
something to fight for it seems to have passed. All is
done now through votes, media, and the stroke of a pen.
The Queen reigns, but does not rule---and if she reigns
through a Governor-General appointed by a local Prime
Minister, that Prime Minister is correspondingly more
powerful. But this is not enough. Politicos want more
than power, they want to be worshipped. Undoubtedly, many
a Commonwealth premier would be in Nirvana, were he able
to halt traffic in his private plane at his nation's second
largest airport, while receiving a £150 haircut.
But the presence of even an old party hack turned Governor-General
is enough to spoil the fun. Every piece of legislation
with its ornate Monarchic language serves to remind him
of a terrible fact: he is only a caretaker, not a god.
That reminder must go.
Now we come to the Royal peccadilloes. Again, this is
amusing. Statistics shows that divorce and so forth grow
ever larger in Britain (in this free republic, the rate
is something like 50%). It is rather unfair to accuse
the Royals of being undemocratic, and then be upset if
they follow their subjects' actions, rather than guide
them. Besides; does anyone seriously think the republican
rulers are moral paragons? Most have been simply unspeakable.
Even in my own country, where they can be relatively benificent,
folly, madness, and crime have stained more than a few
administrations. The lurid revelations our President's
alleged mistress in Penthouse magazine make all that MI-5
have dragged up from phone-tapping seem positively child-like
and innocent. If immorality on the part of its leaders
were a reason for abolition, there would be no institutions:
political, business, religious, or any other sort; remaining
on Earth---and that includes even families.
Let us look at colonialism now. First and foremost, let
it be remembered that most of the peoples of the world
have or had hereditary rulers. George Heaton Nicholls,
later to be a prominent fighter for the Crown in South
Africa, was High Commissioner in London for SA during
World War II. There he found much opposition to King George
II's return to Greece, a return Nicholls' PM, General
Smuts, supported. Of this affair, Nicholls observed:
The opposition to the return of the King existed just
as strongly in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand,
as it did in some political circles of the United Kingdom.
The outcome of the plebiscite betrayed the failure of
all these people to understand the deep spiritual significance
and mysticism which surrounds a hereditary ruler fulfilling
his predestined task and how curiously unaware they were
of a loyalty for a crowned head which exists among all
common peoples who have not been influenced by revolutionary
propaganda. Those of us who have had experience inn administration
of the native tribes in Africa, know with what a deep
sense of satisfaction an hereditary chief is accepted
as their spokesman to the world. Centuries of tradition
and ritual are not easily erased by the arguments of the
London School of Economics, however logical they may be.
(South Africa in My Time, pp. 372-373).
Indeed, if it is a question of colonialism, surely our
glorious republic's annexation of the Kingdom of Hawai'i
is an interesting inversion of what is pretended to be
the pattern. For that matter, President Roosevelt's Indian
Re-organisation Act of 1934, which deposed all the traditional
tribal rulers with more subservient elected ones was another.
European Monarchies did very well with the concept of
"indirect rule," because the local rulers' postion
could be made analogous in law to a feudal lord's. Certainly,
for many such colonial rule meant safety, peace, and food.
Native republics, freed of faraway Queen and traditional
native ruler alike, have rarely given their subjects these
things for very long.
Ah, but what about us sons of the Europeans, in our far
away American and Australasian homes? Surely a republic
is most suited to us---have not the United States everything
a Monarchy could provide them? No. We did have two things
which did, for a long time supply us with the requisite
stability. One was an apolitical judiciary; the other
was a sort of Americanist religion, which led us to venerate
as sacred everything---flag, constitution, liberty bell---having
to do with our country in the abstract. The Founding Fathers
were elevated in the national consciousness from a clique
of revolutionaries to sainthood. But the first of these
is gone, and the second is going. We have nothing to replace
them.
In any case, neither Canada, Australia, nor New Zealand
have a similar national idolatry. Their people retain
something of Christianity in their makeup, and so for
them the dicta of John Healy, turn-of-the-century Catholic
Archbishop of Tuam remains valid:
The character of Kings is sacred; their persons are inviolable;
they are the anointed of the Lord, if not with sacred
oil, at least by virtue of their office. Their power is
broad---based upon the Will of God, and not on the shifting
sands of the people's will...They will be spoken of with
becoming reverence, instead of being in public estimation
fitting butts for all foul tongues. It becomes a sacrilege
to violate their persons, and every indignity offered
to them in word or act, becomes an indignity offered to
God Himself. It is this view of Kingly rule that alone
can keep alive in a scoffing and licentious age the spirit
of ancient loyalty, that spirit begotten of faith, combining
in itself obedience, reverence, and love for the majesty
of kings which was at once a bond of social union, an
incentive to noble daring, and a salt to purify the heart
from its grosser tendencies, preserving it from all that
is mean, selfish, and contemptible. (P.J. Joyce, John
Healy, pp. 68-69).
Would that the good Archbishop's countrymen---or for that
matter, their opponents, had heeded his words. But whether
one likes it or not, all of us formed by the cultures
which grew out of Europe have a need for Monarchy. In
its rituals, its manner, it links us---not always consciously---to
our ancestors, for whom Christendom was at once one Holy
Church outside of which there was no salvation, and one
Sacred Empire, outside of which there were neither safety
nor civilisation. It brings us further back also, to a
time common to all mankind, when the figures of Father,
Priest, and King were one---yet a mere shadow upon Earth
of One greater still.
We ignore these truths at our peril. Whether in London,
or Paris, or Sydney, or Los Angeles, human nature is the
same. C.S. Lewis put the problem very well:
Monarchy can easily be debunked, but watch the faces,
mark well the debunkers. These are the men whose taproot
in Eden has been cut: whom no rumour 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 honour a king they honour 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.
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2004
© Charles Coulombe
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