I have always been immersed in history, so what appears as ‘progress’
to many of my contemporaries seems to me one more lurching step in a
blundering random walk across idea space. Take, for instance, the question of ‘Republic
vs. Constitutional Monarchy’, which floats to the surface to trouble our lives
every now and again like a bloated corpse insufficiently weighted with rocks
floats to the surface of the Murrumbidgee. None of the reasons offered for
changing our form of government have ever made any sense to me. I voted informal
in the referendum, but that was only because I felt I was unduly influenced by
my background as an ‘American’; now that I have resolved to believe that the
United States of America is an imaginary country invented by Nabokov as a
setting for his novel “Lolita”, as the latest step in a program to expunge all
American-ness from my soul, I would have no compunction about voting “over my
dead body” in any future referendum.
The only important question to ask about any system for
providing stable democratic government where the rule of law is respected is “will
it work?” Every other question is a distraction. To that end, let us consider
the historical evidence, and make a little list of nations that are stable and
democratic today, and have been so continuously
for a hundred years (excepting short periods of being conquered by unpleasant
neighbours).
Andorra
Australia
Belgium
Canada
Costa Rica
Denmark
France
Liechtenstein
Luxembourg
New Zealand
Norway
San Marino
Sweden
Switzerland
The Netherlands
The United Kingdom
“The United States of America”
Let me know if I’ve forgotten any. Now, of the countries in
this list, one is a tiny relic of the Renaissance Italian republics (San
Marino) and one is a rather larger example of the same kind (Switzerland). Two
are attempts to revive the institutions of the Roman Republic, which have been
plagued by the same tendencies towards civil wars and degenerating into
Empires, though thankfully not to a significant degree in the century of
interest (France and the ‘United States’); and one is an imitator of the
Franco-American forms of government that
I have included in the list despite one brief dictatorial interlude early on in
the hundred years (Costa Rica). None
of the other imitators of these forms of government, now so ubiquitous, make
the grade.
All the other countries in the list are constitutional
monarchies. (Even though one has half-a-Monarch provided by the elected head of
state of a neighbouring country. People come up with wacky ways of doing
things.)
This is not any proof that the current imitators of the
Franco-American republics will not be stable into the future, of course; but
they do not have proven staying power. And it is apparent to outsiders that the
moderately successful French and American republics have peoples who are, or were, uniquely and
passionately invested in their republican experiments.
Now what struck me quite strongly this Queen’s Birthday long
weekend was how two of these very stable democratic constitutional monarchies
used to be republics, and gave it away.
The Commonwealth of England, 1649-1660,
governed what is now the United Kingdom.
More significantly, the Dutch Republic,
1581-1795, governed what is now the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
So history doesn’t flow in one direction.
People make the argument that replacing the
Governor General, appointed by Parliament and rubber-stamped by the Monarch,
with a President, appointed by Parliament and rubber-stamped by no one, is a
minimal change; but it’s not the most minimal change, and it doesn’t replace
the Queen as a focus, albeit a diffuse and divisive one, for non-partisan
patriotism.
There is a minimal change to our system that
I would strongly endorse, which would be to replace our current dynasty of
dwellers-in-the-Antipodes with a dynasty that actually lives here. And we are
lucky enough to have the perfect candidate for Queen who I am sure would have
overwhelming bipartisan support.
Catherine I, Future Queen of Australia
