by invitation of bronies & Tania
<Avatard RP reactionary leech is oUr fWiEnD u GuIsE
112 posts and 206 image replies omitted.Oliver Goldsmith The Vicar of Wakefield Chapter 19
<Politics, however, was the subject on which our entertainer chiefly expatiated; for he asserted that liberty was at once his boast and his terror. After the cloth was removed, he asked me if I had seen the last Monitor, to which replying in the negative, 'What, nor the Auditor, I suppose?' cried he. 'Neither, Sir,' returned I.
>'That's strange, very strange,' replied my entertainer. 'Now, I read all the politics that come out. The Daily, the Public, the Ledger, the Chronicle, the London Evening, the Whitehall Evening, the seventeen magazines, and the two reviews; and though they hate each other, I love them all. Liberty, Sir, liberty is the Briton's boast, and by all my coal mines in Cornwall, I reverence its guardians.'
<'Then it is to be hoped,' cried I, 'you reverence the king.'
>'Yes,' returned my entertainer, 'when he does what we would have him; but if he goes on as he has done of late, I'll never trouble myself more with his matters. I say nothing. I think only. I could have directed some things better. I don't think there has been a sufficient number of advisers: he should advise with every person willing to give him advice, and then we should have things done in anotherguess manner.'
<'I wish,' cried I, 'that such intruding advisers were fixed in the pillory. It should be the duty of honest men to assist the weaker side of our constitution, that sacred power that has for some years been every day declining, and losing its due share of influence in the state. But these ignorants still continue the cry of liberty, and if they have any weight basely throw it into the subsiding scale.'
>'How,' cried one of the ladies, 'do I live to see one so base, so sordid, as to be an enemy to liberty, and a defender of tyrants? Liberty, that sacred gift of heaven, that glorious privilege of Britons!'
>'Can it be possible,' cried our entertainer, 'that there should be any found at present advocates for slavery? Any who are for meanly giving up the privileges of Britons? Can any, Sir, be so abject?'
<'No, Sir,' replied I, 'I am for liberty, that attribute of Gods! Glorious liberty! that theme of modem declamation. I would have all men kings. I would be a king myself. We have all naturally an equal right to the throne: we are all originally equal. This is my opinion, and was once the opinion of a set of honest men who were called Levellers.' They tried to erect themselves into a community, where all should be equally free. But, alas! it would never answer; for there were some among them stronger, and some more cunning than others, and these became masters of the rest; for as sure as your groom rides your horses, because he is a cunninger animal than they, so surely will the animal that is cunninger or stronger than he, sit upon his shoulders in turn. Since then it is entailed upon humanity to submit, and some are born to command, and others to obey…
<The question is, as there must be tyrants, whether it is better to have them in the same house with us, or in the same village, or still farther off, in the metropolis. Now, Sir, for my own part, as I naturally hate the face of a tyrant, the farther off he is removed from me, the better pleased am I. The generality of mankind also are of my way of thinking, and have unanimously created one king, whose election at once diminishes the number of tyrants, and puts tyranny at the greatest distance from the greatest number of people. Now the great who were tyrants themselves before the election of one tyrant, are naturally averse to a power raised over them, and whose weight must ever lean heaviest on the subordinate orders
<It is the interest of the great, therefore, to diminish kingly power as much as possible; because whatever they take from that is naturally restored to themselves; and all they have to do in the state, is to undermine the single tyrant, by which they resume their primaeval authority.…
<What they may then expect, may be seen by turning our eyes to Holland, Genoa, or Venice, where the laws govern the poor, and the rich govern the law. I am then for, and would die for, monarchy, sacred monarchy; for if there be any thing sacred amongst men, it must be the anointed sovereign of his people, and every diminution of his power in war, or in peace, is an infringement upon the real liberties of the subject.https://www.online-literature.com/oliver-goldsmith/vicar-of-wakefield/20/I like this speech & like its pushback against Aristotelian mixed constitutionalism (until the latter half delves into the middle class, which rebounds into a defence of it via monarchy, but overall I like this speech from Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield).
<My warmth I found had lengthened this harangue beyond the rules of good breeding: but the impatience of my entertainer, who often strove to interrupt it, could be restrained no longer.
>'What,' cried he, 'then I have been all this while entertaining a Jesuit in parson's cloaths; but by all the coal mines of Cornwall, out he shall pack, if my name be Wilkinson.'
<I now found I had gone too far, and asked pardon for the warmth with which I had spoken.
>'Pardon,' returned he in a fury: 'I think such principles demand ten thousand pardons. What, give up liberty, property, and, as the Gazetteer says, lie down to be saddled with wooden shoes! Sir, I insist upon your marching out of this house immediately, to prevent worse consequences, Sir, I insist upon it.'
<I was going to repeat my remonstrances; but just then we heard a footman's rap at the door, and the two ladies cried out, 'As sure as death there is our master and mistress come home.' It seems my entertainer was all this while only the butler, who, in his master's absence, had a mind to cut a figure, and be for a while the gentleman himself; and, to say the truth, he talked politics as well as most country gentlemen do. But nothing could now exceed my confusion upon seeing the gentleman, and his lady, enter, nor was their surprise, at finding such company and good cheer, less than ours.
I like 2/3 of what the speech & this scene together, lol.
>>669752>>669755But the inadequacies I see here are resolved in Hobbes' Leviathan: Hobbes fully commits to discarding mixed constitutionalism w/o recourse & makes no pretence of tyrant whatsoever. (as the vicar of wakefield does).
>Now seeing freedom cannot stand together with subjection, liberty in a commonwealth is nothing but government and rule, which because it cannot be divided, men must expect in common; and that can be no where but in the popular state, or democracy. And Aristotle saith well (lib. 6, cap. 2 of his Politics), The ground or intention of a democracy, is liberty; which he confirmeth in these words: For men ordinarily say this: that no man can partake of liberty, but only in a popular commonwealth. Whosoever therefore in a monarchical estate, where the sovereign power is absolutely in one man, claims liberty, claims (if the hardest construction should be made thereof) either to have the sovereignty in his turn, or to be colleague with him that hath it, or to have the monarchy changed into a democracy
<[Semi-relevant, from a previous chapter]<[The subjection of them who institute a commonwealth amongst themselves, is no less absolute, than the subjection of servants. And therein they are in equal estate; but the hope of those is greater than the hope of these. For he that subjecteth himself uncompelled, thinketh there is reason he should be better used, than he that doth it upon compulsion; and coming in freely, calleth himself, though in subjection, a FREEMAN; whereby it appeareth, that liberty is not any exemption from subjection and obedience to the sovereign power, but a state of better hope than theirs, that have been subjected by force and conquest. And this was the reason, that the name that signifieth children, in the Latin tongue is liberi, which also signifieth freemen. And yet in Rome, nothing at that time was so obnoxious to the power of others, as children in the family of their fathers. For both the state had power over their life without consent of their fathers; and the father might kill his son by his own authority, without any warrant from the state.]
<[Freedom therefore in commonwealths is nothing but the honour of equality of favour with other subjects, and servitude the estate of the rest. A freeman therefore may expect employments of honour, rather than a servant. And this is all that can be understood by the liberty of the subject. For in all other senses, liberty is the state of him that is not subject.]In Leviathan:
>The Athenians, and Romanes, were free; that is, free Common-wealths: not that any particular men had the Libertie to resist their own Representative; but that their Representative had the Libertie to resist, or invade other people. There is written on the Turrets of the city of Luca in great characters at this day, the word LIBERTAS; yet no man can thence infer, that a particular man has more Liberty, or Immunity from the service of the Commonwealth there, than in Constantinople. Whether a Common-wealth be Monarchicall, or Popular, the Freedome is still the same.
>But it is an easy thing, for men to be deceived, by the specious name of Liberty; and for want of Judgement to distinguish, mistake that for their Private Inheritance, and Birth right, which is the right of the Publique only. And when the same errour is confirmed by the authority of men in reputation for their writings in this subject, it is no wonder if it produce sedition, and change of Government. In these western parts of the world, we are made to receive our opinions concerning the Institution, and Rights of Commonwealths, from Aristotle, Cicero, and other men, Greeks and Romans, that living under Popular States, derived those Rights, not from the Principles of Nature, but transcribed them into their books, out of the Practice of their own Commonwealths, which were Popular; as the Grammarians describe the Rules of Language, out of the Practise of the time; or the Rules of Poetry, out of the Poems of Homer and Virgil. And because the Athenians were taught, (to keep them from desire of changing their Government,) that they were Freemen, and all that lived under Monarchy were slaves; therefore Aristotle puts it down in his Politiques,(lib.6.cap.2) “In democracy, Liberty is to be supposed: for ’tis commonly held, that no man is Free in any other Government.”
>From the same books, they that live under a Monarch conceive an opinion, that the Subjects in a Popular Common-wealth enjoy Liberty; but that in a Monarchy they are all Slaves. I say, they that live under a Monarchy conceive such an opinion;
>The Liberty, whereof there is so frequent, and honourable mention, in the Histories, and Philosophy of the Ancient Greeks, and Romans, and in the writings, and discourse of those that from them have received all their learning in the Politiques, is not the Liberty of Particular men; but the Liberty of the Commonwealth [i.e. the absolute power of states]
>The Athenians, and Romans, were free; that is, free Commonwealths: not that any particular men had the Liberty to resist their own Representative; but that their Representative had the Liberty to resist, or invade other people. There is written on the Turrets of the city of Luca in great characters at this day, the word LIBERTAS; yet no man can thence infer, that a particular man has more Liberty, or Immunity from the service of the Commonwealth there, than in Constantinople. Whether a Common-wealth be Monarchicall, or Popular, the Freedom is still the same. I've come to agree more w/ what Queen Chrysalis is saying than Starlight Glimmer here:
The Sword of Commonwealth, & appeal to an Arbiter / unilateral authority, is more sound than Aristotle's concord of hosts / the laws their mutual convention, the State a partnership of clans… (even w/ its appeal to consent of the governed, which Hobbes also assents to despite this).
…
I think what Hobbes has a point here, because the problem w/ politics being a concord rather than unitary stems from the impossibility of factions to share this vision.
…
This is evident that Hobbes makes the distribution of property based solely upon the arbitrary division of the Sovereign:
>The Children of Israel, were a Commonwealth in the Wilderness; but wanted the commodities of the Earth… which was divided amongst them, not by their own discretion, but by the discretion of Eleazar the Priest, & Joshua their General… which division was therefore Arbitrary.
It must be arbitrary, like Queen Chrysalis says, the hunger of Changelings can never be satisfied – so the hosts would never be content to divide the land amongst themselves without an arbitrary power. –Which is more likely to have defined the boundaries and borders of nations? their mutual concord & agreement, or rather their strength and their armies & the mutual fear they withhold? – The map of nations is drawn by the Sword, not by sweet concord.
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An arbitrary power & land being cut and portioned off by the Sword of Commonwealth – rather the mutual concord of hosts – sounds ugly, whereas the concord of hosts conventionally giving the laws by their concordant power… sounds sweet & friendly.
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The problem ultimately with the concordant view (& I've come to see as a flaw of Democracy) is the utter incapacity of these hosts & political parties to actually agree, the decision-making must ultimately be arbitary: for example, there are pan-Europeans who also appeal to this idea of a concordant Europe, but imagine bringing together the most hardline European nationalists, the Nordicists vs the Latins vs pan-Slavics – how should they agree? it's impossible, it must be arbitrary if ever.
If you took /leftypol/ & /pol/ together, there'd be much less a concord: this further shows that a concord of hosts is indecisive & cannot find an equilibrium w/o an arbiter.
So I've come to agree with Hobbes that having a concord of hosts without a sovereign to define the boundaries of the land is an impossible feat and like a state of war of all against all, proving the necessity of the Sword of Commonwealth to at once define these boundaries, or else perish into confusion & anarchy.
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This hasn't dawned to me until now.
It shows the necessity of the Sword of Commonwealth, & dare I say, force, in having civil order of any kind.
The idea of agreement of an independent partnership of clans / factions, their love of virtue & concordance sounds nice, imo fails.
Jean Bodin & Hobbes is right to also conclude – that at first there were Lordly Monarchies & not Aristotle's heroic kings made by election and the concord of nobility for their virtue, not however that it doesn't take virtue to lead armies as well.
…
What virtue is Democracy if by participating in the Democratic process, there is formed a community of strangers rather than a kindred people – and I become a Tory or Whig, Conservative or Labour, Republican or Democrat, & make the State into a house divided?
This destroys a community of pleasures and pains, divides people against themselves, divides households against themselves by political factionalism.
Democracy makes the people themselves alien to each other by their direct participation.
A monarch or unitary corporatist party will give the people a common soul & identity.
Clement Attlee
>I have never been a republican even in theory, and certainly not in practice.
>The Labour Party has never been republican. British Socialists, with their own experiences of the long reign of Queen Victoria, differ from their Continental colleagues, with their memories of Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns and Bourbons.
>I remember Jimmie Maxton quoting John Wheatley as saying that he saw no point in substituting a bourgeois president for a bourgeois king… Capitalism, not monarchy, was the enemy.
A King Every Four Years
>The most stable and successful republic is that of the United States of America, and Americans are currently supposed to be most critical of what they call 'this King business.' Yet America is really more monarchical than Britain.
>In effect, what they do is to elect a king for a period of four years. The powers of the President are much the same as those enjoyed by our King William III. What he does with those powers depends largely on his personal will. There is all the difference in the world between a Roosevelt and a Coolidge, just as there was between a Henry III and an Edward I.
>There is the serious disadvantage of combining in one person the symbol of the nation and the party leader… At the end of dinner the British general rose, glass in hand, and gave 'The Queen,' adding 'God bless her.' He then gave 'The President of the United States.' The President was a Democrat. The American general, a Republican, said 'The President,' and added 'God help us.'
>A British king making himself a dictator is unthinkable, but many thoughtful Americans would not deny that a President might do so.
The Advantage of Constitutional Kingship
>The advantage of constitutional kingship is, in my view, every simple. The Monarch is the general representative of all the people and stands aloof from the party political battle. A president, however popular, is bound to have been chosen as representative of some political trend, and as such is open to attack from those of a different view. A monarch is a kind of referee, although the occasions when he or she has to blow the whistle are nowadays very few.
>The monarchy attracts to itself the kind of sentimental loyalty which otherwise might go to the leader of a faction. There is, therefore, far less danger under a constitutional monarchy of the people being carried away by a Hitler, a ᴉuᴉlossnW or even a de Gaulle. The monarchy gives a certain stability and continuity to the government. The substitution of one political leader for another causes no upset. The Queen's Government is carried on. The institution was not seriously affected even by the abdication of King Edward VIII, which elsewhere might have caused very serious trouble.
Common Symbol of Unity
>One may ask here whether it is the institution or the monarchs who have maintained it in being. Britain has been well served by its last three monarchs, but it is noteworthy also that the greatest progress towards the democratic Socialism in which I believe has been made not in republics but in limited monarchies.
>Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are probably the three countries where there is the highest degree of equality of well-being. They, like Britain, have been fortunate in having monarchs who are democratic and imbued with the spirit of service, while the leading statesmen have been, and are, practical men who understand the needs of their people and are tolerant. It may be said that in all these countries the persons have flattered the institution.
>There is one other very practical point in favour of monarchy. The British Commonwealth is made up of a great variety of peoples. More and more they need a common symbol of unity. Some of these peoples are inheritors to a high degree of the sentiment of loyalty to the monarch; others have this to a lesser degree. Yet others are now republics, but the monarch is there as head of the Commonwealth, a living symbol of unity which cannot be replaced by a formula, still less by a president elected by all the constituent peoples of the Commonwealth.
>>669789I post Clement Attlee here – not to show my approval.
This demonstrates what Jean Bodin says – that Mixed Constitutionalism is an opinion not only absurd but treasonable, & wholly warrants the lamentations of Thomas Hobbes
>>661724 that the whole nation of England was carried away with the stream of mixed constitutionalism and so-called mixed monarchy.
Mixed Constitutionalism in all its forms is a war against all notions of monarchical pre-eminence.
So much that Attlee boasts that America is really more monarchical than Britain.
How shouldn't it be? that is the ideal limited monarch for mixed constitutionalism – ultimately to be limited by terms or simply another estate mixed with the estates, having no pre-eminence and not wanting a monarchical power in policy since Aristotle makes a monarchical power (or any other unitary / corporatist mode of politics) contrary to his pluralistic mode of politics.
>>669776(Part 2)
I sympathize with Chrysalis here.
>>669789From Bore Doorbell:
>the monarchy was one of the things that have saved Britain from FascismAND WHAT SYSTEMS WERE COUNTRIES LIKE AUSTRIA AND GERMANY USING BEFORE FASCISM YOU FUCKING MORON? AUSTRIA-HUNGARY WAS AN ABSOLUTIST MONARCHY. SO WAS GERMANY. FASCISM TOOK OVER ALMOST RIGHT AFTER. WHERE WAS THE PROTECTION? ITALY DIDN'T EVEN ABOLISH THEIR MONARCHY'S STATUS UNTIL AFTER WORLD WAR 2. JAPAN WENT FASCIST AND KEPT THEIR MONARCH.
holy fuck the more quotes I see from Orwell the more retarded he reveals himself to be.
>>669810>but you have to honestly agreeI know your pain, b/c you have your George Orwell Animal Farm and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Gulag Archipelago, & I have my Alexis de Tocqueville and Bertrand de Jouvenel and a whole slew of Right Libertarian critics.
Like I bring up
>>661757 &
>>661758 &
>>661759 &
>>661760 &
>>661762 &
>>661763 &
>>661764 &
>>661765 &
>>661767 &
>>661771 &
>>661772I too know what it is like having a meta-narrative against you cushioned by these sort.
De Jouvenel>Where will it all end? In the destruction of all other command for the benefit of one alone – that of the State. In each man's absolute freedom from every family and social authority, a freedom the price of which is complete submission to the State. In the complete equality as between themselves of all citizens, paid for by their equal abasement before the power of their absolute master – the State. In the disappearance of every constraint which does not emanate from the State, and in denial of every pre-eminence which is not approved by the State. In a word, it ends in the atomization of society, and in the rupture of every private tie linking man and man, whose only bond is their common bondage to the State. The extremes of Individualism and Socialism meet: that was their predestined course.-Bertrand De Jouvenel
<The extremes of Individualism and Socialism meet: Jean Bodin on equality & a state as household?
>But the error originated with Plato, who, after he had established a popular state, introduced dangerous equalization. Then the Academicians who came from his school amplified his reasons, assuming that society is maintained by harmony, harmony by equality of justice, and equality by a popular state. Then all the citizens are made one and the same in the most perfect equality and likeness, and this should be the aim of human society. Aristotle did not confute the hypothesis of Plato, but he thought that Plato had erred especially in trying to make the citizenship one and the same; in that way the state is destroyed and becomes a family. This reasoning seems to me to be ineffective; but I judge the hypothesis not only absurd, as Aristotle would have it, but also clearly false.
>And the ancients (to assure Popular estates) did strive to equal all citizens in goods, honours, power, and rewards: and if any one were more virtuous, more just, or more wise, than the rest, he was banished, as I have showed before, seeking to make an equality, if it were possible: and even Plato did wish, That wives and children should be common to all, to the end that no many might say, This is mine, or, That is thine: for those words of Meum, and Tuum (said he) were the breeders of disc0rd, and the ruin of states. By the which there will grow many absurdities: for in so doing, a city shall be ruined, and become a household (as Aristotle said) although that a household or family (which is the true image of a Commonweal) has but one head. And for this cause, an ancient lawmaker, being importuned by some one, to make his country a Popular estate: Make it (says he) in thine own house. And if they say, That it is a goodly thing so to unite citizens and a city, as to make one household of it, they must then take away the plurality of heads and commanders, which are in a Popular estate, to make a Monarch, as the true fathers of a family; and to cut off this equality of goods, power, honour, and commandment, which they seek to make in a Popular estate; for that it is incompatible in a family.
Jean Bodin on Monarchy
>If we should inspect nature more closely, we should gaze upon monarchy everywhere. To make a beginning from small things, we see the king among the bees, the leader in the herd, the buck among the flocks or the bellwether (as among the cranes themselves the many follow one), and in the separate natures of things some one object excels: thus, adamant among the gems, gold among the metals, the Sun among the stars, and finally God alone, the prince and author of the world. Moresoever, they say that among the evil spirits one alone is supreme. But, not to continue indefinitely, what is a family other than the true image of a state? Yet this is directed by the rule of one, who presents, not a fictitious image, like the doge of Venice, but the true picture of a king.
>If, then, Plato were to change the nature of things and set up several lords in the same family, several heads for the same body, several pilots on a ship, and finally several leaders among bees, flocks, herds (if only the farmers will permit); if at length he would join several gods into an association for ruling, then I would agree with him that the rule of the optimates is better than a kingdom.
>But if the entire nature of things protests, reason dissents, lasting experience objects, I do not see why we ought to follow Plato or anyone else and violate nature. What Homer has said, "No good thing is a number of masters; let one man be master, one man be king," Euripides has repeated, "Power belongs to one man in the homes and in the cities." For this reason Sibylla is said to have prophesied in her poems that the safety of the Roman Republic is founded upon a kingdom, that is, the citizens cannot be protected unless they have a king.
Jean Bodin on Equality continued
>For if we refer all things to nature, which is chief of all things, it becomes plain that this world, which is superior to anything ever joined together by immortal God, consists of unequal parts and mutually discordant elements and contrary motions of the spheres, so that if the harmony through dissimilarity is taken away, the whole will be ruined. In the same way the best republic, if it imitates nature, which it must do, is held together stable and unshaken by those commanding and obeying, servants and lords, powerful and needy, good and wicked, strong and weak, as if by the mixed association of unlike minds. As on the lyre and in song itself the skilled ears cannot endure that sameness of harmony which is called unison; on the contrary, a pleasing harmony is produced by dissimilar notes, deep and high, combined in accordance with certain rules, so also no normal person could endure equality, or rather democratic uniformity in the state. On the other hand, a state graduated from the highest to the lowest, with the middle orders scattered between in moderate proportion, fits together in a marvelous way through complementary action. It is true this gives rise to that blight of all public affairs, the fact that people who are alike from a certain aspect think that they are altogether unlike; but, those who are in a certain degree unlike, think that they are altogether alike. If, therefore, such is the disparity of men among themselves, such the disparity of natural talent, who would divide authority, resources, honors, and offices on the basis of equality? It is as if the same food and clothing were given to boys, grown men, old men, the sick, and the strong and by this reasoning they think to preserve equality.
Hobbes on Equality
>The cause of mutual fear consists partly in the natural equality of men, partly in their mutual will of hurting: whence it comes to pass that we can neither expect from others, nor promise to ourselves the least security: For if we look on men fullgrown, and consider how brittle the frame of our human body is, (which perishing, all its strength, vigour, and wisdom itself perishes with it) and how easy a matter it is, even for the weakest man to kill the strongest, there is no reason why any man trusting to his own strength should conceive himself made by nature above others: they are equals who can do equal things one against the other; but they who can do the greatest things, (namely kill) can do equal things. All men therefore among themselves are by nature equal.
>The question whether of two men be the more worthy, belongs not to the natural, but civil state; for it has been showed before, Cap. I. Art. 3. that all men by nature are equal, and therefore the inequality which now is, suppose from riches, power, nobility of kindred, is come from the civil law. I know that Aristotle in the first book of Politics affirms as a foundation of the whole political science, that some men by nature are made worthy to command, others only to serve; as if Lord and Master were distinguished not by consent of men, but by an aptness, that is, a certain kind of natural knowledge, or ignorance; which foundation is not only against reason (as but now has been showed) but also against experience: for neither almost is any man so dull of understanding as not to judge it better to be ruled by himself, than to yield himself to the government of another; neither if the wiser and stronger do contest, have these ever, or often the upper hand of those. Whether therefore men be equal by nature, the equality is to be acknowledged, or whether unequal, because they are like to contest for dominion, its necessary for the obtaining of Peace, that they be esteemed as equal; and therefore it is in the eight place of the Law of nature, That every man be accounted by nature equal to another, the contrary to which Law is PRIDE.
>Some there are who are discontented with the government under one, for no other reason, but because it is under one; as if it were an unreasonable thing that one man among so many, should so far excel in power, as to be able at his own pleasure to dispose of all the rest; these men sure, if they could, would withdraw themselves from under the Dominion of one God. But this exception against one is suggested by envy, while they see one man in possession of what all desire: for the same cause they would judge it to be as unreasonable, if a few commanded, unless they themselves either were, or hoped to be of the number; for if it be an unreasonable thing that all men have not an equal Right, surely an Oligarchy must be unreasonable also. But because we have showed that the state of equality is the state of war, and that therefore inequality was introduc'd by a general consent; this inequality whereby he, whom we have voluntarily given more to, enjoys more, is no longer to be accompted an unreasonable thing. The inconveniences therefore which attend the Dominion of one man, attend his Person, not his Unity.
>This great Authority being indivisible, and inseparably annexed to the Sovereignty, there is little ground for the opinion of them, that say of Sovereign Kings, though they be Singulis Majores, of greater Power than every one of their Subjects, yet they be Universis Minores, of less power than them all together. For if by All Together, they mean not the collective body as one person, then All Together, and Every One, signify the same; and the speech is absurd. But if by All Together, they understand them as one Person (which person the Sovereign appears,) then the power of all together, is the same with the Sovereign's power; and so again the speech is absurd; which absurdity they see well enough, when the Sovereignty is in an Assembly of the people; but in a Monarch they see it not; and yet the power of Sovereignty is the same in whomsoever it be placed.
>And as the power, so also the honour of the sovereign, ought to be greater than that of any or all the subjects. For in the sovereignty is the fountain of honour. The dignities of lord, earl, duke, and prince as his creatures. As in the presence of the master, the servants are equal, and without any honour at all; so are the subjects, in the presence of the sovereign. And though they shine some more, some less, when they are out of his sight; yet in his presence, they shine no more than the stars in the presence of the Sun.
>The inequality of subjects proceeds from the acts of sovereign power, and therefore has no more place in the presence of the sovereign; that is to say, in a court of justice, than the inequality between kings and their subjects in the presence of the King of kings. The honour of great persons is to be valued for their beneficence, and the aids they give to men of inferior rank, or not at all. And the violences, oppressions, and injuries they do are not extenuated, but aggravated, by the greatness of their persons, because they have the least need to commit them. The consequences of this partiality towards the great proceed in this manner. Impunity makes insolence; insolence, hatred; and hatred, an endeavor to pull down all oppressing and contumelious greatness, though with the ruin of the Commonwealth.
From Samuel Johnson's Taxation No Tyranny
>The Colonies of England differ no otherwise from those of other nations, than as the English constitution differs from theirs. All Government is ultimately and essentially absolute, but subordinate societies may have more immunities, or individuals greater liberty, as the operations of Government are differently conducted. An Englishman in the common course of life and action feels restraint. An English Colony has very liberal powers of regulating its own manners and adjusting its own affairs. But an English individual may by the supreme authority be deprived of liberty, and a Colony divested of its powers, for reasons of which that authority is the only judge.
>In sovereignty there are no gradations. There may be limited royalty, there may be limited consulship; but there can be no limited government. There must in every society be some power or other from which there is no appeal, which admits no restrictions, which pervades the whole mass of the community, regulates and adjusts all subordination, enacts laws or repeals them, erects or annuls judicatures, extends or contracts privileges, exempt itself from question or control, and bounded only by physical necessity.
>By this power, wherever it subsists, all legislation and jurisdiction is animated and maintained. From this all legal rights are emanations, which, whether equitably or not, may be legally recalled. It is not infallible, for it may do wrong; but it is irresistible, for it can be resisted only by rebellion, by an act which makes it questionable what shall be thenceforward the supreme power.
>An English Colony is a number of persons, to whom the King grants a Charter permitting them to settle in some distant country, and enabling them to constitute a Corporation, enjoying such powers as the Charter grants, to be administrated in such forms as the Charter prescribes. As a Corporation they make laws for themselves, but as a Corporation subsisting by a grant from higher authority, to the control of that authority they continue subject.
Samuel Johnson continued
>A COLONY is to the Mother-country as a member to the body, deriving its action and its strength from the general principle of vitality; receiving from the body, and communicating to it, all the benefits and evils of health and disease; liable in dangerous maladies to sharp applications, of which the body however must partake the pain; and exposed, if incurably tainted, to amputation, by which the body likewise will be mutilated.
>The Mother-country always considers the Colonies thus connected, as parts of itself; the prosperity or unhappiness of either is the prosperity or unhappiness of both; not perhaps of both in the same degree, for the body may subsist, though less commodiously, without a limb, but the limb must perish if it be parted from the body.
>Our Colonies therefore, however distant, have been hitherto treated as constituent parts of the British Empire. The inhabitants incorporated by English Charters, are entitled to all the rights of Englishmen. They are governed by English laws, entitled to English dignities, regulated by English counsels, and protected by English arms; and it seems to follow by consequence not easily avoided, that they are subject to English government, and chargeable by English taxation.
>To him that considers the nature, the original, the progress, and the constitution of the Colonies, who remembers the first discoverers had commissions from the Crown, that the first settlers owe to a Charter their civil forms and regular magistracy, and that all personal immunities and legal securities, by which the condition of the subject has been from time to time improved, have been extended to the Colonists, it will not be doubted but the Parliament of England has a right to bind them by statutes, and to bind them in all cases whatsoever, and has therefore a natural and constitutional power of laying upon them any tax or impost, whether external or internal, upon the product of land, or the manufactures of industry, in the exigencies of war, or in the time of profound peace, for the defence of America, for the purpose of raising a revenue, or for any other end beneficial to the Empire.
Archibald Kennedy
>There is, in every Family, a Sort of Government without any fixed Rules; and indeed it is impossible, even in a little Family, to form Rules for every Circumstance; and therefore it is better conceived than expressed; but perfectly understood by every Individual belonging to the Family. The Study of the Father or Master, is for the Good of the Whole; all Appeals are to him; he has a Power, from the Reason and Nature of Things, to check the Insolent, or Indolent, and to encourage the Industrious: In short, the whole Affairs of the Family are immediately under the Care or Direction of the Father or Master; and this is a natural Prerogative, known and acknowledged by every Man living, who has ever had a Family, or been any Ways concerned in a Family, in all Ages and in all Places. His Majesty, as he is our political Father, his political Prerogative, from the like Circumstances and Reasons, is equally necessary. And this political Authority has been allowed the supreme Director, in all States, in all Ages, and in all Places; and without it, there would be a Failure of Justice.
Robert Filmer / Directive Power
>The first Father had not only simply power, but power monarchical, as he was a Father, immediately from God. For by the appointment of God, as soon as Adam was created he was monarch of the world, though he had no subjects; for though there could not be actual government until there were subjects, yet by the right of nature it was due to Adam to be governor of his posterity: though not in act, yet at least in habit. Adam was a King from his creation: and in the state of innocency he had been governor of his children; for the integrity or excellency of the subjects doth not take away the order or eminency of the governor.
>but as for directive power, the condition of human nature requires it, since civil society cannot be imagined without power of government: for although as long as men continued in the state of innocency they might not need the direction of Adam in those things which were necessarily and morally to be done; yet things indifferent, that depended merely on their free will, might be directed by the power of Adam's command.
>>671589 (me)
I meant outfits from
>>671570 for the new grace designs, not the modules from
>>671589 lol
>>671577A magnanimous ruler.
I'd rather echo Bodin's appraisal, the French chauvinist he is.
Though personally I align w/ the Byzantineboo's claim to the Roman Empire over the HRE.
Personally, I prefer the Rome of Antiquity and Caligula over the Holy Roman Empire and Byzantine people.
>>671589>>671590My only quip w/ Grace's design is I worry she looks too generic like Saber or too DnD lawful good alignment chart vibes – whereas my style of monarchy is about being a 21st century Caligulan, a Leviathan enjoyer, and shilling monarchical absolutism, I ache to be seen as too traditionalist or a neofeudalist because I get ostracized by that crowd everyday.
Grace is from 2018, so it's before my utter frustration and break w/ that half of the monarchist community and delve into all the research and political works I'd post here. I utterly detested dealing with the traditional catholics for their ultramontanism, the irate mixed constitutionalists and their maxims of the classics (like Hobbes laments, esp. egregious w/ Aristotle), the right libertarians & their contempt for absolute monarchy – it is a neverending barrage of people who hate you. I struggle to think of any demographic on the right not at odds w/ my politics since outside e-monarchist circles there's republicans and Hitlerists don't like hereditary monarchy and Nietzscheans typically have a Tocquevillist contempt for absolute monarchy, Fascists usually are republican (or belong to one of these groups), Orthodox Christians are hit or miss & while there's Tsar Nicholas II supporters there's also hatred for Emp. Peter I.
This is the reason why I've come to agree with Jean Bodin that Lordly Monarchy was necessary for the formation of states, & with Thomas Hobbes on the necessity of the arbitrary power and Sword of Commonwealth – as of late – because this dilemma has convinced me a concord of hosts is unworkable. Unique IPs: 18