Edmund Burke|The formation of the British power system and the survival of the monarchy

Edmund Burke (1729–1797), Irish politician, writer, orator, political theorist, and philosopher, served for several years as a member of the Whig Party in the House of Commons, best known for his opposition to King George III and the British government, support for the American colonies and later the American Revolution, and criticism of the French Revolution. Reflections on the French Revolution made him a major figure in the Whig Party of conservatism (he also called himself "Old Whig") and is regarded as the founder of Anglo-American conservatism. His representative works include "Reconciliation with the United States" and "Reflections on the French Revolution".

Whatever the interpretation and grossly erroneous excuse that the king (although the people expect him to have the crown) is given the crown by the choice of the people, nothing makes them avoid the very obvious declaration that the people have the right to vote, whose right to vote is directly supported and embraced by the people. All the unscrupulous hints of elections in this proposition can be attributed to it. Lest the king's exclusive legal right be perceived as merely a fiery speech of flattery and freedom, the political priest dogmatically insisted on this claim. According to the principle of "revolution", the English people were given three rights, which he combined into a system, and summed it up in a short sentence, that is, we received one right:

1. "Choose our own ruler".

2. "Remove him for his misconduct".

3. "Build a government for ourselves."

So far, this new and unprecedented bill of rights, although enacted in the name of the entire people, belongs only to those gentlemen and their collectives. Most of the British people did not share it. They will resist practical support for it at the risk of life and property. According to the laws that the "revolutionary associations" were abusing and that they claimed during the revolution to call people to support false rights, they would have done so.

The old Jewish gentlemen, among all their inferences about the revolution of 1688, were the revolution that took place in England 40 years ago and the revolution that had recently taken place in France, so imprinted in their eyes and hearts that they often confused the three. It is necessary that we distinguish between what they confuse. In order to discover its true principles, we must recall their false illusions about the revolutionary acts we respect. If the principles of the Revolution of 1688 can be found anywhere, they are in the statutes of the Bill of Rights. The wisest, most solemn and comprehensive bill, drafted by great lawyers and statesmen, not enthusiastic, inexperienced fanatics, does not utter a word or mention a proposal concerning the right of the masses to "choose our own ruler, to depose him for misconduct and to establish a government for ourselves".

The Bill of Rights (William and Mary's First Act, Minutes 2, Chapter 2) is the cornerstone of our Constitution. As we continued to add, elaborate and improve, its basic principles were permanently established and became known as "a bill proclaiming the rights and freedoms of the people and settling the question of succession to the throne". You will observe that these rights are proclaimed in conjunction with this inheritance, and they are an indelibable unity.

In the years that followed this period, we again had the opportunity to affirm the king's right to vote. Fearing the complete failure of the succession between King William and the princess who would later become Queen Anne, the consideration of settling the succession to the throne and further ensuring the freedom of the people was once again before the legislature. Will they again make any rules that legitimize the false revolutionary principles of the old Jews? The answer is no. They followed the main principles of the Bill of Rights, indicating more clearly the heirs in Protestantism. This bill contains both our right to liberty and the inheritance of inheritance. It was also urgent for them to declare that hereditary (Protestants from the line of James I) was absolutely necessary for "the freedom, stability, and security of the kingdom" and that "the stability of the hereditary heritage and the safe recourse of the people to their protection" were also urgent. The revolutionary policy of these two bills, which sounded infallible and unambiguous prophecy, rather than the deceptive prophecy of Gypsy that "the right to choose our government" proved that the wisdom of this nation came from translating an inevitable situation into a statute.

There is no doubt that during the Revolution King William had a little temporary departure from the normal hereditary strict procedure and formulated a principle in a law made from a particular case and individual point of view, which violated all the true principles of the legal system: the individual cannot become a universal norm. If there was a period in history conducive to the establishment of the principle that the king chosen by the masses was the only legitimate king, it had to be in the revolutionary period. If it is not established in that period, it proves that the people believe that it should not be established at any time. No one would have neglected our history so much that they did not know that the overwhelming majority of the two parties in Parliament were extremely reluctant to do something of similar principle, and their initial decision was not to give the vacant throne to the Prince of Orange, but to his wife Mary, the daughter of King James, whom they recognized without doubt because she was the king's eldest daughter.

Recalling your memories of these circumstances must be repeated as a very old story, but these circumstances prove that it was not an appropriate choice for them to accept King William; But for those who do not wish to recall King James, or to lie in a pool of blood, and once again bring their religion, law, and liberty back to the danger from which they have just fled, this is a necessary act of the strictest morality.

In this bill, lawmakers temporarily violated the strict order of succession in one case in favor of a prince who, although he was not the first heir, was also in the upper order. It is strange to see Lord Summers, who drafted the Bill of Rights, behave on such a delicate occasion. It is also strange that we observe that this successive ephemeral approach conceals people, yet all the ideas that can be found in this necessary act to support hereditary succession are put forward and developed, and put to good use by the great man and the legislature that followed him. He abandoned the dry and fatalistic bill of Parliament and allowed the House of Lords and House of Commons to begin a pious legislative discussion, declaring that "it is a wonderful providence of God that merciful God protects their majestic royals to rule us happily on the thrones of their ancestors, so that they reciprocate from the bottom of their hearts with the most humble thanks and praise". The legislature clearly endorsed Chapter 3 of the Act of Elizabeth I and Chapter 1 of the Act of James I, both of which strongly declared the nature of the succession to the throne, and in many parts they followed the language and even the form of thanks found in these old proclamations, almost to the extent of copying.

In King William's bill, the upper and lower houses did not thank God, and they had found a fairly good opportunity to assert their right to choose their own ruler, let alone use elections as the only legitimate way to obtain the throne. They are in a state of avoiding the way it occurs, taking it as much as possible as a lucky escape. Whenever there is a tendency to weaken rights, they are covered with an elaborate political veil that is the order of succession to the throne that they want to permanently establish, or that provides a precedent for future violations of the order they have permanently established. Thus, they may not relax their nerves about the monarchy, and may remain highly consistent with the practices of their ancestors, as appears in the proclamations of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, and in the second sentence, by their majesty, through the public granting all the privileges of the king, they also declare: "These rights are best, most rightly and most completely conferred, embodied, united and possessed." In the ensuing content, in order to prevent any question of obtaining the throne under false names, they declared (and also adhered to traditional language and traditional policy, retelling the previous Elizabeth and James Act from the title) that "under the protection of God, the unity, peace, and stability of this country depend entirely on the determination of the order of succession to the throne."

They know that a questionable succession would be very similar to an election that would completely destroy the unity, peace and stability of the country, which they consider to be considerations at certain important moments. In order to provide these things, they have forever excluded the doctrine of the old Jews ("the right to choose our own rulers") and followed one of the most solemn oaths of the aforementioned Queen Elizabethan Act, a solemn oath that had supported or could support hereditary succession, and a solemn oath to abandon the principles that the association had attributed to them. Members of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, in the name of the above-mentioned people, make themselves, their heirs and descendants always submit to the sovereign, with the most humility and loyalty, and most heartily undertake that they will do their utmost to support and protect their majesty, as well as the monarchical restrictions laid down and contained in the Act.

The right to elect a king through this association is not only untrue, but if we had ever had such a right, the British people and their descendants would have solemnly abandoned it. Those gentlemen are free to judge themselves according to the principles of the Whig Party, but I never wish to be considered a better Whig than Lord Summers, or to understand the principles of the Association better than those put forward, or to read in the Bill of Rights any mystery about the content and spirit of this immortal law that is not known to those who (whose thoughts are engraved in the decrees and in our hearts).

It is true in the sense that the people of the time were free to choose any way to succeed the king by virtue of the right by force and opportunity, but it was also on the basis of this alone that the people were free to completely abolish their monarchy and all other parts of the constitution that they considered to be outside their mandate to make such a bold change. It is indeed difficult, perhaps unlikely, to limit the purely abstract competence of the supreme power (such as the exercise of parliament at that time), but the restriction of moral authority (even under an undisputed monarch), incidentally subordinating the will to eternal truth or to the unchanging maxims of faith, justice, and fixed fundamental policies, is quite understandable and can bind those who exercise any right in the state under any name or title. For example, the House of Lords does not have the ability to dissolve the House of Commons, nor does it have the ability to dissolve itself, and it cannot give up its seat in the legislature even if it wishes. Although the king can abdicate himself, he cannot abdicate because of the monarchy. For equally good reasons, or more so, the House of Commons cannot waive its rights. Social conventions or contracts that we usually call constitutions do not allow for such violations or waivers. The various components of a State have an obligation to uphold their common faith among themselves and with those who have received any significant benefit under their Convention, just as the State as a whole must uphold its common faith with individual groups. Otherwise, authority and power can easily be mixed up, and then the law ceases to exist, leaving only the will of the dominant power. Influenced by this principle, legally, the system of succession to the throne is and has always been hereditary: in the past it was regulated by customary law, but now it is regulated by statutory law and operates according to the principles of customary law, without changing its substance, but merely adjusting its form and describing specific heirs. The content of both laws has the same force and derives from the same authority, from the common agreement of the State and from the original contract, that is, the consent of all the people of the country, which is equally binding on the king and the people as long as it is observed, and so long as the present form of government is upheld.

If we were not entangled in a labyrinth of metaphysical sophistry, established rules and occasional deviations could be reconciled, and the sacred principles of hereditary succession of our government could be appropriately adapted in emergency situations. Even in that case, change (if we adopt the method of exercising power during the revolution) is limited to the part that is at fault and to the part that produces the necessary deviation, and even then, in order to establish a new public order with the basic elements of society, it will not cause the disintegration of the entire civic and political groups.

A country has no way to survive without some means of change. Without these methods, it may be in danger of losing that part of it most pious to protect. When England found itself without a king, the two principles of preservation and correction were forcefully applied to the two crucial periods of restoration and revolution. In both periods, Britain lost the bond of friendship in the old edifice, yet they did not break down its entire structure. On the contrary, in both cases, they renovated the defective parts of the old constitution by leaving them undamaged. They maintain those old parts as much as possible so that the repaired parts can fit them. They act on the basis of an ancient state of organization, not on the organic elements of a disintegrated nation.

When it deviated from the direct line of hereditary succession, perhaps the supreme legislature did not give more importance to the basic principles of British constitutional policy than it did during the Revolution. The crown has moved more or less away from the original moving lineage, but the new lineage also derives from the same lineage. Although hereditary descendants must be Protestants, they are still a lineage of hereditary descendants, still hereditary descendants of the same bloodline. When the legislature changed course and stuck to the policy, they expressed preservation of its sacredness.

Under this policy, the law of inheritance recognizes some amendments from the past, especially in the recent revolutionary era. In the period following the struggle for hegemony, major questions arose about the principle of legality of hereditary descendants. Whether heirs in number or heirs of the family line succeeded to the throne became a matter of controversy. When heirs of the family line arose, the heirs according to the number gave way to it, and when the people preferred the Protestant heirs, the Catholic heirs gave way, and the principle of succession survived in an immortal spirit, which underwent the cycle of many years in which the luck of the family remained unchanged and the genealogy of their ancestors continued. This is the spirit of our Constitution, which exists not only in periods of stability, but in all periods of revolution. Whoever steps into our country, or how, whether he obtains the crown by law or force, hereditary succession is either perpetuated or adopted. In the revolution of 1688, the gentlemen of the "revolutionary association" saw only the deviation from the constitution and took the principle of deviation as principle. Although they see that their teachings leave little positive authority in the positive institutions of their countries, they are also completely unconcerned about the serious consequences of their teachings. Once this unjustified maxim is established, there is no legitimate monarch except through elections, and before this era, no fictitious election of princes was valid. Are these theorists trying to imitate their predecessors and drag the remains of our ancient monarchs out of quiet graves? Are they trying to tarnish and abolish the kings who ruled us before the Revolution, and therefore defile the English monarch with continuous usurpation? Are they intentionally denying, abolishing, or doubting all the hereditary rights of our kings, feeling that much of the written law was passed by what they consider to be usurpers? Do they want to repeal laws that are so precious to our freedom (which are at least as valuable as any law passed during or during the revolution)? If it is not chosen by the people to receive the crown, the king does not have the right to make laws, then without consent, no decrees can be made - what will happen to the Petition for Rights, the Habeas Corpus Act? The new human rights doctors claimed that King James II from collateral descent was not a legitimate king of England until he announced his abdication under the then illegal succession laws. If he really was not legitimate, then in the days of nostalgia of the gentlemen, there would be no great deal of trouble in the council. But King James was a bad king with all the power, and he was not a usurper. The Parliamentary Election Act granted the throne to candidate Sophia and her descendants, and the princes who succeeded under this Act, like King James, were Protestants and received the throne by succession. It can be seen from the way in which he received the crown that he succeeded to the throne by law, whereas the princes of the House of Braunschweig succeeded to the throne not by law but by election, as can be seen from the way in which several of their Protestant heirs and heirs inherited, as I have already mentioned.

King William's Bills Nos. 12 and 13 clearly provide for the right of succession to the royal family. The provisions of the Act bind "us and our heirs, and our descendants, to them, their heirs and their descendants" until the last moment of life, just as the Bill of Rights binds us to the heirs of King William and Queen Mary. Thus, this ensures hereditary throne and generational allegiance. Unless constitutional policy forever ensures a system of succession that prevents the people from choosing, what reason can we have for the legislature to be more than happy to accept the just and plentiful option that our country offers them, to go to exotic lands in search of foreign princesses, and to give her heirs, our future hereditary rulers, the right to rule over thousands of our people for centuries?

Princess Sophia was appointed heir to the throne under King William's Succession to the Throne Laws Nos. 12 and 13 because she was the heir of our King, not because of her merits in exercising power as interim heir to the throne, which she may not have (and indeed did not) exercise. She was admitted for only one reason, as the bill reads: "The daughter of our late and deeply remembered monarch King James I, the noble late Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia, whose daughter, the widow of the Venerable Elector of Hanover and the Duke, Princess Sophia, will be proclaimed as the next heir, in Protestant order... And the throne should continue to be inherited by its Protestant heirs. "This limit was set by Parliament, and although Princess Sophia had the right to inherit the throne, [they thought of very substantial things] through her she could be connected to the ancient succession of King James I, for the monarchy to maintain its integrity and unity for eternity, and for the protection of the old model approved by the heirs, according to which if our freedoms were at stake, they would be preserved through all the storms and struggles of privilege and priority. They did a great job. In any other path and method, only the experience of the hereditary system of the throne can teach us, which allows our freedom to perpetuate and preserve its sanctity as our hereditary right. An unlawful, convulsive movement may need to throw out its ills, but the process of succession is a healthy habit of the English Constitution. Did the legislature want to pass a bill to limit royal power to the Hanoverian hereditary descendants of King James I, so that people would have a sense of resistance to foreigners inheriting the English throne? No! - They have a due consciousness of the evil that may come from foreign domination, and there is more than this due awareness. There is no more conclusive evidence of the firm conviction of the English nation that the principles of the revolution did not authorize them to elect kings at will, nor did they pay attention to the ancient basic policy of our government, except that they continued to adopt the old hereditary Protestant hereditary succession, and all the dangers and inconveniences of foreign hereditary were fully presented before their eyes and worked in their brains with the greatest force.

A few years ago, I bothered to talk about a problem, and now I am ashamed to think about it, because it is self-explanatory; But now, this provocative and unconstitutional doctrine is openly taught, proclaimed, and published. I am disgusted with the revolution, whose signals are accidentally sent from the pulpit, whose spirit of change has spread abroad, and we all completely despise it when the ancient system is alien to the convenience and tendencies of the present. This contempt is prevalent in you, and it may be prevalent in ours: it seems to me that all these calls make it possible for us to pay attention to the true principles of our own domestic law, and you, my French friend, should begin to know these considerations, and we should all continue to cherish them. On both sides of the sea, we should not be deceived by counterfeit goods that are exported to your country by cunning swindlers on illegal cargo ships, like raw materials from England itself, which, although incompatible with our soil, are smuggled back and incorporated into the improved freedom, the latest Parisian fashion.

The British people will not imitate patterns they have never experimented with, nor will they return to patterns that they have experimented with and found to be disasters. They saw the legitimate hereditary succession to the throne as a wisdom rather than a mistake, a gain rather than a disadvantage, a guarantee of freedom rather than a sign of servitude. They consider the structure of the State to exist to be of inestimable value and envisage an uninterfered succession to the throne as a guarantee of stability and permanence for all remaining components of the Constitution.

Before I elaborate further, allow me to highlight some despicable ruses — the repugnant measures that the instigators of the elections for the legitimate succession to the throne intend to resort to in support of the principles of justice of our Constitution. These sophists substitute for fictitious and fabricated dignitaries, and whenever you defend the nature of the succession to the throne, they think that you are involved in supporting these people and things. For them, it is normal to argue, as if they were in conflict with some fanatics who had erupted under slavery who had previously insisted (and I believe no one insists now) that "the throne is obtained through sacred, hereditary, and inalienable rights" – the old fanatics dogmatized personal dictatorship as if only hereditary kingship were the only legitimate government in the world, just as the new fanatics supported democracy and believed that public elections were the only source of power. The ideas of those old privilege fanatics are foolish and probably not religious, as if monarchy is more sacred than other forms of government, as if the right to rule by inheritance is inalienable to everyone who inherits the throne, and in any case there is no civil or political power to take away, but an absurd view of the right of succession to kings does not undermine the rationality of the principle of law and policy solidity. If all the fallacies of lawyers and theologians would harm what they are well versed in, then there would be no law or religion in our world. But an absurd theory of a problem on the one hand does not justify a false fact or the promulgation of disastrous norms on the other.

This article is selected from the Harvard Centennial Classics Burke Anthology, the title was added by the editor, and briefly edited.

It is especially recommended to purchase this book and study it carefully. This selection is only for reference to the content of the recommended books, and may not be used for commercial purposes, and the copyright belongs to the original publishing organization.

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