Up with Monarchy, down with Democracy

There's a bit of a kerfuffle here in the UK about Prince Charles. Apparently, he has opinions of his own and has been expressing them in letters to ministers. Queue outrage from the usual suspects which goes something along the lines of "He's not elected how dare he meddle in politics."

The implication is clear: only democratically-elected politicians have a right to make laws.

First: no they don't. Our liberties are innate. They are ours by virtue of being alive. No one but no one has the right to take them away. They just think they do.

Second. Democracy doesn't work. It is difficult to put a date on when the UK became a democracy - indeed even now the vote is denied the under 18s, prisoners, the insane, members of the House of Lords and members of the royal family - but ever since the franchise began to be extended in the 1830s the British have seen a steady erosion of their liberties.

It is not difficult to see why. I think it was Thomas Carlyle who said something along the lines of "I doubt the collective wisdom of the individually stupid." He might have said a whole load more if he had been aware of public choice theory and the way that democracy legitimises legalised theft.

Yes, I actually said that. Democracy doesn't work. It may indeed be the guiding principle of our constitution. It may indeed be something we are encouraged to honour. Phrases such as "freedom and democracy" spring to mind. But it doesn't alter the fact. It doesn't work and it has to go.

So, what should we replace it with? Funny you should ask that but we could do a lot worse than read the works of Montesquieu and especially his masterpiece "The Spirit of the Laws".

Montesquieu was a French aristocrat who believed in liberty. He asked himself two questions (this was in about 1750, I think): Which country on earth is most free and what are the guiding principles of its constitution? Following an entirely empirical approach and after exhaustive (at least exhaustive on the part of his researchers) he came up with the country: Britain. He then started to look at its constitutional principles.

The first thing he found was that power was dispersed. The monarch had the power of appointment but could not raise taxes or make laws without the agreement of Parliament. The judiciary, although appointed by the monarch could not be sacked by him. So, their independence was guaranteed.

The second thing he found was that each element of the constitution was appointed in a different way: the Monarch and the House of Lords by birth, the House of Commons by (non-democratic) election and the Judiciary by appointment. This he believed was vital in making sure one could not dominate the other and hence that a tyrant could not seize power.

When the framers of the US constitution did their work they did little more than codify the British constitution of the day replacing the monarch with an elected President. This was their mistake.

Meanwhile in Britain we have had two hundred years of expanding democracy and an expanding state. Democracy has usurped power in Britain to the extent that to all intents and purposes we live in an elected dictatorship.

And this is where Prince Charles comes in. The monarch, in the form of his mother, is the last vestige of the balanced system. She still has (theoretically at least) some pretty impressive powers. She can dissolve parliament, appoint ministers and judges, declare war, negotiate treaties and block legislation. It is time that the monarch started using them and, failing that, it is absolutely vital that the monarch does not allow those powers to be removed.

I believe that given the right sort of intellectual support the monarch could very easily start regaining some of her/his powers. Elections themselves are usually fought over a very small number of issues. But the results of those elections are used to smuggle in no end of laws and taxes that no one voted for. A monarch would be entirely within his rights to say: "No one voted for that EU treaty, or ID cards, or compulsory metrication. If you want to get it past me, Matey, you'll have to fight an election. In the meantime concentrate on what you got elected for."

Of course, this doesn't mean that bad laws won't get passed. And it certainly isn't a shortcut to freedom. But it makes it less likely that those laws will be passed.

Monarchy, has been brought into disrepute over the last two and a half centuries. But as Hans-Hermann Hoppe (I think) has pointed out there are many advantages to a monarchy. The principle one is that a monarch is around for a long time and that (typically, at least) he wants to hand over something of value to his son.

Frankly, the history of a powerful (but not absolute) monarchy is far more impressive than a powerful democracy.