Democracy--Parliament Triumphs

The Stuarts were gone. From their refuge at the French court, they would continue to bedevil England for decades more—James III and his son Charles Edward, “Bonnie Prince Charlie.” Scotsmen would go on secretly toasting, “The King Over The Water”. But the philosophy of absolute monarchy, French style, was gone forever.
For a brief moment things seemed to waver as the English Jacobites (the name for people who supported Catholic James—whose English name was actually Jacob) urged that one of the scores of Catholic relatives of the late Queen Anne be chosen as king.
The Tories (an insulting term for an Irish [Catholic] horse thief backed the idea of a strong monarchy—and tended toward the Catholic heirs. The Whigs (an insulting term for a Scotch [Protestant] horse drover) backed the notion of constitutional monarchy, of limited power to the king and the rule of Parliament—and George I.
Parliament exercised its king-making prerogative and chose the Protestant George of Hanover. He had been a staunch German ally of Britain during the last two major European wars. He took the throne in 1714, and in 1715 the Whigs won an over whelming majority in Parliament. They would hold power for nearly a half century.
In 1720 Robert Walpole became the first man to be what we today would recognize as a “Prime Minister” . George, 54 when he came to England, had been an absolute monarch in large parts of Germany, but he basically allowed Parliament to govern England. He paid very little attention to domestic affairs in Great Britain. His primary interest remained on the Continent.
While he wasn’t paying attention, Parliament cemented its role as the actual ruler of the British Isles. No king did more for democracy by doing so little. By the end of his reign in 1727, Parliament was firmly in place. Constitutional monarchy—a real form of democracy—was a fact. For the next 222 years, the powers of the king would steadily erode; the power of Parliament would grow.
(Note that the American colonists in the 1760s saw Parliament as their adversary, not nearly so much the king. George Washington, commander of the colonial army, was still toasting the King in 1776. Those who hoped for reconciliation with England made their primary appeals to Parliament.)
The long battle between king and parliament, inadvertently set in motion by Henry VIII two centuries before, was essentially over. In France—and most of the Continent—the result was exactly opposite. Absolutism became stronger and stronger –it would not end in Central and Eastern Europe until 1918. As a consequence, many of these peoples remain unsure and uncomfortable with democratic forms to this day. Try playing baseball if you’ve never held a ball.
Hereinafter, when speaking of an event in British history, scholars less and less spoke of something that happened during the reign of so and so the King; they spoke of something that happened during the ministry of such and such Prime Minister. Power had passed.
Before leaving England for America, we have to briefly touch on a political philosopher who wrote a famous book that nearly every member of the American Constitutional Convention in 1787 carried with him.
He became involved with some radical Whig politicians and his revolutionary views of government caused him to flee to Holland during the 1680s. When the Glorious Revolution sent James II scurrying to France, John Locke returned to England with Queen Mary.
In 1692 he published his “Two Treatises on Government”. It was, first of all, a defense for all the political chaos that had gone on in the Seventeenth Century—civil war, violent reaction to the suppression of Parliament, execution of a king and the forced abdication of another. It had been a truly exciting century. Its events had gone against everything Europeans had believed in since the days of ancient Rome. They required some sort of philosophical defense!
In the “Two Treatises” Locke set forth his view that government depends not upon God or some other exalted agency, but is rather a contract between the governed and the government. Like any contract it can be broken. If the government violates its end of the contract, the people have a right to throw out that government and create a new one that better satisfied their wishes.
This is called Locke’s “Social Contract” theory of government. It is a perfectly marvelous theory for those who are in the midst of a revolution or those who need to justify one in the bloody aftermath. e Americans loved it—they felt it gave them all the justification they needed for revolting against King George III and Parliament.
It became their grounds for the war and for the new government they created at Philadelphia after the war. It was hugely influential on American thinking. Our history textbooks to this day give happy lip service to Locke’s notion that the basis for government is nothing more than a contract between equals, and that it is obligated to make its citizens happy.
When in the past I have lectured on Locke, I have always reminded students that Government is an organism like any other—and, like any other, it will move to defend itself with any means at its disposal. It is therefore not wise to take the “Social Contract” too seriously in everyday political life.
“If,” I say, “the situation has become so drastically wrong that you feel the necessity of invoking the idea of Social Contract (and revoking the contract itself), write your will, pay up your insurance and stand by for some serious action.” In any country, at any time.
I reminded them of the students at Ohio State University in 1970 who met the National Guard by throwing stones and cursing them. As the stones began to strike the guardsmen, they fired back. Friends of the dead students were startled and horror struck. This certainly was not the way they expected the Social Contract to work! Maybe not—but it IS the way the Real World works.
In business sometimes contracts are rigidly enforced by legal edict. Governments tend to use even more forceful means. But Locke gave our revolutionary forefathers a lovely construct to work with and to justify their actions—after they had succeeded. As such, it was deservedly a very influential work.
But it’s one of those great ideas that shouldn’t be taken too seriously or invoked too often.
Now we cross the Atlantic and see how English law, politics and precedent played out in thirteen uncoordinated outposts on the very edge of the North American Continent.