King Charles III had an opportunity for immortality in speaking to the Congress of the United States last April 28 by emulating George Washington’s walking away from power after defeating the British Empire in the Revolutionary War. Upon hearing that Washington planned to resign his military commission and return to private life, King George III reportedly said, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”
Charles would have lived for the ages by renouncing the throne, disposing of the lion’s share of the $28 billion estimated wealth of the royal family, and sounding the death knell for the unjust principle that the accident of birth as opposed to character and accomplishments is destiny. Thomas Jefferson elaborated, “The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.”
The Declaration of Independence and Constitution are predicated on the enlightened principle that justice is the end of government, the end of civil society. Perfect justice would have everyone’s station in life correspond exactly to their character and accomplishments, simpliciter.
Life, however, cannot be made perfectly just. We do not choose our parents, our inheritance, or our congenital endowments. But more justice is better than less. Royalty compounds rather than diminishes injustice by bestowing fabulous entitlements divorced from individual merit, virtue, or achievements. Royalty cynically teaches that, in Orwell’s phrase, some are more equal than others. The injustice of British royalty is underscored in Mark Twain’s famous novel The Prince and the Pauper.
Charles did not follow Washington’s example. He may be excused for that shortcoming. Washington was a prodigy unlikely to be duplicated in 1,000 years or more. But the king’s speech can be faulted for a fairy tale history that neglected the vast philosophical divide between the United Kingdom and the United States. The former has no Constitution or checks and balances limiting majority rule. Parliamentary supremacy reigns. Unelected royalty—the opposite of government by the consent of the governed—endures.
The United States, in contrast, celebrates a Constitution featuring a separation of powers, an independent and impartial Supreme Court exercising the power of judicial review, and a prohibition on any “title of nobility” such as that exemplified by Charles himself. A nation lives by symbols. Titles of nobility symbolize inequality unrelated to skill, foresight, self-discipline, or virtue and contrary to the majestic philosophy of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Charles’s pollyannish insistence of an identity of interests and eternal friendship with the United States ignored the earthbound teaching of British Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston:
Therefore I say that it is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.
Great Britain attacked Egypt with the French and Israel in 1956 over its nationalization of the Suez Canal. President Dwight Eisenhower adamantly opposed the invasion and forced the United Kingdom to withdraw. President George Washington’s timeless Farewell Address warned:
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions—by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained—and by exciting jealousy, ill will, and a disposition to retaliate in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld.
Charles should not be singled out for animadversion. His predecessors exhibited the same flaws and unjust royal presumptions. But progress towards justice is made of more enlightened and praiseworthy stuff.
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