But What Shall Be The New Form Of Government For The New Kingdom?
That Is A Speculation Very Interesting To A Politician, Though One
Which To Follow Out At Great Length In These Early Days Would Be
Rather Premature.
That it should be a kingdom - that the political
arrangement should be one of which a crowned hereditary king should
form part - nineteen out of every twenty Englishmen would desire;
and, as I fancy, so would also nineteen out of every twenty
Canadians.
A king for the United States, when they first
established themselves, was impossible. A total rupture from the
Old World and all its habits was necessary for them. The name of a
king, or monarch, or sovereign had become horrible to their ears.
Even to this day they have not learned the difference between
arbitrary power retained in the hand of one man, such as that now
held by the Emperor over the French, and such hereditary headship
in the State as that which belongs to the Crown in Great Britain.
And this was necessary, seeing that their division from us was
effected by strife, and carried out with war and bitter
animosities. In those days also there was a remnant, though but a
small remnant, of the power of tyranny left within the scope of the
British Crown. That small remnant has been removed; and to me it
seems that no form of existing government, no form of government
that ever did exist, gives or has given so large a measure of
individual freedom to all who live under it as a constitutional
monarchy in which the Crown is divested of direct political power.
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