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The Origins Of Modern Constitutionalism
Mixed Monarchy
by Wormuth, Francis D.
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At the close of the Middle Ages came a revival of
trade and the integration of local economies into larger units. There resulted
a quickening of political life in all fields, but particularly in the field of
international affairs. Evidence of this new activity is found in the practice
of maintaining ambassadors at foreign capitals; several Italian cities had
adopted it by the close of the fifteenth century, and the northern nations took
it up during the sixteenth. The wars of aggrandizement and religion, the
intrigues and plots of assassination gave rise to a new branch of political
science — "reason of state." Machiavelli was the expositor of this
discipline, which had consequences in other fields besides morality. To deal
with secret and urgent matters of state the king must act secretly and
arbitrarily, in contravention not only of rules of morality but of rules of
law. In England the claim of Queen Elizabeth to act irresponsibly in the field
of foreign affairs was conceded by her Parliament; and in the reign of James I
the judges of the courts of common law affirmed that the king possessed an
"absolute prerogative" to act contrary to common law in all matters of state.
His "ordinary prerogative" was to do justice according to law, but his absolute
prerogative was a discretionary power to safeguard the nation by any means that
seemed to him appropriate.
Another current of thought set in the same direction. The internal
disorder following the wars of religion in France in the sixteenth century had
led Jean Bodin to make his celebrated if imperfect statement of the doctrine of
sovereignty. To Bodin, as to the whole school of politiques, it appeared that
the very existence of society was possible only if there were some overriding
power capable of exacting complete obedience from all subjects. James I, in the
light of his unhappy experiences in turbulent Scotland, held the same view.
Order was dependent upon the relationship of command and obedience. All
organization derived from superiority and subordination: God in the celestial
universe, the king among men, the shepherd among the sheep, Satan among the
legions of hell, all averted chaos by the organizing power of command. Other
writers argued to the same effect. Without a sovereign, said Edward Forsett,
"no people can ever as subjects range themselves into the order, and community
of human society, howsoever, as men, or rather as wild savages, they may
perhaps breathe a while upon the earth." Roger Manwaring, chaplain of Charles
I, rendered this point of view in terms of "divine right." The organization of
a multitude into unity was the work of power, and all power was derived from
God. Kings were the vicegerents of God and participated in His omnipotence.
There was, however, another and older way of looking at monarchy —
in terms of double majesty. Before the Civil Wars the medieval notion of a
kingship absolute in its sphere but limited to that sphere by an autonomous
body of law was the dominant conception. The classical idea of the mixed state
was sometimes employed, but before 1641 it appears to have been merely a thin
literary tradition. Thomas Starkey in 1538 declared "a mixed state to be of all
others the best and most convenient to conserve the whole out of
tyranny."1 When Elizabeth succeeded to the throne John Aylmer
reassured those troubled at the accession of a woman by pointing out that she
was not an absolute but a "mixed ruler": "The regimen of England is not a mere
monarchy, as some for lack of consideration think, nor a mere oligarchy nor
democracy, but a rule mixed of all these, wherein each of them have or should
have like authority."2 Sir Walter Raleigh spoke with approval of the
"royal, mixed government of Sparta" in a passage which seems to liken the
English polity to the Spartan.3 Sir Francis Biondi, in his History
of the Civil Wars in England, published in Italian, 1637-1644, and in an
English translation by the Earl of Monmouth in 1641, described England as "una
ben constuita aristodemocratica monarchia." With the outbreak of the war the
idea came into active controversial use and largely displaced the doctrine of
double majesty. John Milton in 1641 asserted that neither Sparta nor Rome was
"more divinely and harmoniously tuned, more equally balanced as it were by the
hand and scale of justice, than is the commonwealth of England."4
What chiefly gave currency to the idea of the mixed state was the reply of
Charles to the Nineteen Propositions of Parliament in 1642. The mixed state now
represented the King's highest ambition; he wished only to be recognized as one
of three equal estates, in order to prevent hostile action by the other two.
The reply was written by Sir John Colepepper,5 who followed the
arguments of Polybius.
There being three kinds of government amongst men, absolute monarchy,
aristocracy, and democracy, and all these having their particular conveniences
and inconveniences, the experience and wisdom of your ancestors hath so molded
this out of a mixture of these, as to give to this kingdom (as far as human
prudence can provide) the conveniences of all three, without the inconveniences
of any one, as long as the balance hangs even between the three estates, and
they run jointly on in their proper channel (begetting verdure and fertility in
the meadows on both sides) and the overflowing of either on either side raise
no deluge or inundation. The ill of absolute monarchy is tyranny, the ill of
aristocracy is faction and division, the ills of democracy are tumults,
violence, and licentiousness. The good of monarchy is the uniting of a nation
under one head to resist invasion from abroad, and insurrection at home: the
good of aristocracy is the conjunction of counsel in the ablest persons of a
state for the public benefit: the good of democracy is liberty, and the courage
and industry which liberty begets.6
The "mixture" lay in the joint possession of legislative power by all
three elements and in the assignment of appropriate functions to each of the
three singly. The king was charged with the conduct of foreign relations, the
power of appointment, the pardoning power, and other functions; the Commons
possessed the sole right to propose taxes and to impeach; the Lords possessed
power of judicature.
This conception was immediately adopted by the pamphleteers of both
parties. Royalist writers rested their case upon the king's right, never
contested before the war, to participate equally with Lords and Commons in the
government of the country. The Parliamentarians attempted to refute this claim.
Philip Hunton, a serious and honest thinker, argued in his Treatise of
Monarchy7 that the purpose of the balance between King, Lords, and
Commons was "that one should counterpoise and keep even the other."
Consequently, if the King should "run in any course tending to the dissolving
of the constituted frame," the Lords and Commons were obliged to restrain
him.
But some champions of the king denied the possibility of a mixed
monarchy. Robert Sheringham, a Cambridge scholar, wrote a pamphlet called The
King's Supremacy Asserted8 in which he insisted that monarchy is
"the government of one alone." "His Majesty acknowledgeth monarchy to be so
mixed with aristocracy and democracy in the exercise of some part of his power,
that the conveniences of all those forms of government, without the
inconveniences of any of them, are obtained by such a mixture; but he denieth
the mixture to be in the power itself, for the convenience which he saith it
hath from monarchy, is, that it is governed by one head."
Sheringham failed to state his case clearly, but Thomas Hobbes and Sir
Robert Filmer drove straight to the central issue. The whole burden of the
teaching of Hobbes was the necessity and the indivisibility of sovereign power.
Sovereignty might reside in one man, or in a corporate group, but it could not
be partitioned into several hands. "For although few perceive, that such
government is not government, but division of the commonwealth into three
factions, and call it mixed monarchy; yet the truth is, that it is not one
independent commonwealth, but three independent factions; nor one
representative person, but three."9
Such a state was diseased. Filmer vigorously attacked both the
scholarship and the logic of Hunton's Treatise.10
There is scarce the meanest man of the multitude but can now in these
days tell us that the government of the Kingdom of England is a limited and
mixed monarchy: and it is no marvel since all the disputes and arguments of
these distracted times both from the pulpit and the press do tend and end in
this conclusion.
The author of the Treatise of Monarchy hath copiously handled the nature
and manner of limited and mixed monarchy, and is the first and only man (that I
know) hath undertaken the task of describing it; others only mention it as
taking it for granted. ...
I have with some diligence looked over this Treatise, but cannot approve
of these distinctions which he propounds; I submit the reasons of my dislike to
others' judgments. I am somewhat confident that his doctrine of limited and
mixed monarchy is an opinion but of yesterday, and of no antiquity, a mere
innovation in policy, not so old as New England, though calculated well for
that meridian. ...
Machiavell is the first in Christendom that I can find that writes of a
mixed government, but not one syllable of a mixed monarchy: he in his
discourses or disputations upon the Decades of Livy falls so enamoured with the
Roman commonwealth, that he thought he could never sufficiently grace that
popular government, unless he said, there was something of monarchy in it: yet
he was never so impudent as to say, it was a mixed monarchy.
Hunton's monarch is in fact, Filmer argues, no monarch at all. He
possesses only the executive power, and sovereignty resides in legislative
power.
But whatever the theoretical soundness of the conception of mixed
monarchy, it took an extraordinarily firm grip on the public mind. The
anonymous author of a learned work published in 1648, Several Politic and
Military Observations upon the Civil and Military Governments, declared:
The government of England is then one of the best in Christendom : and
it is not by any defect of it, that civil contentions do reign among us this
day, but from our sins and ingratitude, and the impenitency of the whole
nation, who have justly provoked the Lord to send the spirit of division in the
land, and to permit the prelates, and the court favorites, to bend the treble
of the instrument of the commonweal higher than the base: for all composed
monarchies are like unto a musical instrument, that can afford no melody
(although the artist that plays upon it be never so skilful in his art) except
the strings of it be tuned alike.
In 1649 a group of Presbyterian ministers in Lancashire, at a time when
the regicide and the abolition of the House of Lords had apparently struck a
fatal blow at mixed monarchy, passed a series of resolutions which included the
wistful proposition that "The government we are under is good, wholesome,
equitable for the constitution of it, balanced and proportioned, being reduced
to the golden mean; lying between monarchical tyranny and popular anarchy, it
hath had the general suffrage to be one of the moderatest and best tempered
governments in Europe."11 And in 1650 Captain Edmund Hall, in his
Digitus Testium, or a Dreadful Alarm to the Whole Kingdom, Especially
the Lord Mayor, the Aldermen, and the Common Council of the City of London,
declared that the mixture of the three estates was "the absolutest best
government in the world, as is clear from God and Nature. God Himself who is
the Almighty Monarch of all spirits, hath pleased to reveal Himself to man in a
Trinity of persons, and governs the universe by Himself, angels, and men;
celestial bodies, by sun, moon, and stars; the little world man by
understanding, will, and affections; and the Kingdom of England, by King,
Lords, and Commons."
The idea of balance which was expressed in the doctrine of mixed
monarchy appears in the proposals of all constitution-makers of the period
except the Levellers and the Rump republicans. The Humble Petition and Advice,
which was adopted in 1657, created a Cromwellian House of Lords and was lauded
as restoring the ancient trinity and balance of the constitution. In 1659 and
1660, when there seemed to be some possibility that the Stuarts might return,
Royalist pamphlets praised the old constitution and urged the restoration of
Charles II. The failure of all the experiments of the past decade made the
advice more persuasive. Sir Roger L'Estrange addressed a pamphlet to General
Monk in which he argued that England could enjoy stable government only under
mixed monarchy.12
... our English nature is not like the French, supple to oppression, and
apt to delight in that pomp and magnificence of their lords, which they know,
is supported with their slavery and hunger; ... so doth it, as little or less,
agree with the Dutch humor, addicted only to traffic, navigation, handicrafts,
and sordid thrift, and (in defiance of heraldry) every man fancying his own
scutcheon; doth not every one amongst us, that hath the name of a gentleman,
aim his utmost to uphold it? Everyone that hath not, to raise one? To this end,
do not our very yeomen commonly leave their lands to the eldest son, and to the
others, nothing but a flail or a plow? Did not everyone, that had anything like
an estate, pinch himself in his condition, to purchase a knighthood or small
patent? What need further proof? Our late experience of that glimpse and shadow
of monarchy (though in persons hated, and scorned, and upon a most scandalous
account) yet (for mere resemblance) admitted as tolerable, and in respect of a
commonwealth, courted, clearly evinces, how grateful the substance would be to
Englishmen. ...
This was that triple cord, ... this was our gold, seven times refined,
for every bill, being thrice read, debated and agreed, in either House, was, at
last, brought to the King, for his royal assent, the mint of our laws: a trial
so exact, that surely, no dross could escape it; since all interests must
thereto concur (as truly, it was but fit they should, in the establishment of
that, which must bind them all) ... as by sad events, we have since seen, that,
power being engrossed by one of the three estates, purged and modeled to the
interest of a faction, a consequence natural to such premises (as a balance
consisting of but one scale), nothing hath been
weighed, our laws have been mandrakes of a night's growth, and our times
as fickle as the weather or multitude.
It was with the relief of turning to old and tested things that the
Convention Parliament in 1660 voted that government belonged to king, Lords,
and Commons.
NOTES
(1) England in the Reign of King Henry VIII, II,
ii, 95.
(2) Quoted by C. H. McIlwain, Constitutionalism
Ancient and Modern (Ithaca, N. Y., 1940), p. 106.
(3) Cited by Zera S. Fink, The Classical Republicans
(Northwestern Univ. Studies in the Humanities, No. 9: Evanston, Ill.,
1945), p. 24.
(4) "Of Reformation in England," cited by Fink, op.
cit. supra, p. 108.
(5) Stanley Pargellis, "The Theory of Balanced
Government," in Conyers Read, ed., The Constitution Reconsidered (New
York, 1938), p. 40.
(6) An Exact Collection of all Remonstrances, etc.,
between the King's Most Excellent Majesty and His High Court of Parliament,
December 1641-March 21, 1643 (London, 1643), p.
266.
(7) (London, 1643), Pt. I, chap. 4. The theoretical part
of the book was republished in 1689 and this latter edition was included in
Volume VI of the Harleian Miscellany.
(8) The quotation is from the third edition, London,
1682.
(9) Leviathan (Everyman's Library), p.
176.
(10) The Anarchy of a Limited or Mixed Monarchy
(1648).
(11) The Paper called the Agreement of the People
Taken into Consideration, and the Lawfulness of Subscription to It Examined,
and Resolved in the Negative, by the Ministers of Christ in the Province of
Lancaster (London, 1649).
(12) A Plea for a Limited Monarchy, As It Was
Established in this Nation, before the Late War (London, 1660). This is
reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany (London, 1810), i., 20. The
attribution to L'Estrange is in Samuel Halkett and John Laing, Dictionary of
Anonymous and Pseudonymous English Literature (ed. Kennedy, Smith, and
Johnson), iv, 361. An expanded version of this pamphlet is included in The
Interest of the Three Kingdoms with Respect to the Business of the Blade Box,
and All the Other Pretensions of His Grace the Duke of Monmouth (2nd
impression, London, 1680), which has been attributed to William Griffith but
appears to be by the same hand as A Plea for a Limited
Monarchy.
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