THE ENGLISH-speaking world bubbled with enthusiasm this spring over the wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton. French, German, Chinese and Japanese audiences weren’t far behind in their excitement about the royal couple. Why all the fuss, especially here in the United States, a country that once fought a bloody revolutionary war to get away from one of the prince’s ancestors? And does the royal wedding matter, except as an incident in modern celebrity culture?
The case against hereditary monarchy has proved widely persuasive over the last couple of centuries. Nearly everywhere it has either been phased out completely or reduced to no more than a matter of ceremony. No wonder. Monarchy was always inherently unstable, vesting as it did so much power in one individual. If the monarch was strong, wise, resourceful, charismatic, generous, merciful and shrewd, the system could work, but a casual glance at the kings and queens of England shows all too plainly how few of them even remotely approached such a standard. As Thomas Paine remarked in Common Sense, “One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in Kings, is that nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule, by giving mankind an ass for a lion.”
