Myths Concerning Republicanism 5: Republics are only suited to small states

Anonymous portrait of Montesquieu after Jacques-Antoine Dassier (c.1728). Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons.

It was a commonplace in the eighteenth century that republics are suited only to small states. This idea was memorably articulated by two of the most significant political theorists of the eighteenth century the Frenchman the Baron de Montesquieu and the Genevan Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

In The Spirit of the Laws Montesquieu declared:

It is in the nature of a republic to have only a small territory; otherwise, it can scarcely continue to exist. In a large republic, there are large fortunes, and consequently little moderation in spirits: the depositories are too large to put in the hands of a citizen; interests become particularised; at first a man feels he can be happy, great, and glorious without his homeland; and soon, that he can be great only on the ruins of his homeland.

In a large republic, the common good is sacrificed to a thousand considerations; it is subordinated to exceptions; it depends upon accidents. In a small one, the public good is better felt, better known, lies nearer to each citizen; abuses are less extensive there and consequently less protected (Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, ed. A. Cohler, B. Miller and H. Stone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 124).

Statue of Jean-Jacques Rousseau near the Pantheon in Paris. Image by Rachel Hammersley

Similarly, in The Social Contract Rousseau argued that a true republic was only possible in a small state, where the whole population could gather together on a regular basis: 'The Sovereign, having no other force than the legislative power, acts only by means of the laws, and the laws being nothing but the authentic acts of the general will, the Sovereign can only act when the people is assembled.' (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, ed. Victor Gourevitch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 100).

This myth relied on the fact that most republics both past and present had been small; operating in city-states rather than nation-states. Moreover, it was precisely the expansion of the Roman republic that was viewed by figures like Montesquieu as having caused its political and moral corruption, ultimately resulting in the shift to imperial rule (Montesquieu, Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur and Declension of the Roman Empire from The Complete Works of M. de Montesquieu, translated from the French. London, 1777, pp. 61-66).

While there were a few exceptions in the form of the Dutch, Swiss, and English republics, all of which had emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, these were generally seen as proving rather than challenging the rule. The Dutch and Swiss republics were confederacies or leagues bringing together several city-states rather than being single large republics. The English 'commonwealth and free state' of the mid-seventeenth century was a genuine exception, but its reputation as a short-lived, precarious, and contentious regime did more to hinder than to advance the cause of large republics.

It goes without saying that the idea that republics are only suited to small states does not remain a potent myth today. Most governments calling themselves republican now rule over states that are large in both population size and area. The republic that did more than any other to undermine the myth was the American one established following the Declaration of Independence of 1776.

Howard Chandler Christy, Signing of the Constitution of the United States (1940). Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons.

Yet the extent to which the United States of America really was - or is now - a republic in the traditional sense of the term is open to challenge. One such challenge has been articulated in forceful terms by the historian Eric Nelson. In The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding (Cambridge - Massachusetts, 2014) Nelson argues that America's founding fathers owed as much to royalist arguments of the mid-seventeenth century as they did to republican ones. Far from opposing royal tyranny in 1776, many American revolutionaries were reacting against the actions of Parliament and what they saw as its usurpation of royal prerogative in relation to the colonies. Moreover, in doing so they drew on the arguments of those who had opposed Parliament's attack on the prerogative of Charles I in the mid-seventeenth century. When it came to designing new constitutions, these men argued for a strong, single executive holding sweeping prerogative powers. As a result the American president was assigned far greater power than any British monarch had wielded for over a century. The legacy of those decisions remain today in the considerable powers still afforded to the US president and his ability to take crucial decisions for good or ill - the consequences of which are currently on display.

A different challenge to America's status as a republic was raised by the political philosopher Michael J. Sandel. In Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge - Massachusetts, 1996) Sandel argued that while the original constitution was grounded in republican ideas, they had gradually been eroded. By the late twentieth century there was considerable discontent with public life, and in particular fears around the loss of self-government and the erosion of a sense of community or public spirit. Despite America's status as a republic, the dominant political philosophy, Sandel argued, was no longer republicanism but a version of liberalism which placed centre stage the idea that the government should remain neutral in regard to the moral and religious views of its citizens. These issues have been brought into sharp relief by the current crisis. One feature of this liberalism is the absence of a public health service in the US. In the current crisis this means that those without adequate private healthcare provision may be left to die and it has made a co-ordinated public response to the crisis difficult. This lack of co-ordination has been identified as one reason why cases have advanced more quickly in the US than in other countries - such as Germany - which have a stronger health and social security system.

Of course the shortcomings of the current US system do not prove the impossibility of large-state republics. Republican government operates today in a variety of large states - including Germany. Yet eighteenth-century concerns - and the US example - should serve to remind us of the need to think carefully about what is necessary in order for a republic to function effectively in a large state, and to warn us that such states must be closely monitored for evidence of decline. The establishment of representative government and a strong executive undoubtedly provided useful means of making large-state republics possible, but such states can only function effectively where there are robust processes in place to hold both representatives and executive officers (including the president) to account. In addition, careful attention must be paid to the nature of, and the means to achieve, the public good. After all, government in the service of the public interest was one of the early definitions of republicanism.

Myths Concerning Republicanism 2: Republican Government has always been Aristocratic

January's blogpost explored the myth that republican government is necessarily anti-monarchical. This month I want to consider another myth: that republican government is inherently aristocratic or élitist in character and therefore unsuited to the democratic nature of twenty-first-century states.

Print of Geneva in 1630. Image by Rachel Hammersley.

There is some justification for this characterisation. In the ancient world republican government was associated with slavery, the exclusion of women from the political sphere, and the restriction of political participation to certain groups. Indeed, the exercise of citizenship depended on the work carried out by non-citizens (including slaves, women, servants, and foreigners), which made it possible for citizens to devote their attention to political matters. Moreover, later republican governments were criticised for descending into oligarchy. Venice's Grand Council was initially composed of all male inhabitants but due to citizenship being restricted to the descendants of those original citizens, by 1581 it was accorded to just over 1% of the population. In the Genevan republic the cost of claiming citizenship became more expensive over time, restricting who could take it up. In addition, power was increasingly moved away from the General Council - comprising all citizens - and towards smaller bodies that were dominated by a few families.

Frontispiece to The Federalist Papers. Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons.

The rise of the modern representative republic proved a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it undercut the need for citizens to be supported by non-citizens by making citizenship a less onerous activity. Yet, at the same time, it created a political élite distinct from the wider citizen body whose role it was to govern. For some thinkers this was a positive move. They saw representation not simply as a necessary evil in the large states of the modern world, but as a good in itself. In The Federalist Papers James Madison insisted that in a representative government 'public views' would be 'refined' and 'enlarge[d]' by being passed through 'the medium of a chosen body of citizens' who would be wiser than the rest and therefore better able to determine the true interest of the nation. He went on: 'Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose.' (Publius, The Federalist Papers, X).

Yet, as debates at the time make clear, this was not the only way of organising representative government. Anti-Federalists in America, and various individuals and groups in Europe, proposed representative systems that maintained a closer connection between elected delegates and those they represented. The mechanisms they advocated included short terms and regular rotation of office, powerful local assemblies, binding mandates, and even the popular ratification of laws. The way in which the modern representative republic was organised did serve to create a narrow political élite, but that was a deliberate choice rather than the only option available.

Where the Federalists chose to build on the aristocratic tendency within republican thought, an alternative more democratic strand also existed

Portrait of James Harrington from The Oceana and Other Works of James Harrington… ed. John Toland (London, 1737). Image by Rachel Hammersley.

Some republicans insisted that popular participation (rather than anti-monarchism) was the defining feature of republican government. William Walker argues that the ancient historian Sallust saw the establishment of the tribunate as more important to the Roman Republic than the displacement of the monarch by consuls (William Walker, 'Sallust and Skinner on Civil Liberty', European Journal of Political Theory, 5:3, 2006). Likewise, for James Harrington it was not the presence or absence of a single figurehead at the apex of the system that determined whether or not a regime was a commonwealth, but rather whether or not the people (via their popular assembly) had the final say over which legislation was passed and enacted (Rachel Hammersley, James Harrington: An Intellectual Biography, Oxford, 2019). Similarly, John P. McCormick has argued that Niccolò Machiavelli offered an anti-élitist critique of republican practice. In contrast to Francesco Guicciardini's "senatorial" model of politics, he favoured a "tribunate" model which embraced popular deliberation and employed extra-electoral methods to secure the accountability of those in power (John P. McCormick, 'Machiavelli Against Republicanism On the Cambridge School's "Guicciardinian Moments", Political Theory, 31:5, 2003, 615-43).

Both Machiavelli and Harrington were also advocates of the idea that extremes of wealth and poverty would pose a direct threat to the survival of the republic. Machiavelli famously argued that if the system was well-constituted the public should be rich, but the citizens poor (Machiavelli, The Discourses, ed. Bernard Crick. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970, p. 475). This idea has a modern echo in the notion that we must choose between public luxury for all or private luxury for some. Other thinkers called for balance and moderation. Harrington claimed that: 'There is a mean in things: as exorbitant riches overthrow the balance of a commonwealth, so extreme poverty cannot hold it nor is by any means to be trusted with it.' (James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana, ed. J. G. A. Pocock. Cambridge, 1992, p. 77). A similar view was endorsed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau who insisted that in order to secure civil freedom: 'no citizen [can] be so very rich that he can buy another, and none so poor that he is compelled to sell himself.' (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Social Contract, ed. Victor Gourevitch. Cambridge, 1997, p. 78). The problem with wealth and luxury, Rousseau insisted, was that they exerted a corrupting influence, encouraging the citizens to put their own private interests above those of the republic.

The Leaders of the Knights of Labour with Terence Powderly in the centre. Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons.

It is also evident that even after the emergence of representative republics, the language of republicanism could be used by marginalised or excluded groups against their oppressors. As Alex Gourevitch has demonstrated, this tactic was deployed to great effect by 'The Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor', the first labour organisation in the United States of America to admit both white and black workers (Alex Gourevitch, From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth. Cambridge, 2015). Its leaders deliberately used republican arguments to criticise wage labour. George McNeill spoke of the 'inevitable and irresistible conflict' between the system of wage labour and republican governance (p. 100). The reason for this, as Terence Powderly explained, was that the wage labour system generated economic inequalities that were translated into political inequalities. Drawing directly on the understanding of liberty as non-dependence, and on arguments that had been used in the seventeenth century to insist that subjects were unfree even under a mild and gentle monarch, the Knights insisted that a worker would be a slave even if employed by 'the gentlest man in the world' 'if he must obey his commands and depend upon his will' (pp. 14-15). The solution, they argued, was to establish cooperatives so that workers could collectively own and manage the factories in which they worked. By applying the conception of liberty as non-dependence to the economic as well as the political sphere, these labour republicans succeeded in making republican arguments applicable not just to independent property owners, but to all workers - white and black, male and female.

While republicanism has taken an aristocratic form in both theory and practice in the past this was often a deliberate strategy rather than a necessity. The history of the republican tradition can provide arguments in favour of popular participation in government, warnings against excessive inequalities among citizens, and evidence of the importance of economic as well as political inequalities (and of the relationship between the two). Rather than dismissing republicanism as inherently aristocratic, then, it might be more profitable to draw on these resources to create a version of republicanism suited to the democratic states of the twenty-first century.

Civil Religion from Antiquity to the Enlightenment

October proved to be a busy month for conferences. Just days after having returned from Wolfenbüttel invigorated by discussions around 'Translating Cultures' I was part of a team organising a conference at Newcastle University on the subject of 'Civil Religion from Antiquity to Enlightenment'. Here too there were a number of outstanding papers that stimulated thought and provoked discussion on this fascinating, but understudied topic. The downside of hosting a conference at your own institution is that it is not easy to prevent other commitments from encroaching, so unfortunately I was not able to attend all of the sessions. The following reflections, then, are based on those that I was able to hear.

The biggest questions sparked for me concerned definitions. What do we mean by 'civil religion'? Has it been understood consistently in all times and places? And is civil religion best understood as a tradition, a concept, or an approach?

Ronnie Beiner, author of Civil Religion: A Dialogue in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge, 2010), drew on Rousseau's distinction between civil religion - the subordination of religion to politics - and theocracy - the subordination of politics to religion. In the modern world, Beiner explained, there is a third way of conceptualising the relationship between religion and politics - the idea of complete separation. This is the conception that lies at the heart of the fully secularised polity favoured by liberals, where religion should not play any role at all in the political sphere.

Mark Goldie in his paper 'Civil Religion in Early Modern England' began by acknowledging the distinction between civil religion, theocracy and secularism, but went on to suggest that there is an alternative approach to civil religion which understands it to be deeply embedded within Christian theology rather than constituting a dissolution of it. In Goldie's view, early-modern civil religion was a Christian project. The issue was not Christianity, but Priestianity. Considered in this way civil religion is concerned as much with reformation and a return to the apostolic church as it is with the subordination of religion to politics.

William Prynne after Unknown artist, line engraving. National Portrait Gallery, NPG D26979. Produced under a creative commons license.

Various other speakers flagged up the importance of this approach, particularly in an English context. Esther Counsell showed how Puritans like Alexander Layton and William Prynne saw the reframing of the church on the model of civil religion as the basis for reform. Nor was this understanding of civil religion as a Christian project merely a feature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In both his paper, and the forthcoming book on which it is based, Ashley Walsh demonstrates the richness and vitality of the idea of a Christian version of civil religion in eighteenth-century Britain.

Yet, in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England there was no single answer to the question of the appropriate relationship between religion and politics. Polly Ha flagged up some of the difficulties faced by the Anglican establishment. In theory it sought to introduce a 'civil' reformation, yet in practice incivility, discord, and dissent soon challenged this ideal, raising difficult questions as to the boundaries of civil and religious jurisdiction. This was a theme picked up by Connor Robinson in 'Reformation, Civil Religion, and the University in Interregnum England', which examined the role of universities, at least in the eyes of some, as vehicles for the implementation of civic reformation. John Coffey outlined the wide variety of attitudes to church-state relations that were being voiced by the 1650s. Presbyterians insisted on religious uniformity and the existence of a national church. Magisterial independents, by contrast, firmly rejected the idea of a national church, but accepted that the magistrate could have authority over national religion and the policing of heretics. Radical independents went further still, repudiating magisterial enforcement of orthodoxy and the policing of heresy. Their position was very close to that of the Godly republicans who called for the complete separation of Church and State. Harringtonian republicans, by contrast, adopted a more moderate position that again supported the idea of national religion (though not, Coffey asserted, a national church) and insisted on congregationalism, while still defending toleration for gathered churches. It became very clear that there is no single early-modern English version of civil religion

The theme of complexity was arrived at from a different direction by Charlotte McCallum and Jacqueline Rose, who focused on the potential sources of the idea of civil religion for early-modern English thinkers. McCallum, in a paper on the early-modern translations of Niccoló Machiavelli's works into English, noted that Machiavelli himself offered not one, but two versions of civil religion: false religion used for political purposes (perhaps a negative reading of Beiner's Rousseauian definition) and the appropriation of religious values as good civic values in the style of Numa (which fits more with Goldie's approach). Not surprisingly, McCallum showed that most seventeenth-century writers favoured the latter and actually used Machiavelli's acknowledgement that religion could perform a valuable political role to 'prove' that atheism was wrong. Rose, in a paper entitled 'Civil Religion and the Anglo-Saxon Church', probed the intriguing question of why the Anglo-Saxon system, which might appear a useful home-grown example of civil religion, was not widely used in that way by early-modern writers. Showing the problems that the presence of the clergy within Anglo-Saxon Parliaments raised for those intent on limiting priestcraft, Rose insisted that we should be careful not to collapse royal supremacy into civil religion. What we have, she concluded, is not a single discourse, but a series of languages that overlap with and cross over each other in complex and complicating ways.

The complexities continued after the revolutionary period and on into the eighteenth century, as John Marshall's paper on the extent to which John Locke can be said to have advanced civil religion and Katie East's on debates surrounding religion during the early English Enlightenment made clear. And they become further elaborated if we extend our horizons beyond England, as some speakers did

Statue of Jean-Jacques Rousseau next to the Pantheon in Paris. Photograph by Rachel Hammersley

Nevertheless, much would surely be learned by tracing other national stories in the same detail as has been done for England. Venice would be an interesting case study, and so too would colonial America, which was touched on in Christie L. Maloyed and Andrew Murphy's paper 'Civil Religion on the Ground: Theory and Practice in Early Pennsylvania'. They showed how some of the ideas that had been developed in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England were not only put into practice, but also transformed in the rather different circumstances of colonial and revolutionary America. A comparison with the French case too might prove particularly revealing. An account that examined Gallicanism, Jansenism, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and the Cult of the Supreme Being, setting them against traditional understandings of civil religion and the English case could be fruitful. Some of the important distinctions here were flagged up in Delphine Doucet's paper, which showed that Rousseau was at odds with other figures within the traditional canon - not least Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes - in his insistence that both natural religion and toleration were crucial to civil religion, and in his refusal to see priests as civil servants. To what extent this distinctive perspective was coloured by Rousseau's Genevan roots, or indeed, by his French connections, is as yet unclear.

Coming away from this conference, as with the previous one, I very much wished that I had the time necessary to follow up all the fascinating intellectual threads that had been revealed.

Republics v Monarchies

The Scottish National Party recently brought the question of the Monarchy back onto the political agenda by voting at their 2017 party conference in favour of cutting public funding for the Royal Family. Delegates supported overwhelmingly a motion calling for the repeal of the Sovereign Grant Act of 2011. While the vote will not bring immediate political change, since Westminster retains control of the Sovereign Grant, the vote has drawn attention once again to the alleged republicanism at the heart of the SNP and the idea that an independent Scotland might choose to replace the Queen as head of state. Such suggestions always produce strong views on both sides, usually labelled 'republican' and 'monarchist'.

On the surface, at least, the distinction between republics and monarchies is a crucial feature of our modern political landscape. Yet the history of these two constitutional forms is far more complex than this simple dichotomy would suggest. Indeed, according to one historical definition, Britain is and has long been a republic, whereas on the basis of another neither France nor the United States of America is worthy of that term. Monarchists and republicans alike might, therefore, benefit from a deeper understanding of the history of these political concepts.

Bust of Cicero. I am grateful to Katie East for providing the image.

The concept of republican government, in both theory and practice, dates back at least to ancient Rome. It was explored in a number of Roman texts, not least those of Marcus Tullius Cicero who was both a politician and a political thinker. In his De re publica Cicero did not define a republic or commonwealth in opposition to kingship, but instead argued 'that a commonwealth (that is the concern of the people) then truly exists when its affairs are conducted well and justly, whether by a single king, or by a few aristocrats, or by the people as a whole'. (Cicero, On the Commonwealth, ed. James. E. G. Zetzel Cambridge, 1999,  p. 59). The key distinction here, then, is between rule that serves the public interest and that which serves private interests. So, on Cicero's account, a monarchy, if properly organised and directed towards the public good, could be a kind of republic. That same idea was still being voiced as late as the mid-eighteenth century, when the Genevan-born political theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in his Social Contract:

I therefore call Republic any State ruled by laws, whatever be the form of administration: for then the public interest alone governs, and the public thing counts for something. Every legitimate government is republican.

The accompanying footnote might appear self-contradictory, if Cicero's position is not borne in mind:

Statue of Jean-Jacques Rousseau outside the Pantheon in Paris. Image by Rachel Hammersley.

By this word I understand not only an Aristocracy or a Democracy, but in general any government guided by the general will, which is the law. To be legitimate, the Government must be not confused with the Sovereign, but be its minister. Then monarchy itself is a republic. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, ed. Victor Gourevitch, Cambridge, 1997, p. 67)

   But while the Ciceronian understanding of a republic survived well into the eighteenth century, from the late fifteenth century onwards a second understanding was developing. This saw monarchy not as one form of republican government, but as its direct opposite. Several historians have recently traced the development of this tradition of republican thought, emphasising its debt to the writings of Italian Renaissance thinkers as well as to a tradition of Jewish Biblical scholarship that offered a distinctive take on the Israelites' plea to God in I Samuel 8 that they be given a king like other nations.

By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there were certainly those who saw republican government as requiring the destruction of monarchy. The English Civil War of the 1640s prompted some parliamentarians to attack not simply Charles I, or even just tyrants, but all kings. Marchamont Nedham was one of several figures who challenged the very distinction between kings and tyrants: 'Had they [the English] but once tasted the sweets of peace and liberty both together, they would soon be of the opinion of Herodotus and Demosthenes that there is no difference between king and tyrant and become as zealous as the ancient Romans were in defence of their freedom.' (Marchamont Nedham, The Case of the Commonwealth of England Stated, ed. Philip A. Knachel, Charlottesville, 1969, pp. 127-8). This view had practical import too. The 'Act Abolishing the Office of King', which was passed on 17 March 1649, declared the office of king to be 'unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous to the liberty, safety, and public interest of the people' and the ensuing 'Act Declaring England to be a Commonwealth and Free State', which was passed in May 1649, insisted that this government was to be 'without any King or House of Lords'.

John Milton, by unknown artist, National Portrait Gallery, NPG4222. Reproduced under a creative commons license.

Yet even this does not present the full complexity of the concept, since those who agreed that republicanism was, by definition, anti-monarchical, could nevertheless disagree over precisely what institutional form should replace the office of king. Most significant was the distinction between those who insisted merely on the absence of a monarch, and those who outlawed any form of single-person rule. Thus a third definition of republic required that the government was not headed by a single figure, but by a group or council. As John Milton asserted in The Readie and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth: 'I doubt not but all ingenuous and knowing men will easily agree with me, that a free Commonwealth without single person or house of lords, is by far the best government, if it can be had.' (John Milton, The Readie and Easy Way, in Selected Prose, ed. C. A. Parties, Harmondsworth, p. 338). Milton's formulation ruled out both monarchy (as in the reign of Charles I) and a Protectorate (as under Oliver Cromwell).

Moreover, the English revolutionaries had attempted to institute such a form a decade earlier. When Charles I was executed on 30 January 1649 he was replaced not by another single person, but rather by the Rump Parliament, which ruled together with its Council of State, until April 1653. Yet as its short life - and the rise of Oliver Cromwell - would suggest, experiments involving a purely conciliar government have often proved unsuccessful in practice. The experiments in France in the 1790s with the Committee of Public Safety, and later the Directory, further confirmed this conclusion.

Evidently, it is the second definition of a republic outlined above that is most common today, so that a republican wishes to abolish the Monarchy. According to the first definition, that of Cicero, modern Britain could, despite having a Queen as head of state, be counted as a republic so long as government decisions were made in the public interest. Indeed, there were those in the eighteenth century who made precisely that argument. In 1700, the controversial political thinker and activist John Toland declared that 'if a Commonwealth be a Government of Laws enacted for the Common good of all the People' and if they had some means to consent to those laws 'Then it is undeniably manifest that the English Government is already a Commonwealth, the most free and best constituted in all the world.' (John Toland, The Oceana and Other Works of James Harrington, London, 1737, p. vii-viii). According to the third definition, by contrast, which requires that a single person must not be given considerable power, neither France nor the United States of America (both of which have a President), would be deemed worthy of that label.

Viewed historically, 'monarchy', is no easier to define than 'republic'. We can see this if we consider precisely what features make a monarch. Hereditary rule might be thought of as one key element, but this does not hold in the case of the early-modern Polish monarchy, which was elective. We might, then, say that a monarch generally holds his or her position for life. This would work for the Polish system, but it was also true of the Doge of Venice during the same period, and yet most people would argue that the Doge was the head of a republic rather than being a monarch.  Instead of thinking about the nature of the position, then, we might consider the extent of the power wielded. But this seems no more satisfactory as a basis for distinguishing monarchies from republics, since from the late eighteenth century to the present the President of the United States of America has tended to wield far greater powers than the English monarch. While part of the problem here is that the modern British Monarchy is in some ways a misnomer, since our Queen is a hereditary figurehead rather than a power-wielding head of government, even in the late eighteenth century George Washington already enjoyed greater powers in certain respects than George III. (For an interesting exploration of the royal tendencies in the American system see Eric Nelson, The Royalist Revolution, Cambridge Massachusetts, 2014).

John Lilburne, England's New Chains Discovered, London, 1649. http://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/leveller-tracts-6. 18.10.17. Taken from the Online Library of Liberty [http://oll.liberty.org] hosted by Liberty Fund, Inc.

This is not to say that important differences between what are conventionally labelled as monarchies and republics do not exist. The expenditure of public money on the Royal Family and the upkeep of royal palaces has always been one of the stronger arguments in the British republican arsenal (though of course presidential systems and legislative assemblies also incur costs). But we must also be careful not to assume that all our political problems can be solved by establishing a republic. It did not take long even for those seventeenth-century English revolutionaries who had called for an end to the monarchy to realise that many problems remained in its wake. Perhaps the best illustration of this is the fact that, less than a month after the regicide, the Leveller leader John Lilburne published a pamphlet which he entitled England's New Chains Discovered.