Thursday, January 04, 2007

The merit of a King

"Anyone who has walked through the deserted Palaces of Versailles or Vienna realise how much a part of the life of a nation is lost when a monarchy is abolished. If Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle were transformed into museums, if one politician competed against another for the position of President of the Republic, Britain would be a sadder and less interesting place. Our politicians are not men such as could challenge more than a thousand years of history!"

William Rees-Mogg, former Editor of The Times.


"A priest who is not a monarchist is not worthy to stand at the altar table. The priest who is a republican is always a man of poor faith. God himself anoints the monarch to be head of the kingdom, while the president is elected by the pride of the people.

The king stays in power by implementing God’s commandments, while the president does so by pleasing those who rule. The king brings his faithful subjects to God, while the president takes them away from God."

Neomartyr Vladimir, Metropolitan of Kiev, tortured and killed by Bolsheviks on 7th February 1918.


"Monarchy can easily be debunked, but watch the faces, mark well the debunkers. These are the men whose taproot in Eden has been cut: whom no rumour of the polyphony, the dance, can reach - men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if they desire mere equality they cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to honour a king they honour millionaires, athletes or film stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison."

C S Lewis.


"This war would never have come unless, under a modernising pressure, we had driven the Habsburgs out of Austria and the Hohenzollerns out of Germany. By making these vacuums we gave the opening for the Hitlerite monster to crawl out of its sewer on to the vacant thrones. No doubt these views are very unfashionable...."

Winston Churchill, 8th April 1945.


"Those who imagine that a politician would make a better figurehead than a hereditary monarch might perhaps make the acquaintance of more politicians."

Baroness Thatcher, November 1995.

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