Henry II had four legitimate sons. His heir and namesake, Henry, died before he could ascend to the throne. His second would rule as Richard the Lionheart. The third, Geoffrey, pre-deceased his father but had a son, Arthur of Brittany. And then there was John.
When gangrene from a crossbow wound took the life of King Richard outside the town of Châlus, there was uncertainty as to who had the greater claim to the throne: Arthur or John.
The rules of primogeniture favoured Arthur, but John was an adult and Arthur just 12. The nobles coalesced around John and Arthur vanished from history. It was rumoured that John’s aide, William de Braose, had the boy strangled.
De Braose won the sovereign’s favour, possibly as recognition for this service. Some decades later, relations cooled and John demanded De Braose hand over his son as surety for his loyalty.
This was too much for his wife, Maud, who commented that she would not surrender her son to the man who had murdered Arthur.
Fair enough, but things spiralled south for the De Braoses. Their lands were seized and John had Maud and her son imprisoned at Corfe Castle in Devon and starved them to death.
There are many similar stories from John’s reign.
In 1215, his barons revolted and the rebellion brought us the Magna Carta, with clause 40 stipulating that “No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his freehold, or liberties…but by lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.”
The Carta was re-issued in 1297 and the above clause remains the law in New Zealand.
The Carta was won by barons for freemen. Its provisions did not extend to serfs who were bound to the land, owed labour to their lord in return for protection, justice and, at the lord’s discretion, welfare.
We can go back to 1260 for the quote: “The King should not be under man, but under God and the Law”, an oddly phrased sentence, but Henry de Bracton, author and judge, meant that the King’s authority was constrained by the law of the realm.
Sadly, English monarchs didn’t get the message. One needed to be beheaded, in 1649, and another expelled from office, in 1688, before the lesson took.
This is the purpose of democracy.
As John Locke wrote in 1690: “…tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right…When the governor…makes not the law, but his will, the rule; and his commands and actions are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion.”
The long march towards democracy has been to free men from the abuses of the sovereign’s whim.
Alas, this is not where the story ends, for democracy contains within it two toxic seeds.
The first is legitimacy.
Historically, a monarch’s authority rested on their lineage and a presumption of a divine right to rule. A democratically elected regime cloaks itself in a similar shroud.
In New Zealand, we champion parliamentary sovereignty and Parliament’s mana rests on the electoral process.
Our democracy binds the executive, constraining its authority to laws that have been passed, but there is no restriction, except the risk of civil disobedience, on what laws can be enacted.
Any law, no matter how perverse, is justified by legislative legitimacy if that legislature has been properly constituted.
The second is what French economist Frédéric Bastiat observed in 1848: “the State is the great fiction through which everyone endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else.”
The longer we have had democracy, the greater demands electors have made on those elected.
Initially, we sought secure borders and safe streets. In New Zealand, we mirrored our British cousins with limited state-funded education in the 1870s, expanding to the point that more than a third of us have degrees.
Health, pensions and Creative New Zealand all followed.
Each ratchet of the electoral cycle results in higher state spending that now permanently exceeds the ability of the state to fund, which is why almost all democratic regimes are running deficits even in benign economic climates.
The breakout party this election is promising to pay every citizen $19,400 a year by expropriating the assets of those who have worked and saved over their lives to own property, and voters love it.
What began as an attempt by the barons of England to reign in (typo intended) a tyrannical sovereign has devolved into a symbiotic relationship between voters’ insatiable demands for the product of another’s labour and the willingness of politicians to satisfy these demands.
We are now several generations into an experiment on dependency so profound that this election we look for politicians who can fulfil central government’s promise to educate our children, pay for our entertainment, supply the news, cover our medical bills and even address our mental health issues.
These are not the demands of a free people.....The full article is published HERE
Damien Grant is an Auckland business owner, a member of the Taxpayers’ Union and a regular opinion contributor for Stuff, writing from a libertarian perspective
De Braose won the sovereign’s favour, possibly as recognition for this service. Some decades later, relations cooled and John demanded De Braose hand over his son as surety for his loyalty.
This was too much for his wife, Maud, who commented that she would not surrender her son to the man who had murdered Arthur.
Fair enough, but things spiralled south for the De Braoses. Their lands were seized and John had Maud and her son imprisoned at Corfe Castle in Devon and starved them to death.
There are many similar stories from John’s reign.
In 1215, his barons revolted and the rebellion brought us the Magna Carta, with clause 40 stipulating that “No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his freehold, or liberties…but by lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.”
The Carta was re-issued in 1297 and the above clause remains the law in New Zealand.
The Carta was won by barons for freemen. Its provisions did not extend to serfs who were bound to the land, owed labour to their lord in return for protection, justice and, at the lord’s discretion, welfare.
We can go back to 1260 for the quote: “The King should not be under man, but under God and the Law”, an oddly phrased sentence, but Henry de Bracton, author and judge, meant that the King’s authority was constrained by the law of the realm.
Sadly, English monarchs didn’t get the message. One needed to be beheaded, in 1649, and another expelled from office, in 1688, before the lesson took.
This is the purpose of democracy.
As John Locke wrote in 1690: “…tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right…When the governor…makes not the law, but his will, the rule; and his commands and actions are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion.”
The long march towards democracy has been to free men from the abuses of the sovereign’s whim.
Alas, this is not where the story ends, for democracy contains within it two toxic seeds.
The first is legitimacy.
Historically, a monarch’s authority rested on their lineage and a presumption of a divine right to rule. A democratically elected regime cloaks itself in a similar shroud.
In New Zealand, we champion parliamentary sovereignty and Parliament’s mana rests on the electoral process.
Our democracy binds the executive, constraining its authority to laws that have been passed, but there is no restriction, except the risk of civil disobedience, on what laws can be enacted.
Any law, no matter how perverse, is justified by legislative legitimacy if that legislature has been properly constituted.
The second is what French economist Frédéric Bastiat observed in 1848: “the State is the great fiction through which everyone endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else.”
The longer we have had democracy, the greater demands electors have made on those elected.
Initially, we sought secure borders and safe streets. In New Zealand, we mirrored our British cousins with limited state-funded education in the 1870s, expanding to the point that more than a third of us have degrees.
Health, pensions and Creative New Zealand all followed.
Each ratchet of the electoral cycle results in higher state spending that now permanently exceeds the ability of the state to fund, which is why almost all democratic regimes are running deficits even in benign economic climates.
The breakout party this election is promising to pay every citizen $19,400 a year by expropriating the assets of those who have worked and saved over their lives to own property, and voters love it.
What began as an attempt by the barons of England to reign in (typo intended) a tyrannical sovereign has devolved into a symbiotic relationship between voters’ insatiable demands for the product of another’s labour and the willingness of politicians to satisfy these demands.
We are now several generations into an experiment on dependency so profound that this election we look for politicians who can fulfil central government’s promise to educate our children, pay for our entertainment, supply the news, cover our medical bills and even address our mental health issues.
These are not the demands of a free people.....The full article is published HERE
Damien Grant is an Auckland business owner, a member of the Taxpayers’ Union and a regular opinion contributor for Stuff, writing from a libertarian perspective
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