Anti-monarchy

Anti-monarchism is presented as more than opposition to a crown: it is a test of political legitimacy rooted in natural equality and public freedom, and a plan for organizing authority without hereditary rule. The argument moves from the defects of monarchy and the corruption of England’s mixed constitution to a representative continental government whose authority would come from the people and whose highest emblem would be law.

Political legitimacy and the origins of government

The account begins from the premise that people are equal in the order of creation. Differences between rich and poor may arise from circumstances, but the distinction between kings and subjects has no comparable natural or religious justification. It therefore asks how one human being came to be exalted above others as though belonging to a different species, and whether that arrangement produces happiness or misery.

Government itself is not treated as a natural privilege of rulers. In the account of a newly arrived community, shared necessity first brings people together: their mutual assistance answers their needs, and their reciprocal benefits can make law unnecessary while they remain just toward one another. As the first common difficulties recede, however, people may relax their duties to each other. Government then becomes necessary to compensate for the shortfall in moral virtue, with freedom and security as its ends. This distinction matters to the anti-monarchical case: the need for government does not establish a need for kings.

The community’s first institutions develop from participation rather than inherited status. At a convenient tree, the colonists gather to deliberate; their earliest rules are called regulations and are upheld by public disesteem rather than a separate penal apparatus. Every man has a seat in this first assembly by natural right. As population grows and homes spread farther apart, the whole community can no longer conveniently meet on every matter, so it entrusts legislative work to selected representatives. The number of representatives can increase as the colony grows, while dividing the colony into parts allows each area to send its own number.

Frequent elections are the proposed safeguard against representatives acquiring a separate interest from those who elect them. Representatives should return to ordinary community life after a short period, making their public fidelity depend in part on the prospect of again living among the people affected by their decisions. The argument locates governmental strength not in the empty title of king but in this shared interest between elected and electors, which enables different parts of the community to support one another.

The critique of monarchy and constitutional checks

The argument treats simplicity as a standard of sound government: simpler arrangements are less liable to disorder and easier to repair. It acknowledges that England’s constitution may have been a notable improvement over the tyranny of an earlier age, while maintaining that its complicated structure is imperfect, vulnerable to convulsions, and unable to deliver what it appears to promise. In a simple absolute government, the source of suffering may be easier to identify; in a complex constitution, the public can endure trouble for years while political observers dispute which institution is responsible and which remedy would work.

The claim that the English constitution consists of three powers reciprocally checking one another is rejected as incoherent in practice. The crown, the hereditary upper chamber, and the elected commons do not stand on equal terms: the two hereditary elements are independent of the people and therefore do not, in a constitutional sense, contribute to the state’s freedom. Nor does the commons reliably restrain the crown. The supposed check begins from the premise that monarchy has a natural appetite for absolute power, but the institutional remedy is unequal to the task.

The crown’s practical advantage, in this account, is its control of offices and pensions. That patronage gives it weight over the other parts of the constitution: the other powers may slow its advance, but cannot stop it, and time ultimately favors the stronger power. The image is of a people who have barred the door against absolute monarchy only to place the key in the crown’s hands. The commons may formally occupy the republican part of the constitution, yet royal influence can absorb its power and erode its virtue.

The resulting critique distinguishes the character of a people from the structure of their government. English individuals may be safer than people in some other countries, the argument concedes, but that relative safety is credited to the people’s own constitution of character rather than to the governing arrangement. National pride in king, lords, and commons obscures the extent to which royal will can still reach the public through parliamentary acts. The lesson drawn from the fate of Charles I is not that kings became just, but that they learned greater subtlety.

Monarchy, war, and the colonial break

The historical argument presents kingship as a source of conflict, not a guarantee of peace. It asserts that in the earliest ages, according to scripture chronology, there were no kings and no wars, and contrasts the quiet rural life of the patriarchs with the later history of Jewish royalty. Holland, without a king, is offered as a more recent comparison, having enjoyed more peace over the previous century than European monarchies. These examples support the claim that royal pride throws people into disorder.

The argument also challenges the religious defense of monarchy. It traces kingship to the heathen and describes its adoption by the children of Israel as an invention that promoted idolatry. The elevation of rulers through sacred titles is presented as inconsistent with human mortality and equal standing. It further invokes Gideon and the prophet Samuel as scriptural witnesses against rule by kings, while arguing that monarchical governments have glossed over scripture’s anti-monarchical passages. The instruction to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s is not treated as an endorsement of kingship: the Jews at that time, it notes, were under Roman rule and without a king of their own.

The dynastic struggle between the houses of York and Lancaster supplies a political example of the costs of hereditary succession. The contest brought England years of bloodshed, including twelve set battles as well as skirmishes and sieges. Power shifted repeatedly: Henry was taken prisoner by Edward, Edward was later Henry’s prisoner, and each man’s fortunes reversed between palace and exile. Parliament, the account observes, followed the stronger side. The conflict began in Henry VI’s reign and was not fully extinguished until Henry VII united the families, across a period of sixty-seven years, from 1422 to 1489. From this record the argument generalizes that monarchy and succession have laid the world in blood and ashes.

The critique becomes a case for colonial separation when political conflict moves from argument to arms. The beginning of hostilities on April 19 marks a new political era, making earlier proposals for union with Great Britain seem obsolete. Before hostilities, advocates of force and advocates of friendship differed over the means of attaining union; the argument now judges that force has failed and friendship has withdrawn its influence. It insists that the colonial question must be reconsidered under the changed circumstances rather than treated as though reconciliation remained an untouched possibility.

Dependence on Great Britain, it argues, draws the continent into European wars and quarrels, sets it against countries with which it has no grievance, and makes America a weight in British political calculations. Since Europe is the colonies’ market, the text argues against a partial alignment with one European power. When England goes to war, colonial commerce is exposed to ruin because of the colonial connection; in a future conflict, neutrality could provide safer protection than dependence on a British warship. The anti-monarchical position thus joins domestic constitutional criticism to a claim about external sovereignty: freedom from royal rule is also a way to avoid being enlisted in another power’s conflicts.

A representative continental government

The proposed alternative is a layered representative system. Colonial assemblies would meet annually under a president, attend to domestic business, and remain subject to the authority of a Continental Congress. Each colony would be divided into six, eight, or ten districts, with each district sending delegates; every colony would send at least thirty, producing a Congress of at least 390 members. The large membership and district basis are intended to make representation more equal and to prevent a small group from standing in for a whole colony.

The plan also specifies a rotating method for selecting the congressional president. At each Congress, a colony would first be chosen by lot, and Congress would elect the president by ballot from that colony’s delegates. At the next meeting, the previous president’s colony would be omitted from the lottery; the rotation would continue until all thirteen colonies had their turn. To ensure that legislation was satisfactorily just, the proposal would require at least three-fifths of Congress to constitute a majority. These procedural details turn opposition to monarchy into institutional design: leadership is temporary, distributed among the colonies, and not inherited.

Because the formation of a new government requires a body between the people and Congress, the argument proposes a Continental Conference. Its membership would combine twenty-six congressional delegates, two from each colony; two members from each assembly or provincial convention; and five representatives of the people at large from each province. Those public representatives would be chosen by qualified voters meeting in a provincial capital or town, or, where more convenient, in two or three populous places. The combined body is meant to unite knowledge, gained through experience in public affairs, with authority grounded in the people’s choice.

The Conference’s task would be to frame a Continental Charter for the United Colonies, comparable in function to Magna Carta. The charter would establish the number and method of choosing members of Congress and the assemblies, set their periods of sitting, and define their respective jurisdictions. It would secure freedom and property to all, and, above all, the free exercise of religion according to conscience. Once the charter had been framed, the Conference would dissolve, leaving the bodies chosen under it to govern for the time being. Continental strength, rather than provincial isolation, is the principle that joins the arrangement’s parts.

The text later reiterates that a charter should bind the whole to uphold the rights of every part, including religion, personal freedom, and property. It also warns that representation and election should not be concentrated in the same hands without scrutiny. Immediate necessity had justified appointing members from the colonial assemblies to consult during the crisis, and the argument credits their work with preserving the continent from ruin; but an emergency method should not automatically become a permanent arrangement. Since a Congress is likely to remain necessary, the way its members are selected deserves reconsideration, especially when posterity’s government cannot assume that virtue is hereditary.

Law as sovereign and the problem of representation

The rejection of a king culminates in a symbolic alternative: law itself should rule. The argument imagines a day for proclaiming the charter, with the document placed upon the word of God and crowned to show that, insofar as America approves of monarchy, its law is king. The ceremony then reverses its own symbol: the crown is to be demolished and scattered among the people, whose right it represents. The point is not to transfer royal dignity to another individual, but to deny that any individual should stand above the law in a free country.

The representative ideal is tested against a concrete warning from Pennsylvania. When the Associators petition came before the provincial assembly, only twenty-eight members attended; eight Bucks County members voted against it. Had seven members from Chester County done the same, two counties alone would have governed the entire province. The episode shows how a small and unevenly present body can distort the voice of a larger public. A related complaint concerns instructions for provincial delegates that were prepared and approved by only a few people outside the assembly, yet passed in the colony’s name. Together, these examples support the demand for broader and more equal representation and caution against allowing power to drift out of the people’s hands.

Anti-monarchism therefore joins a negative and a constructive argument. It denies that inherited rank can be reconciled with natural equality, disputes the claim that a crown can be safely restrained by institutions it influences, and associates dynastic power with corruption and war. At the same time, it treats government as necessary under human fallibility and makes its legitimacy depend on public authorization, frequent elections, balanced representation, protected rights, and a clear distribution of powers. Its decisive contrast is not government versus no government, but rule by hereditary person versus a continental order in which authority is delegated and law stands above the ruler.