1. Compared with the democratic regime, the excellence of personal power needs no proving. The monarch, dictator and king, free sovereign, born leader or even usurper, governs above all private interests, financial powers and partisan pressures. He is the final court of appeal in deciding all political matters. This theory of monarchy excludes absolutely polyarchic democracy and plebiscitary monarchy, but not however certain traditional oligarchic republics, be they ecclesiastical, aristocratic, commercial or even syndicalist, whose power is admittedly collegial, but nevertheless indivisible and sovereign.
2. The phalangist weighs the risk entailed in every type of power and subjection. But he knows that risk is part of human life and that this particular risk is inherent in man’s condition in society. With this wise realism, he is more disposed to place his trust, with the free conscience of a Christian, in one person, the royal person, than in an anonymous democratic multitude, irresponsible and generally heedless of what is at stake.
It is true the French have been taught by the Republic to fear this personal power – to which all peoples instinctively aspire – as necessarily tyrannical and strangely they have been taught to hate it as inevitably clerical. Intoxicated by a purely superficial republicanism, France is afraid of a king. At the same time, this refusal to serve another man, to humble oneself before him – a refusal clearly inspired by Protestant insubordination and irreligion – contradicts and paralyses the violent love the French people spontaneously have for the person of the king, for the military leader, for the father of the country, in whom they tend to place their entire trust.
3. Personal, royal power represents the highest degree of reason and experience, wisdom and awareness, will, initiative and decision that can be encountered in politics. Of itself it has no propensity to tyranny, no temptation to doubt its own power and no tendency to anarchy. It represents authority, responsibility and freedom. The virtue proper to royal, personal power is of such a kind that it places the person of the sovereign above all factions with their intrigues and conflicts, above all rivalries of interest or class, and at the centre of the widest comprehension and most extensive determination, from whence it is best able to judge and decide for the common good, and so much the better for being naturally involved with the common good by reason of situation, interest and honour.
The proof of this is that every democratic power that is free in its movements transforms itself into a dictatorship under the force of public necessity, because such is the nature of things, and this dictatorship then aspires to the continuity and legitimacy of royal power. And the people accept it! They applaud the confiscation of their democratic prerogatives in exchange for the benefit of any leader at all and for the immense satisfaction of at last being commanded.
"The rule of many is not good;
let there be only one leader,
one King."
(Words of Ulysses, the wisest of all the Greeks)
When in 1900 in his Enquiry about the monarchy Maurras put to qualified representatives of the real country his famous question, "Yes or no, is the institution of a traditional monarchy, one that is hereditary, anti-parliamentarian, and decentralised, necessary for the public security?", the word traditional necessarily connoted religious, Catholic, and sacral, for the French monarchy’s birth, life, and future revival are entirely dependent on the anointing at Rheims,on Mother Church and on God.
1. All personal power, absolute in its own domain, is of divine right. This is not based on some fiction or convention, but on nature. It is founded on the power of God, the Creator and Master of all things. Without this religious foundation, it would be monstrous in its claims, totalitarian in its authority, and mad in its exercise. For "if nothing is true, then everything is permitted" (Dostoyevsky). If the king has not God as his father, then he becomes a god or a devil according to his good pleasure, and the people are his plaything.
But it is from the Christian faith and from the Church that this universal, natural principle of the divine right of all true and legitimate authority receives its perfect fulfilment and its ultimate raison d’être. God gave all the kingdoms of the world to His Son Jesus Christ, Saviour of the world, and He in turn consecrates to Himself through His Church all that belongs to Him by right. Thus the anointing at Rheims is not only the consecration of the nation and its prince to God. It it is even more the recognition and blessing by Christ, true Prince and true King of France, of the contract which, before Him and in His Name, and before the Church who is its witness and guarantor, unites the people to their king and dedicates the king to his people, as in a mystical and veritable marriage.
Thus the anointed king becomes a sacrament for his people, and in this sacrament he is established for ever as the legitimate and inviolable lieutenant of Christ the King.
2. The anointing binds the king to Christ in the fulfilment of his task as a temporal sovereign. He must respect the divine law, the Decalogue, the Gospel and the teaching of the Church’s Magisterium. He must be the support of the Church, her servant and defender, in all things that lie under his control. The admirable succession of the kings of France shows what a strong sense of justice they had, what great devotion they displayed for both the body and soul of their country, and what moral firmness and perfection they possessed.
If one disregards, as one should, the faults of our kings’ private lives – regrettable though they may be for their personal merit and lamentable for the bad influence and example they give – it must be admitted that they all, absolutely all, possessed at a high level, above all doubt and contestation, the absolute sense of the truth of their anointing and of the imprescriptible duties they had contracted towards God and their peoples. They all had a high awareness of service to the Church, of the necessity of safeguarding the faith, of dedication to the common good, and of justice and love for the poor. "Weigh, my son, weigh what it is to be king of France." (Philip the Fair)
3. And yet, precisely because it is sacral in essence, the most Christian monarchy succeeded in being independent of the clergy. It worked on terms of sovereign equality with them, opposed to any encroachments on their part. It was a "strongly religious but keenly anticlerical" power (Charles Maurras), so deeply subject to God that it was free of any servile allegiance to the men of God. Endowed with a sacred dignity by his anointing, in the spiritual order the king of France speaks to the bishops and to the popes as a submissive son, but in the temporal order, where he is master in God’s name, he acts with them as power to power.
4. Therefore a king who was unanointed, atheist, apostate, heretical or schismatic would be for the phalangist no more than a de facto power. He would be worse than the others, because "the corruption of the best is the worst". It is certain that this necessary anointing demands, as a condition for its validity, a public profession of the whole Catholic faith and an acceptance of the terms of the contract, the object of this sacramental rite. All this is needed that the royal work may be carried out fully and honestly. Such is the first and most fundamental of the fundamental laws of the kingdom of France, a law which in the eyes of the Church and of the people vindicates the sacred origin of the French monarchy, its divine authority and inviolable legitimacy. In abjuring his heresy, Henri IV yielded to the force of this law, or rather, in his wisdom and in his faith, he recognised this law, adhered to it with all his heart, and so confirmed it for ever.
"A prince who would not declare his principles would be nothing", wrote Philip Duke of Orleans to Charles Maurras, on 18 August 1900. "On essential questions, the French have a right to demand of me a clear and categorical statement of my position." Now, of all the essential questions, the Catholic faith, the defence of the Church, the religious commitment to the salvation of souls and the nation’s common good, take first place. For want of a clear and categorical statement of position on these essentials, there can be no popular consent. As long as this absence of declared principle lasts, this lack of a true king to love and serve "in God’s name" (Joan of Arc), the phalangist cannot but keep his distance.
Is this mysticism? Yes, and humanism too, without which nothing exists except brutality and barbarity.
Government by one person alone is better than government by many. This is true in our current daily life, but even more so throughout the span of history. The continuity of power, as well as its unity, its scope and its holiness, is one of the elements of its perfection. We refer not only to its material continuity, but also to its formal and spiritual continuity, the persistence of its legitimacy from year to year, from one generation to the next; it is not continually brought into question and it does not have the bothersome prospect of having to go back to the people for their vote. Royal authority is neither precarious nor transitory; it is hereditary and dynastic.
The natural law of the transmissibility of dignity and property, together with the inheritance of blood, name and breeding, is in harmony with the inspired biblical wisdom. As for ecclesiastical authority – which is always monarchical and sometimes solemnly collegial, but never hereditary by reason of its spiritual essence and the celibacy that signifies this – it requires the perilous exercise – and how minutely controlled! – of election.
French royal authority, formerly non-hereditary and plebiscitary, owing to the wisdom of the Capetians became dynastic, just as was the case with the kings of Juda by virtue of the messianic promises. Is not France "the tribe of Juda of the New Covenant" (Saint Pius X) ?
2. The profound reason for this French, Christian and biblical tradition is supernatural. It is rooted in faith in the mystery of the divine generation, of which all human generation is the image and likeness. As the Father gives all to His only Son, in the life of the Trinity and in the unity of one and the same Spirit, so the king gives all to the firstborn of France. "The king does not die". The royal family goes on as does the divine Life, and it guarantees for every family in the kingdom a similar legitimacy, the same stability of a dynastic paternal authority.
Thus in accordance with nature’s most profound rhythm are reconciled stability and change, tradition and progress, fidelity to heritage and initiative, authority and freedom.
3. Of all the laws of succession, the law of birth is the one most marked with the sign of divine mission, of providential vocation, and also the one most tied to the service of the nation. It excludes the competition of other claimants, but it also moderates the sovereign’s pride, for he is an heir and not an upstart. It invests him with an historic responsibility, an ancient patrimony, which he receives as a deposit, which he must render an account of before God and posterity, and which he must transmit to his successor intact and prosperous, both materially and spiritually. The phalangist will prefer the hereditary monarchy to all forms of caesarism. To anyone chosen by the masses or a man of destiny, he will prefer the dynastic heir of the Capetians, whose right to the Crown of France has never been prescribed or abolished. It is not the royal family or the House of France that is failing the kingdom; it is France that is failing the kingdom by lacking a king.
There are two ways for a paternal, patronal or royal authority to be popular. There is the way of arbitrary choice and the way of consent, the way of election and the way of adherence. A democratic authority gets itself elected, applauded, dominated and eventually dismissed by any popular force, real or supposed. It is the slave of the latter. A demophile authority, "which loves the people", commands the people but does not wait for their consent before acting in their interest, whether they know it or not, whether they appreciate it or not. It seeks the people’s good, not popularity.
Now, curiously though rightly enough, it is the demophile authority that proves to be spontaneously and profoundly popular, not the democratic authority.
1. Electoral democracy, because it necessitates a constant manipulation and hidden manoeuvring of public opinion, effectively confiscates the nation’s alleged sovereignty for the benefit of parallel powers, parliaments, ruling classes, plutocracy and trade union organisations, all anything but honest. These oligarchies place themselves between the people and their elected representatives – the latter belonging to them rather than to the people! – and it is they that regulate the degree of popularity, purely fictitious and fabricated, that they judge to be required by each of these elected representatives.
2. Royal authority, which is demophile, takes its source from other than the people. It holds its title from birth and its power from God Himself, which might appear to distance it terribly from its subjects. On the contrary, this sovereignty sweeps away all intermediaries and is on a level with the people. The wall of money, ambition, calculation and betrayal that necessarily intervenes between electors and elected, now finds itself overturned. Kings disdain lying praise and the calculated oppositions of the Great, and destroy their manoeuvres. And so the people, that much more spontaneously, give the kings their trust, their unshakeable love and fidelity. This disinterested understanding is not fabricated and cannot be canvassed. It is freely given.
3. The most Christian monarchy is anti-democratic and anti-parliamentarian in its very essence. The only condition the nation can and should make with regard to its initial loyalty and perpetual trust in the most Christian monarchy is that the title and principles of the heir to the throne should be verified: the validity of his dynastic rights and the truth of his Catholic faith, as well as his commitment to the service of the country in accordance with its traditions and in conformity with the popular sense; for a king, this is a matter of fidelity to the oath of his anointing. The Council of the kingdom, the jealous guardian of the French royal law, will ensure these conditions are met.
For if blood designates the heir and makes him king, it is the Catholic faith and the faith sworn to his people that alone permit him to be anointed and enter into his heritage, which is France, and thus win the people’s loyalty.
There are two forms of popularity: that which flees those who seek it and that which seeks those who flee it. From these result two systems of government: the one centralised in the extreme, and the other decentralised; the one based on an ever more monolithic urban concentration and an ever more tentacular administrative development, and the other involving a flexible and unrestricted regional life, with spontaneous and responsible corporative activity.
1. Wherever we find peoples who are supposed to delegate to anyone they like, at any time and in any way, then the State distributes the freedom of existence, life and action to anyone it likes, at any time and in any way, as sparingly and as artfully as possible, so as to be re-elected and retain power. Thus the people and the State are at each other’s throats in an awkward attitude of distrust and self-defence, hardly propitious to the joy of living.
The rights of man and the people’s sovereignty have caused the crumbling of all natural social groups, families, professions and regions. At the same time they have driven the State to consolidate its foundations on this undifferentiated mass, from whom it claims to take its origin, and which it must consequently force to think, act and vote in accordance with its own norms. Before long, the whole life of the citizen from the cradle to the grave – his intellectual, spiritual, economic, family, communal and urban life – is taken in hand, controlled and dominated by the State, which effectively becomes his schoolmaster, his employer, and his sole source of information. 1789, 1793, the Institutions of the year VIII, such are the historical stages of every revolution, oscillating between anarchy and tyranny.
Democracy means an administrative iron collar. The sovereignty of the people is answered by state control, and because this control has to be hidden insofar as it is illegitimate, it proceeds by alternative paths which suffocate and paralyse the country. Such is the cause of the "mal français"; it is republican. Suppress the cause and the effects will soon disappear.
2. Sacral monarchy means decentralisation. The monarchy, which formed the unity of the French nation in its infinite diversity, defended it and pulled it together at certain periods in response to pressing dangers, centrifugal forces and the beginnings of anarchy. It was also capable of loosening administrative bonds, reducing their control, and restoring the provinces and corporations to their own free government, with the return of calmer times.
The king in his person concentrates and sums up political power. He represents and incarnates national unity. He is both its expression and its limit. Having assumed, by right and in his own proper person, this unitary and necessary political function at its highest summit, he has no need to burden himself by adding to it any administrative, economic, or educational centralisation. There are no more political elections, no more professional electioneers, and no more "people" to be formed, bureaucratised and standardised.
On the contrary, the king is inclined of himself to satisfy the desire of his subjects to exercise the greatest possible initiative, although he may have to balance and direct it in his capacity as a sovereign judge and a good father. It is for the needs of the nation, not his own personal needs, that he strengthens the central power when the order, security, peace and prosperity of the nation demand it.
The true promise of the people’s liberty is to be found in the full sovereignty of the monarch absolute in his divine right. He has no need to encumber his function with things that are not necessary to it. His great desire, his noble ambition, is to see his subjects acting freely and confidently for themselves beneath his gaze, as a father of a family does for his grown-up children.
1. The king reigns and his glory is the quiet manifestation of the nation’s order and prosperity. By his presence alone he exerts a prodigious influence over the thoughts, feelings and morals of his subjects.
He reigns surrounded by representatives of the great orders of the nation which form his court. He encourages their devotion, increases their worth and influence without encroaching on the proper autonomy of their functions, and all the while retains their loyalty, their awareness of the common good, and their service of the kingdom. It will be borne in mind that the royal court – so calumniated – gradually evolved and fulfilled its role according to the needs of the times and the nation’s best interests.
2. The king governs as sovereign head with the ministers of his choosing and through the means of his councils. These councils can be varied and hierarchised, restricted or enlarged, as required by the matters to be dealt with and the decisions to be taken : high matters of State, questions of religion, justice, administration or economics. To these councils he summons, according to their competence, the men of government and representatives from the Church, the magistrature, the orders, and the organised nation, or even, if need be, private persons whose advice is considered to be useful.
Permanent councils remain in the king’s service – such as the Council of State, which is none other, in the best of its functions, than the ancient Council of the King – for the purpose of elaborating laws and regulations or arbitrating in administrative matters.
Finally, the king uses specialist commissions consisting of ministers, government officials, professionals and representatives chosen from the nation to deal with delicate and grave matters that cannot be discussed in public or where the country’s long-term future is at stake, for example, the manufacture and use of nuclear energy.
High officials, like ministers, are chosen by the king for their aptitude and honesty. He defines their tasks and invests them with his own power within the limits of their competence. They are answerable to him alone. Trust and loyalty are the foundations of royal authority. The King surrounds himself with very few high officials. He honours and rewards them generously according to services rendered, but any embezzlement or betrayal on their part he punishes firmly and publicly. If they are incompetent, he dismisses them. If they are successful, he attaches them to himself for life, and there is no need for them to be changed.
3. The king judges and arbitrates supremely over any conflicts which set his subjects against one another. This is a thousand-year-old custom of France’s ancient and most Christian monarchy. The king derives this authority, this liberty, this right to enter into his subjects’ daily lives from his superior, independent situation and from his eminently paternal spirit. The subjects themselves look to his arbitration to be reconciled among themselves by the hand of Justice, all of which increases their unanimous attachment to the Crown.
4. The king retains his sworn and anointed legitimacy through an inviolable fidelity of his person to the kingdom’s traditional Constitution. In line with the unwritten laws of France, the king accepts to be challenged and remonstrated with by his subjects, if they suspect or accuse him of perjury or neglect in his royal function. The council of the kingdom will receive and examine these complaints and will, if they are legitimate and well founded, set them before the king. Should the king, behaving violently and obstinately, publicly renounces his essential obligations and duties, then the council will publicly invite him to resign and abdicate. For he is a man and not God.