Henry I of Montecito

When America’s first envoy to Britain, John Adams, met with George III, the king expressed the hope that America would not suffer for want of a monarchy. Two years later America ratified a constitution that prohibits Congress and the states from granting any title of nobility. It’s one of the most pointed prohibitions ever put to parchment. Yet today, America is frothing with memoirs, movies, and documentaries on the British monarchy.So what does one suppose is going on here? Reports come in that Prince Harry’s memoir, “Spare,” is selling at a faster rate than even books by America’s first family of publishing, the Obamas. Alongside sit downs on the other side of the Atlantic, interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Anderson Cooper, and Stephen Colbert have made the renegade prince a familiar face on American television. The ubiquitousness of the Sussexes here outstrips theirs in Britain.In 1982, Chief Justice Burger noted the “American aversion to aristocracy,” and in 1995 Justice Antonin Scalia proffered that the national parchment contemplates only the “individual” and rejects “dispositions” based on “race” or “blood.” This reverent republicanism is far from the pronouncement of, say, King James I, who believed that, the “State of MONARCHIE is the supremest thing upon earth.”In 84 Federalist, Alexander Hamilton puts it plainly: “Nothing need be said to illustrate the importance of the prohibition of titles of nobility. This may truly be denominated the corner-stone of republican government; for so long as they are excluded, there can never be serious danger that the government will be any other than that of the people.” We fired shots at Saratoga so that we would no longer be forced to bend the knee at Saint James’s. Yet Americans still feel wisps of want, tuning in to the weddings, funerals, and, soon, another coronation of the latest in a line of rulers going back a thousand years. What we find so sad about the Sussexes is how they have thrown over their royal roots in an effort to exploit their connection in a republican land to the very monarchy they seem to detest. Let’s hope they don’t suffer for want of a king.

Henry I of Montecito

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