Category: Constitution

The end of ‘King Oliver’

A.  In the year 1657 the first thing the Parliament did, was the drawing up of this petition to the Protector, to take upon him the government of the three nations, with the title of King. As of other Parliaments, so of this, the greatest part had been either kept out of the House by force, or else themselves had forborne to sit and become guilty of setting up this King Oliver. But those few that sat, presented their petition to the Protector, April the 9th, in the Banqueting-house at Whitehall; where Sir Thomas Widdrington, the Speaker, used the first arguments, and the Protector desired some time to seek God, the business being weighty. The next day they sent a committee to him to receive his answer; which answer being not very clear, they pressed him again for a resolution; to which he made answer in a long speech, that ended in a peremptory refusal. And so retaining still the title of Protector, he took upon him the government according to certain articles contained in the said petition.

B.  What made him refuse the title of King?

A.  Because he durst not take it at that time; the army being addicted to their great officers, and amongst their great officers many hoping to succeed him, and, the succession having been promised to Major-General Lambert, would have mutinied against him. He was therefore forced to stay for a more propitious conjuncture.

…

Having signed the articles, he was presently with great ceremony installed anew.

B.  What needed that, seeing he was still but Protector?

A.  But the articles of this petition were not all the same with those of his former instrument. For now there was to be another House; and whereas before, his council was to name his successor, he had power now to do it himself; so that he was an absolute monarch, and might leave the succession to his son if he would, and so successively, or transfer it to whom he pleased.

The ceremony being ended, the Parliament adjourned to the 20th of January following; and then the other House also sat with their fellows.

The House of Commons being now full, took little notice of the other House, wherein there were not of sixty persons above nine lords; but fell a questioning all that their fellows had done, during the time of their seclusion; whence had followed the avoidance of the power newly placed in the Protector. Therefore, going to the House, he made a speech to them, ending in these words; By the living God, I must, and do dissolve you.

In this year, the English gave the Spaniard another great blow at Santa Cruz, not much less than they had given him the year before at Cadiz.

About the time of the dissolution of this Parliament, the royalists had another design against the Protector; which was, to make an insurrection in England, the King being in Flanders ready to second them with an army thence. But this also was discovered by treachery, and came to nothing but the ruin of those that were engaged in it; whereof many in the beginning of the next year were by a High Court of Justice imprisoned, and some executed.

This year also was Major-General Lambert put out of all employment, a man second to none but Oliver in the favour of the army. But because he expected by that favour, or by promise from the Protector, to be his successor in the supreme power, it would have been dangerous to let him have command in the army; the Protector having designed for his successor his eldest son Richard.

In the year 1658, September the 3rd, the Protector died at Whitehall; having ever since his last establishment been perplexed with fear of being killed by some desperate attempt of the royalists.

(from Behemoth)

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No libertarian space colonies

A longstanding Libertarian idea is that if a libertarian society cannot be created in the world, then private enterprises can create their own orbiting island worlds, making their own way, free of state control and without the legacy of constraining laws.

Until someone leaves an airlock open.

In a normal land, on Earth, we form societies and make laws for the reasons Hobbes set out:

The finall Cause, End, or Designe of men, (who naturally love Liberty, and Dominion over others,) in the introduction of that restraint upon themselves, (in which wee see them live in Common-wealths,) is the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of Warre, which is necessarily consequent (as hath been shewn) to the naturall Passions of men, when there is no visible Power to keep them in awe, and tye them by feare of punishment to the performance of their Covenants, and observation of these Lawes of Nature

A society built afresh, even if it is designed to be a tabula rasa, on no prior foundation, is nevertheless subject to the laws of nature, which is to say man’s own nature. You can dream of absolute liberty when alone in the virgin woods, but people coming together as a tribe or nation to preserve themselves, must create a social contract or destroy themselves. The laws their Common-wealth creates may be mild and only what is necessary, or intrusive and resented, but cannot be absent.

The more urban and industrial a society becomes, the more intrusive are its laws. Crammed into an orbiting habitat or a Mars colony, imprisoned in a bubble surrounded by the vacuum of space, those laws will be tight. The Libertarian idea is that they need not be:  a colony is not inheriting the laws of its ancestors and building on those, but starting afresh, with only such rules as are actually relevant and necessary to the survival of the colony. Survival is the key to what follows, and kills the libertarian idea.

The way laws are given to British colonies is this: the law of England applies, with such modification as to make them applicable in Rumbabaland or wherever. A space colony could do the same, and then repeal laboriously the inapplicable and unnecessary – no need for conservation laws when there is no nature nor wildlife nor rivers to pollute nor ancient monuments (it sounds an awful place already) and all sorts of spheres of life, where reluctance to interfere with Chesterton’s Fence becomes more and more as you go on.

Instead, the libertarian idea is that you start with no laws at all, and introduce only those which are necessary. Start with ‘Thou shalt not kill’, ‘Thou shalt not steal’; and rights of property have to be defined, and then laws of contract.

You resent government, and want to do without it, until you want someone to enforce your rights of property. (There have been nations with laws but no effective government – Dark Age Iceland, or Albania for most of its post-Roman history, relying on revenge and blood-feuds. It is not recommended.)

Britain became essentially libertarian, in comparison to the modern situation, in the age that led to the Industrial Revolution. That liberty  allowed innovation and industry to rise. With industrialisation came the desire to protect rivers and the atmosphere from what spilled from those belching furnaces, and to protect labourers from being ground up in the machines. With it came urbanisation, and taxes to build sewers and clean streets; to install gas-lamps and eventually electricity. Private Acts of Parliament overrode rights of property in order to carve canals, and then railways, and then roads. Then came town planning laws, and later town and country planning laws. The crush of the new cities, families cheek-by-jowl with their neighbours, brought more detailed laws on tenancies and interpersonal space, and on what vehicles one is allowed to run on the crowded public road.

(Much of this, one might think, could have been imposed on cities only, leaving the countryside alone. Law-makers do not work like that. We have got used to paying for the cities, as they earn for us, and to being stuck with their laws.)

In a space-colony, inhabitants are even more cheek-by-jowl. There is no getting away from the government, because it owns the space-station or colony complex. On Earth, we breathe free air; an unlimited resource, and fresh water tumbles from the skies into cool streams. In a space colony every drop of water and every breath of air, is a finite resource managed and distributed by the colony government. It gives that government the power of life and death over every inhabitant, moment to moment and in minute detail.

We curse the planning laws when they stop us building an extension or a new country cottage for ourselves on our own land. A space colony cannot be unconstrained: try knocking through a wall to build a lean-to, and all the colony’s air is sucked into space.

If the structure of government ceases to function in a normal country, we might not notice for a white. (Whitehall is barely functional now at the best of times.) We do nevertheless have basic law enforcement, and goodwill between neighbours, in nicer areas. If basic law enforcement ceases, riots and looting begin – even then the Earth sustains us: there may be famine in the artifices that are the cities and millions starving, but outside we still have sunshine and water and can live, if we can get food.

If government ceases in a space colony, life-support may break down and everyone dies. If inhabitants stop respecting the government and the rules laid down, the rationing of air, water and food is ignored, and everyone dies.

Interestingly, when Project Hyperion held a competition to design a ‘generation ship’ – an interstellar colony ship – one entry, Systema Stellare Proximum, assumed that every generation or so, society in the colony will break down into riots and anarchy, until re-established by tyranny. The colony ship would therefore have to be designed with this in mind. That is a more realistic analysis than any familiar science fiction. The colony would need to have an overriding artificial intelligence as an undisplaceable governing system to keep the ship alive in spite of the breakdown.

What of opportunity too?  The libertarian ideal allows any man or women to make his or her life however they wish. On Earth, that can be done. In a decently sized country, I could choose my path, looking for any opening or innovate in my own enterprise to create something new. In a closed, defined space colony, perforce autarkic and unexpandable there is little opportunity for anything but being allocated to a task.

This is all without thinking about the effect of inbreeding in a small colony – that would need careful regulation, in a way we would find unacceptable overreach into the personal sphere even in a constrained, modern society.

I can appreciate the hope of the libertarian, to build a new, free world by thumbing his nose at governments and making a new home outside the state’s grip; building it as a private enterprise to his own specifications. It would however be far more unfree than anything they have left on Earth.

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Fiction:

Unwarranted acts

In a Body Politique, if the Representative be one man, whatsoever he does in the Person of the Body, which is not warranted in his Letters, nor by the Lawes, is his own act, and not the act of the Body, nor of any other Member thereof besides himselfe: Because further than his Letters, or the Lawes limit, he representeth no mans person, but his own. But what he does according to these, is the act of every one: For of the Act of the Soveraign every one is Author, because he is their Representative unlimited; and the act of him that recedes not from the Letters of the Soveraign, is the act of the Soveraign, and therefore every member of the Body is Author of it.

But if the Representative be an Assembly, whatsoever that Assembly shall Decree, not warranted by their Letters, or the Lawes, is the act of the Assembly, or Body Politique, and the act of every one by whose Vote the Decree was made; but not the act of any man that being present Voted to the contrary; nor of any man absent, unlesse he Voted it by procuration. It is the act of the Assembly, because Voted by the major part; and if it be a crime, the Assembly may be punished, as farre-forth as it is capable, as by dissolution, or forfeiture of their Letters (which is to such artificiall, and fictitious Bodies, capitall,) or (if the Assembly have a Common stock, wherein none of the Innocent Members have propriety,) by pecuniary Mulct. For from corporall penalties Nature hath exempted all Bodies Politique.

But they that gave not their Vote, are therefore Innocent, because the Assembly cannot Represent any man in things unwarranted by their Letters, and consequently are not involved in their Votes.

If the person of the Body Politique being in one man, borrow mony of a stranger, that is, of one that is not of the same Body, (for no Letters need limit borrowing, seeing it is left to mens own inclinations to limit lending) the debt is the Representatives.

For if he should have Authority from his Letters, to make the members pay what he borroweth, he should have by consequence the Soveraignty of them; and therefore the grant were either voyd, as proceeding from Errour, commonly incident to humane Nature, and an unsufficient signe of the will of the Granter; or if it be avowed by him, then is the Representer Soveraign, and falleth not under the present question, which is onely of Bodies subordinate. No member therefore is obliged to pay the debt so borrowed, but the Representative himselfe: because he that lendeth it, being a stranger to the Letters, and to the qualification of the Body, understandeth those onely for his debtors, that are engaged; and seeing the Representer can ingage himselfe, and none else, has him onely for Debtor; who must therefore pay him, out of the common stock (if there be any), or (if there be none) out of his own estate.

If he come into debt by Contract, or Mulct, the case is the same.

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Books

Curbing professional associations

The abuse of power by privileged professional associations is a danger that must be curbed before it happens  The threat grows each day. A reform of coercive state powers will be sidestepped if professional bodies can reimpose restraints using the authority the state entrusts to them.

This was flagged  in an earlier article, ‘Action: A Powers and Bodies Bill‘, but it needs explanation.

Numerous professions are governed by their own professional bodies, which are granted a legal authority over practitioners; a private law, which the Romans called a privilegium: privilege.  That privilege is open to abuse.

Self-regulation by privileged bodies is a valuable way to go about things: only members of a particular profession can understand the practical aspects of their practices. Therefore we have doctors governed by the General Medical Council; accountants by one of the three Institutes of Chartered Accountants; solicitors by the three Law Societies; surveyors and others by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors – and other bodies with royal charters watch over the old honoured professions. Their rules forbid convicted thieves from practising as accountants or solicitors; they determine the qualifications a prospective practitioner must obtain; they bar those proven to be unworthy of the trust reposed in a professional; they determine necessary ethical rules for protecting the public, and vulnerable staff, and the respect held for the profession. They or their proximate bodies will try and punish malefactors.

The private laws of the privileged bodies can ruin an individual to whom they take a dislike, may restrain innovation and competition, and shut out rivals. This is serious power to be so unrestrained.

The general law will (if enforced) forbid the professions from going too far, for example from barring women (as they used to) or barring anyone for their race or religion (as they used to). They are still empowered to bar anyone from practice for membership of a political party, or holding opinions the Council dislikes, or expressing dissent from a decision. They are trusted not to, by a gentlemanly understanding of what is proper. How far though can that be trusted when gentlemen are fewer and political activists are more?

Interference by the state is resented, as the professional bodies consider themselves independent. Every power though that they exercise is granted  or confirmed by an Act of Parliament, and parliament has stepped in before.

Like a mediaeval trade guild, a profesional body may work its rules not to protect the public but to give its members a cozy monopoly. One need not read Adam Smith’s analysis to know that. Within living memory, doctors, surveyors and solicitors had minimum fees imposed by their professional bodies in order to prevent competition, and were forbidden from advertising: these had to be  challenged by the Monopolies Commission of the time. They may need to be challenged again to prevent discrimination by politics or social opinions, or novelty of thought.

A further threat of immediate relevance is the subversion of the professional ethic by People With Ideas. The power of the privileged bodies is a draw for the activist, and they have been pushing at the gates for some time now. In some cases, they have burst through.

The green lobby and disinvestment campaigns are making the running, trying to withdraw professional advice from those they disfavour. Thre are some actively trying to force professionals to add environmental concerns to their professional obligations:  a number of articles have been published insisting on this, or even darkly stating that one should be disciplined already for failing to do so, and others demanding that the rules be changed to prevent professionals from acting for oil companies. If solicitors are forbidden from defending legal interests of any person, that person loses the protection the law grants him.  The Ukraine War saw another set of demands, to stop any Russians receiving professional advice. This is a new form of mediaeval outlawry, imposed on a whole race.

That is not to forget the social justice warriors.  They may so far have had little impact on the older professions beyond surface displays, but elsewhere they have been merrily ruining innocent lives. Privileged associations erected in recent decades for the teaching profession or counselling therapists have not gained the maturity others have, but are as powerful. Any counsellor or teacher declared unsafe to be near children is out of work for life, and while this was created to protect children and the vulnerable from notorious, egregious misconduct, lately the same sanction has been applied to those who denied a doctrine only a tiny number of people believe, that a man can be a woman, and this without any rule declaring the ‘heresy’ to be misconduct. It is not private law, but lynch law.

The overreach can no longer be ignored. The abuse of privileged powers is real, and those powers granted by Parliament can be, and should be, limited by Parliament.

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By Boris Johnson:

By others

The Shallow State

It is said that if you stick an oily finger in a beer,  the head disappears as a single molecule’s thickness of oil chokes the surface. Lifeboats used to calm the mighty waves the same way:  all the welling depths of the ocean were stifled by the thinnest film upon the surface. Abandon your theories about the ‘Deep State’: it is the Shallow State which prevents change –  the fine layer upon the surface smothering action from reaching the nation.

The functions of the state interact with the citizen not through great councils or wise heads, but by the hands of junior officials. Wise heads are (on occasion) hired to look after great matters of state, but they are not the ones putting it into effect. They are at the mercy of those junior clerks. The junior staff are not privy to the policy priorities from on high, and not really interested – they just do their jobs. It can be a cushy billet by all accounts, so a good clerk will keep his or her head down and get on with a basic service.  Innovation is punishable.

This level is the interface with the public, which puts all into practical effect.

If an activist has appointed herself in a senior role, threatening junior staff with discipline for not following her agenda, they will go along with it for an easy life, though they may disagree, and even if that activist civil servant has no authority for her action.

More important are the natural processes of recruitment. Everyone has his or her own interests and priorities. There is a section of the Home Office dealing with nationality and immigration: one can imagine who would apply to work in it, and that is reflected in actual staffing. Likewise for many specialist areas. The minister may change, and have new, fresh ideas, but the staff implementing it have their own ideas and they have not changed.  It may be a molecule-thick layer on the water, but all the pronouncements of government are choked before they reach action and the public.

On occasion something dramatic happens:  when an immigration crackdown was announced not long ago, many junior civil servants protested and said they would refuse to implement it. It is rarely so explicit though: The Windrush Scandal was not caused by any order from the Home Secretary to deport those who had arrived here lawfully in a past generation, but by junior staff implementing a version of the rules, either idiotically or, one suspects, maliciously in order to discredit the whole scheme; and it worked.

I should not concentrate on that one areas though – it is not of particular interest, and serves only because of the scandal.

In many areas of government the same shallow-state effect is visible: stifling policy, stifling innovative thinking, and allowing just a few activist staff to have a wider impact. The government machine is too vast, too Byzantine, for it to be any other way.

Can fraud in social security or the National Health Service be curbed, as every government promises?  Not when staff are just getting on with their jobs to process applications as quickly as possible, and not spending time examining the minutiae or questioning suspicions, and not while they are kept afraid of accusations.  Ministers are as distant from the tasks for which they are nominally responsible as is the director of a multinational concern from the teenagers who serve their burgers. They may shout, but all the layers of insulation between them and the actual doers will muffle them entirely, and the junior staff will just get on with their jobs.

Kemi Badenoch has spoken to the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship that government should ignore extremist lobbyists – but she cannot do anything about it, because the real government are the junior staff at the public interface.

The opportunities for activists to fill the power vacuum is clear. They need not be in a supervisory role: someone in a back office wrote the coding that resulted in some government agency webpages having dropdowns that included ‘Islas Malvinas’ and ‘Occupied Palestine’. No one was tasked with checking and intervening. That at least appears to have been resolved after it was brought to higher attention. Many low-rankers are in the meantime still writing ‘guidance’ notes, enforced as iron law, forcing their own ideas on the junior staff, with no authority to do so.

We read of an employee of ACAS, a government agency, hounded out and slandered when he questioned critical race theory: race-hatred was to be enforced as unquestionable dogma, by the authority delegated by a Cabinet Minister. The tribunal was astounded, but ministers nominally in charge did not even notice. It is no part of government policy, and indeed has been condemned by ministers, so who is in charge, and why are they not removed?

The permanent, non-political civil service is not then to be seen in the great mandarins treated nominally with reverence, but collectively in the most junior layer, whose hands do all, working away at their tasks, keeping their heads down, insulated from the politics afar off from them. They are the single, thin layer that interact with the public, collectively stopping anything from changing.

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