John Dryden Quotes
Plots, true or false, are necessary things, To raise up commonwealths and ruin kings.
John Dryden, 1631-1700, British Poet Laureate to Charles II, Absalom and Achitophel, 1681
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England had gone through a bloody Civil War with the Parliament on one side and the King on the other. The King lost and was beheaded later that year. See {597353}.
Quoted in somewhat different form by Richard Nixon
The revolution turned on many of its initiators including Vergniaud. He was guillotined along with other Girondists.
See {620510} for a much older expression of this idea.
In 1848 a number of revolutions flared throughout Europe with a call for democracy rather than monarchy. The Prussian king was one of those who really believed that he was selected by God to rule, was very frightened and tried to enlist the Queen and England to present a united front against the revolutionaries. England, which had already had a strong functioning parliament and extensive voting suffrage, protected most of the rights of its citizens and was a Constitutional Monarchy where there were limits to the power of the monarch. Further, Victoria was extremely popular and in many ways was far ahead of the electorate in terms of modern democratic reforms. So she was not in the panic of many of the other crowned heads of Europe were in. Somewhat following the example of England, King William IV allowed a parliament and minimized the strong military role that characterized Prussia. Most of the 1848 revolutions failed to sieze governments but, as with Prussia, forced reforms in what was a long movement to European democracy that would take another 150 years. Note also the logic about religion. Since the revolutionists did not believe in the divine right of kings, they opposed God’s will on earth. Therefore, they opposed God and must be atheists. Almost all counter revolutionary accusations included the claim—often not true—that the revolutionaries were atheists.
Many American colonists had relatives and friends in England, and Paine argued that American independence would help and not het the English people.
This could easily have been a description of the 2014 American Congress. Legislative and governing bodies have frequently been paralyzed by hyperpartisanship and ideological polarization.
The assumption of one supreme authority being necessary for a state, has been the most common assumption in almost all cultures and times before the American Revolution. What is amazing is that the Founding Fathers rejected this notion in favor of our complex system of checks and balances restrained by a Constitution which no society had ever tried before. England in contrast as it became more democratic, simply shifted the supreme, uncontrollable entity from the King to the Parliament which it is even today. Parliament can do virtually anything unrestrained by anything except their judgment and tradition.
John Dryden was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who was appointed England's first Poet Laureate in 1668.
