The progress from an absolute to a
limited monarchy, from a
limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.
Being subjects either of an absolute or
limited monarchy, they have endeavored to heighten the advantages, or palliate the evils of those forms, by placing in comparison the vices and defects of the republican, and by citing as specimens of the latter the turbulent democracies of ancient Greece and modern Italy.
The Glorious Revolution, however, established
limited monarchy. Having passed the Bill of Rights the English kings retained real power but they ruled by consent of Parliament and were subject to law.
Edsa, for the political class, was a restoration, a revolution in the sense that England's 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688 was one: a return to
limited monarchy in their case, and the premartial law separation of powers in our case.
Adams was dubbed "His Rotundity," meant to contrast him with the physically imposing Washington and Jefferson, and the Jeffersonian press printed chilling and politically incorrect expressions from the Defence, such as "Wealth, Birth, and Virtue form the best men," or that
limited monarchy is the best government (superior to republicanism).
In 1814, Norway's constitution was signed, providing for a
limited monarchy.
(That is why the Jeffersonians strove so mightily against the Federalists.) John Adams, for example, believed that
limited monarchy is a thing found in nature, and wrote that Americans were suited only to "Aristo-Democratical Monarchy"; Benjamin Rush predicted that the American people would become so corrupt within a century that absolute monarchy would be required to govern them.
Third, it was an autocracy, whereas Britain had been advancing down the path of
limited monarchy under law since the days of Magna Carta, and had, within living memory, fought a civil war and executed King Charles I to resist royal absolutism.
The distinction between absolute monarchy and
limited monarchy was often lost on American politicians, particularly anti-federalists with a political axe to grind.
The mainstream philosophes, favouring varieties of absolute rule or
limited monarchy, were less concerned with the nature of government than with how far it advanced human happiness through the maintenance of order and the protection of property-rights and personal freedoms, as Williams agrees, stressing the 'politically conservative stance of mu ch early to mid-Enlightenment thinkers' (p.33).
The apparent consensus in political ideas usually turns out to consist of mere platitudes and generalizations which disintegrate on any probing; there was a real difference between those arguing for a traditional,
limited monarchy and those intent on extending the powers of the Crown.
Ward's chapter on Shakespeare is also quite effective, drawing on English constitutional history and renaissance theories of monarchy to trace an evolution in Shakespeare's depiction of English kingship, from the absolute monarchy and strict providentialism of Richard III (69-74) to the
limited monarchy and Elizabethan humanism represented by Bolingbroke's accession to the throne in Richard II (80-89), with King John serving as a pivotal transition work (74-80).