Word: bagehot
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Over all of the realms, Elizabeth II will reign but not govern; as a constitutional monarch, her political rights were classically defined by Political Scientist Walter Bagehot in 1867, as three: "to be consulted, to encourage, to warn." In addition, as Sir Winston Churchill remarked, "she is also heir to all our united strength and loyalty . . . Thus we go forward, moving together in freedom and hope, spread across the oceans and under every sky and climate though...
BRITISH royalty reigns but does not govern. According to a famed British constitutional scholar, Walter Bagehot, Queen Elizabeth II "could disband the army; she could dismiss all the officers . . .she could sell off all our ships-of-war and all our naval stores; she could make a peace by the sacrifice of Cornwall and begin a war for the conquest of Brittany. She could make every citizen in the United Kingdom, male or female, a peer; she could make every parish in the United Kingdom a 'University'; she could dismiss most of the civil servants, and she could...
Queen Victoria, in whose reign Bagehot was writing, exclaimed: "Oh, the wicked man, to write such a story!" Elizabeth might feel the same way, for, as every loyal subject knows, the British Constitution cannot be understood by people who think it says exactly what it means. The monarch's will is presumed to march with the will of her ministers. Elizabeth's actual rights as a Queen are only three: the right to be consulted by the Prime Minister, to encourage certain courses of action, and to warn against others...