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A Sacred Symbol in a Secular Country: The Holy Crown
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A Sacred Symbol in a Secular Country: The Holy Crown sándoR Radnóti The Dignified Part of a Constitution In his classic work, The English Constitution, Walter Bagehot differentiates between the efficient and dignified parts of the constitution. “Every constitution must first gain authority, and then use authority.” The dignified part of the constitution “excites and preserves the reverence of the population,” while the efficient part “works and rules.”1 Bagehot was a conservative liberal, a “Whig” who understood the crown (the queen) and in part the aristocratic House of Lords as the dignified part of the constitution. Although the boundaries are fairly fluid, the efficient part—in Bagehot’s interpretation—is predominantly embodied by the Lower House. The dignified leader of the state is the king/queen, the efficient leader is the prime minister. This is the apology of the English establishment in opposition to the American constitution . The precondition is that although the efficient part is modern and simple, the constitution must “contain likewise historical, complex , august, theatrical parts, which it has inherited from a long past.”2 Bagehot’s book used to be the manual of princes (the future George V had to read it, too), and even as late as the end of the last century it was put down that nothing had superseded Bagehot’s views on the monarchy according to the Royal Encyclopedia.3 1 Bagehot, W. The English Constitution (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company 1873, 2nd Edition), 44. My attention was directed at Bagehot’s distinction in connection with the Holy Crown by György Bence. “Barátsággal váltunk el” [We parted in friendship], Philosopher György Bence on Fidesz, the nature of the political parties and the crown. Népszabadság, January 15, 2000, 19. 2 Bagehot, The English Constitution, 47. 3 See Taylor, J. A. British Monarchy, English Church Establishment, and Civil Liberty (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996), 123. 86 Constitution for a Disunited Nation Notwithstanding the uniqueness of the English constitution it is convincing that every constitution must have a dignified foundation that can be accepted by the people. A constitution is the embodiment of the people’s agreement. To quote the title of a constitution of 1647– 49: Agreement of the People. But what is dignity? We must agree with Bagehot that it is more than a mere trinket or symbolic ornament hung on the constitution. In my view, it may stem from two independent sources. One is a long past or antiquity that issues from the stories of foundation and continuity of a historical nation, the other is the agreement of the people, a broad-scale consensus. Thus, the dignified part is divided into a past and a present component. (If not antiquity, durability does have a role in efficiency, as it creates calculable conditions.) The founder of modern political conservatism Edmund Burke explained the significance of antiquity by claiming that a state is a partnership : “As the end of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”4 This organic view of the joint undertaking of many—past, present and future—generations is modern insomuch that the prerogatives of the past (“of the dead”) are not based on unalterable , a-historical and obligatory dogmas but on far weaker, more incidental and historical traditions. The past, present and future are no longer encompassed by a single common historical horizon.5 Obviously, even this interpretation of the past can be the basis for conflict, as Tom Paine’s famous response to this conception proves: “Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.”6 The hidden conflict, however, need not necessarily emerge sharply between right-wing and left-wing, regressive and progressive models. 4 Burke, E. Reflections on the French Revolution (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1951 [1910]), 93. 5 See Koselleck, R. “A kora újkor elmúlt jövője” [The past future of the early modern age] in Koselleck, Elmúlt jövő. A történeti idők szemantikája [The past future. A semantic of historical times] (Budapest: Atlantisz, 2003), 18. 6 Paine, T. “Rights...