By Charles A. Coulombe
Most people asked the title question to-day would doubtless contemptuously answer “no!” Some few – very few in these United States – might answer in the affirmative. But how well do either really understand what they are denying or assenting to? Just what is a Monarchy? For that matter, what is a republic? Just as our Federal Union, Hitler’s Germany, and North Korea are all called republics, so too are Austria-Hungary, Canada, and Imperial China called Monarchies. But in both cases, what a world of difference! About the only thing you can say that most Monarchies shall have in common is the hereditary principle in choosing the Sovereign – but that is not the case to-day with either the Holy See, the Sovereign Order of Malta, or the Co-Principality of Andorra; nor, for long stretches of history, was it true for either the Holy Roman Empire or the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Continue reading
