Bilder on Hater of Kings: Catharine Macaulay's Constitutional Regicide and the Declaration of Independence

Mary Sarah Bilder, Boston College Law School, has published Hater of Kings: Catharine Macaulay’s Constitutional Regicide and the Declaration of Independence as Boston College Law School Legal Studies Research Paper No. 654.

The American Revolution was a constitutional regicide. At first glance it does not much resemble a regicide. Charles I had been executed in 1649. George III went on to live nearly half a century beyond 1776. But read the Declaration of Independence carefully and notice how large the king looms. The “present King of Great Britain” aimed to establish “an absolute Tyranny.” The eighteen usurpations each began with He, the king. The king embodied two particular political typologies: Prince and Tyrant. As such, he was “unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” This constitutional justification for regicide had been developed by British historian Catharine Macaulay in the fourth volume of her History of England. Macaulay’s history from James I to the execution of Charles I provided a historical model, theoretical explanation, and blueprint for would-be patriots. Because of Macaulay, on the far side of the Atlantic, American revolutionaries renounced their allegiance to the king–and to any king–without the complications and consequences of executing one.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Coffee on Catharine Macaulay and Edmund Burke @KCL_Law @OxUniPress

Alan Coffee, King's College London, The Dickson Poon School of Law, is publishing Catharine Macaulay and Edmund Burke in Reconsidering Political Thinkers (Manjeet Ramgotra and Simon Choat, eds., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023). Here is the abstract.

This chapter examines the rival and contrasting political philosophies of Catharine Macaulay and Edmund Burke. The two were almost exact contemporaries in the eighteenth centuries and clashed on their understandings of the fundamental nature of political society and the correct the approach to take on reform. Macaulay and Burke were opposites in many ways. As a woman, Macaulay was a political outsider while Burke was a successful politician. Macaulay was a radical and revolutionary republican who based her ideas on a few clear, immutable philosophical truths, while Burke was a cautious and conservative thinker who valued stability and continuity, appealing to tradition rather than speculative principle. In the first section, I introduce Macaulay’s philosophy based around the core ideal of freedom as independence from arbitrary control. In the second, I present Burke’s contrasting organic, contextual and pragmatic approach. Finally, I consider some of the weaknesses in each philosopher’s work, particularly from the perspective of securing the equal citizenship rights of women and the members of minority social groups.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.