Amid many more apparently momentous events, very few people have
been aware that a small and very lonely but brave battle for
something at the core of Christian civilization has been fought
and lost by, of all people, a Grand Duke, in, of all places,
Luxembourg.
The Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg has lost executive veto power
on legislation for doing, quite legally, what a constitutional
ruler is apparently not supposed to do — exercise his conscience
on behalf of his people.
Grand Duke Henri refused to sign into law a bill legalizing
euthanasia and assisted suicide, which would allow doctors to
kill terminally people who asked repeatedly and had the consent
of two doctors and a “panel of experts.”
This follows the experience of neighboring Holland, where
voluntary euthanasia has rapidly expanded so that involuntary
euthanasia — i.e. murder — has been barely, if at all, punished
in cases where only the barest fig leaf of rationalization has
been offered and consent has been problematical at best. Victims
of the Dutch euthanasia laws have reputedly included children and
people suffering from transitory depression, as well as people
unable to communicate their wishes on the matter.
Luxembourg’s prime minister backed the bill even though his own
Christian Social People’s Party opposed it. It was passed with
the predictable support of the Greens (who all over the world
seem to have a rather favorable attitude to legalizing killing
people) and the Socialists, by 30 votes to 26.
As a result of the Grand Duke’s opposition, Article 34 of
Luxembourg’s constitution has been changed by the Parliament to
strip him of veto power. When Parliament votes on the third
reading of the euthanasia bill, the Grand Duke will be forced to
enact it. The price of obeying his conscience and religious faith
has been that he has been reduced to a pointless cipher.
Constitutional monarchs are not supposed to make waves or
intervene in politics, but this is a matter on convention and
prudence, rather than law. The English Constitutional commentator
Walter Bagehot claimed a Constitutional Monarch had three rights:
the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, and the right
to warn. Bagehot’s commentary, however, is not law, even in
Britain. It is rather a description of the way things have come
to work in Western constitutional monarchies. Actually,
constitutional monarchs and their representatives in different
countries have on occasion shown that they can be more than the
ventriloquist’s dummies of politicians.
In Spain in 1981 King Juan Carlos moved effectively to end an
attempted anti-democratic coup.
In Australia in 1975 the Queen’s representative, Governor-General
Sir John Kerr, used the undefined and unjusticiable “reserve
powers” to sack the shambolic and scandal-ridden Whitlam Labor
Government and call an election. Although Sir John Kerr’s action
was controversial, it has never been seriously held by
constitutional experts that he acted illegally. There is no
reason for supposing that the British monarch does not have
similar reserve powers to intervene as a last resort in Britain
(the powers are unjusticiable and cannot be defined or limited by
a court because the circumstances in which they might be used
cannot be foreseen), but this has perhaps been felt too delicate
a matter to explore much.
In Italy in 1943 the constitutional monarch King Victor Emmanuel
finally sacked Mussolini, but had left it too late to save
himself or his throne — he had rubber-stamped Mussolini’s crimes
for too long when the going was good, including failing to
protect his Jewish subjects from Mussolini’s Nazi-aping
anti-Semitism. In Denmark, on the other hand, King Christian X is
widely credited with having inspired resistance to Nazi
anti-Semitism during World War II, despite Denmark being occupied
by a German Army.
Bagehot argued that the great benefit of a monarchial system is
that it makes the ideals as well as the workings of government
widely obvious. A monarch without virtue, moral strength and the
courage of convictions and conscience, or — which perhaps comes
to the same thing — the ability to exercise them, undermines the
system and institution.
It would seem, as journalist
Michael Cook has pointed out, that Grand Duke Henri believed
that he could not decline personal responsibility for allowing
fellow citizens to be killed, no matter how much political
pressure was applied. Cook added: “But even a Grand Duke is a
man, not a machine. Had he signed the euthanasia bill, his
fellow-citizens could easily have thought euthanasia is
consistent with democracy and human rights. But it is not.… It
cheapens human life and corrupts the medical profession. It has
immense potential for abuse.”
The Grand Duke’s stand appears to have achieved nothing except to
have lost him and his heirs a constitutional prerogative and to
have reduced him to a mannequin. It may, of course have served as
an example of moral courage to inspire his country’s citizens,
but we will probably not know the political results for some
time.
Meanwhile, I am reminded of a Punch cartoon published in
the First World War, featuring Grand Duke Henri’s relative, the
King of the Belgians, in which, after German forces have
conquered Belgium, the Kaiser tells him: “You’ve lost
everything.”
The king replies: “Not my soul.”
