President Biden has said he will not use his power to pardon his son Hunter if the latter is convicted in his gun trial.
This may be a purely hypothetical scenario in any case, given what appears to be the political-partisan capture of much of the US justice system. Hunter might be as likely to secure an acquittal in Delaware, which elected Biden père to the Senate and is the tenth most Democrat State in the Union, as Donald Trump seemed bound to be convicted in New York, the sixth ditto.
But why does the nation's Chief Executive have the power to pardon in the first place?
It is a monarchical prerogative, because the King's will is the law. Even today in Britain an Act of Parliament requires the royal assent. He who breaks the law offends the King, who may condemn or forgive as he chooses.
There was in fact a proposal to make George Washington a king. On 22 May 1782 Colonel Lewis Nicola wrote to him suggesting a monarch elected for life would give the Union the strong and stable government needed to face future challenges. Washington's immediate, appalled reaction put a stop to that. Yet when there was a rebellion against the initial attempt to raise Federal revenue (on whiskey) the first President under the new Constitution of 1789 pardoned (2 November 1795) two ringleaders of their treason, and the rest (3 March 1797) the day before he left office; a model for Mr Biden to consider with regard to the 'insurrectionists' of 6 January 2021.
Colonel Nicola laid his finger on the weakness of republics: 'A monarch may often be governed by wise & moderate councels, but it is hardly possible for large bodies to plan or execute vigorous ones.' They may sound good in principle, but tend not to last: even over the 1,500 year history of ancient Rome (753 BC - 756 AD) it was a republic for less than a third of that time. The drift back to autocracy is almost inevitable.
We also see that drift in the way that war-making has become almost the prerogative of the American leadership - against the constitutional safeguard of Congress.
Here in the UK it was His Majesty's Governments that declared war on Germany twice in the twentieth century, laying the foundations of a progressive financial, social and constitutional ruin whose final chapter we now face, accelerated by an incoming administration determined to push apart the pillars of the Temple of Dagon with the strength of its political abstractions and its systemic weakening of our society's structure.
We have suffered under Puritans before. Perhaps we have no choice but to endure and outlive tyranny, like the Russians.
Yet must America also become a house divided?
