My Lords and Gentlemen,
I beg to move, That this Parliament has confidence in the Lord Archbishop of Bergen to serve as His Majesty's chief minister.
My Lords and Gentlemen,
While I find this choice of a successor befitting of the man who is the Lord Archbishop of Bergen, I am troubled by the concentration of power into the hands of a single man.
The Lord Archbishop, with this appointment, would be:
- Archbishop of Bergen
- Lord High Steward
- Justiciar
I understand the need for all of us to consider multiple duties, but this is tantamount to making him King.
God save the King
Actually, the Lord High Steward is a purely ceremonial role. The only thing the Lord High Steward does is say "oyez, oyez" at the State Opening of Parliament, really.
My Lords and Gentlemen,
The notion that His Grace becoming Justiciar is "tantamount to making him King" seems frankly ridiculous to me.
The office of Lord High Steward is a harmless and relatively powerless ceremonial office, especially since the day-to-day management of the Royal Household is in Mr. Marchmain's hands now. The only power he has in the current circumstances is issuing coats of arms and leading ceremonies in Parliament.
As Archbishop, His Grace has spiritual authority over the Church, but is reliant on the King for appointments, and on this Parliament for administrative matters. One could object based on separation of Church and State, but Our King is Supreme Governor of the Church, and we have already had an Archbishop of Bergen as Prime Minister without any spiritual-temporal problems coming up.
These two offices are high-ranking, but have very limited powers. Certainly they would not give him any more real power than any Justiciar will already wield.
My Lords and Gentlemen,
The Justiciar excellently makes my case by enumerating most of the weighty powers to be put into the hands of one most excellent man.
The only concept worthy of ridicule in this deliberation is that of the Justiciar which amounts to nothing more than "We've never had a problem before", which is precisely the sort of thinking that leads to problems.
There is no down side to the distribution of powers, however small they be, and only risk in concentration. The risk is not all in the form of abuse, but what of simple absence? Should the super minister proposed by the Justiciar be unavailable then the whole kingdom will suffer: the church, the Royal household and the government.
God save the King
My Lords and Gentlemen,
Since the Lord High Steward, as I said, no longer operates the Royal Household, I fail to see how it would suffer from his absence. As for the Church and the Government, there is such a thing as delegation: much as I intended to myself, His Grace would likely arrange things such that his role was that of a leader and spokesman, not a day-to-day administrator and policymaker.
In any case, concentration of powers is written into the constitution, is it not? Our King has more or less absolute executive power if he wants it, combined with very significant influence (and the veto of course) on the legislative process, and the Supreme Governorship of the Church. And yet if he takes a vacation, the Kingdom doesn't collapse. Why? Delegation. And the Justiciar will be doing the same thing.
God save Hanover!
My Lords and Gentlemen,
God save Hanover indeed, from even the potential of a tyrant.
God save the Archbishop as well, from the weight of such offices upon him alone.
The smokescreen of delegation is nothing more than asking the good people of Hanover to simply trust that the one who has all these powers does not become corrupted by them. Mind you, I believe that our Archbishop can, in fact, handle this, but it is unreasonable to ask him to do so and more unreasonable to establish the precedent of allowing such to come to pass.
The constitution does not, in fact, concentrate power, but it defined and divides it. But this too is a smokescreen as the resolution put forth does not pertain to the constitution but to an office with no such definitions or divisions.
For all the mental wrangling, the simple fact stands out that the risk is in concentration, not dilution, and thus far no reasoning to the contrary has been put forth.
God save the King
My Lords and Gentlemen,
The Archbishop has now resigned the office of Lord High Steward, in an attempt to reduce any risk of power concentration. His Grace would now have only one temporal office, and one spiritual. I hope he will not be asked to surrender the Archbishopric as well.
If the Noble Lord, the Duke, has a suggestion as to how we can better manage this transfer of power, I am all ears.
My Lords and Gentlemen,
I have reconsidered my position. This issue is too divisive, and such is my trust in the character of the Archbishop that I withdraw all opposition to it, and I hope His Majesty refuses his resignation.
God save the King
My Lords and Gentlemen:
I commend the Duke of Gottingen for his reconsideration of the matter as I am of the opinion that the Archbishop's resignation from the office of Steward is entirely unnecessary. But I must ask, will 'Super Minister' don a red cape and blue spandex when joining us?