The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
Recently I wrote a short essay entitled If America Had Lost the American Revolution. I want now to enlarge on the theme of the American Revolution by asking another question: Do unstable leaders lead to instability?
The answer to that question would appear to be and unqualified Yes. Unstable leaders inevitably lead to at least some measure of instability. If a person in power is erratic or totally unpredictable or certifiably daft (to use an excellent Scottish word), is it to be expected that instability shall result from that leader’s leadership, or lack thereof. There may be exceptions to this supposition, but historically I suspect not too many.
In this essay I want to concentrate particularly on the man who was the head of state in Great Britain at the time of America’s Revolution, King George III. During and after the colonial rebellion, there was no one more pilloried on both sides of the Atlantic than George. He was blamed in Britain for having lost the war and in America for having caused the war. As decades passed after George had passed, some biographers become more favorably disposed toward the much-maligned monarch. No one was more complimentary to George III than John Brooke, an English historian who published a lengthy biography in 1972.
A few years ago there was what is now called a biopic entitled The Madness of King George. The movie focuses on a period of a much-debated length when the king suffered from what twentieth-century medical experts speculate was a rare condition known as porphyria. It is a disease of the body’s cells which can lead to behavior that appears to be madness, but which John Brooke insists is technically not insanity. Furthermore, says he, he was afflicted with porphyria for only two or possibly three short periods in his life, the first coming in 1765. Other scholars declare that his illness lasted for a much longer time.
Whether or not George III was ever mad, he certainly was obstinate and inflexible. Brooke sees him as an able monarch, and generally believes that he did a creditable job at a difficult period of British history, which included not only the American Revolution, but also the Seven Years’ War, the one Americans call the French and Indian War.
My purpose here is not to debate whether George managed his monarchy well or poorly. Rather it is to suggest that generally he did not follow the wise advice of two of the eighteenth century giants in Parliament, Edmund Burke and William Pitt. Both counseled much more lenient policies toward the American colonies than the king was willing to embrace. American historians of the Revolution tend to agree that the British king was far too doctrinaire and erratic in his treatment of the colonists, and that his very rigidity led to the Revolution instead of averting it.
Was George more mad than Brooke thinks, or was he simply hardheaded and unbending? Whatever may have been the factors which explain his governance, his decisions certainly seems to have hastened the revolt, and his dictates during the war made matters worse. His unstable leadership style resulted in political and military instability which ultimately issued in the establishment of the United States of America. Had he not been the king, there might never have been a revolution.
History is strewn with instances of unstable leaders who cause great havoc to the nations or governments they attempt to lead. Instability is virtually unavoidable under such conditions.
Those who have eyes to see, let them see. - July 30, 2020
John Miller is Pastor of The Chapel Without Walls on Hilton Head Island, SC. More of his writings may be viewed at www.chapelwithoutwalls.org.