1 A recent opinion poll showed that 74 per cent of Canadians feel that the monarchy is decreasing in importance, with 12 per cent thinking that it has remained about the same, and 3 per cent thinking that it has increased. The Canadian Institute of Public Opinion, The Gallup Report, January 3, 1981Google Scholar.

2 In 1977,59 per cent of Canadians felt that we should remain a monarchy while only 28 per cent felt that we should become a republic. The following year, 58 per cent said they wanted the Queen to remain as Head of Canada while only 30 per cent wanted the governor-general to take her place. The Gallup Report, November 5, 1977 and October 14, 1978Google Scholar.

3 Canada, Special Joint Committee of the Senate and of the House of Commons on the Constitution of Canada, Final Report (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1972), 29Google Scholar.

4 Canada, The Constitutional Amendment Bill, 1978, Explanatory Document (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1978), 26Google Scholar.

5 See Frank, MacKinnon, The Crown in Canada (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart and Glenbow-AIberta Institute, 1976)Google Scholar, and Monet, Jacques, The Canadian Crown (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, 1979)Google Scholar. The latter, which was published in cooperation with Rideau Hall and the Ministry of Supply and Services, appeared simultaneously in French as La Monarchie au Canada (Montreal: Le Cercle du livre de France, 1979)Google Scholar. Intended for the general public, it should be read in conjunction with two earlier pieces Monet wrote: “The Canadian Monarchy: ‘Everything that is Best and most Admired,’” in Carl, Berger and Ramsay, Cook (eds.), The West and the Nation: Essays in Honour of W. L. Morton (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976), 321–35;Google Scholar and “La Couronne du Canada,” Journal of Canadian Studies 11 (1976), 27–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Finally, interested readers may want to consult Mone's introduction to Jules Lége's Textes et reflexions surle Canada / A Selection of his Writings on Canada (Montréal: Editions La Presse, 1982Google Scholar).

6 See, for example, Forse's speech in the Senate where, as a member of the Joint Committee on the constitution, he expressed his dissenting views: Canada, Senate Debates, March 28, 1972, 264–71, and March 29, 1972, 278–86Google Scholar.

7 Walter, Bagehot, The English Constitution (London: Collins, Fontana Library, 1963). 61–62Google Scholar.

8 Immanuel, Kant, “Perpetual Peace,” On History (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), 95–97Google Scholar.

9 The clarification of the two terms which follows is largely based on Hannah Arendt, Crisis of the Republic (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovitch, 1972), 142–53Google Scholar.

10 Alexander Solzhenitsyn is agood example of a man with very little power and yet great authority.

11 See From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 295–300Google Scholar.

12 The various categories of instruments which issue under the Great Seal are regulated by the Public Officers Act and the Seals Act as stipulated in the Order of the Governor General in Council of September 29, 1966. Order-in-Council PC 1966–1887 of September 29, 1966 (the Formal Documents Regulations) is printed in the Canada Gazette, Part 2, Vol. 100, October 12, 1966, no. 19. Since the advent of responsible government, the seal is in the custody of one of the ministers of the Crown, whose counter-signature must be affixed.

13 In the same spirit, it should be noted that in Canada the oath of allegiance is not sworn to a constitution, a government, or a people. Instead, it is an oath of loyalty sworn to Her Majesty.

14 “Precautions must be taken to raise or lower [men] in controlled ways for their own protectio” (MacKinnon, The Crown in Canada, 39).

15 Ibid., 122 and following pages.

16 Concentrating on the efficient part of the constitution and finding that it was the cabinet that made it work, Bagehot could say“a Republic has insinuated itself beneath the folds of a Monarchy ”(Bagehot, The English Constitution, 94). A century and a quarter earlier Montesquieu had already referred to England as that country where“la république se cache sous la forme de la monarchic” (De I'esprit des lois, V, xix [Paris: Editions sociales, 1969], 82).

17 Bagehot, The English Constitution, 90.

18 Ibid., 121.

19 Monet, ”La Couronne du Canada,” 29.

20 Ibid., 29–30.

21 MacKinnon, The Crown in Canada, 153.

22 Monet, “La Couronne du Canada,” 28–29.

23 Ibid., 32.

24 This claim—that there is something unique, something specifically “Canadian” about the Crown in Canada, and that it is represented by a“corporate personality,” a 12-person college made up of the Queen, the governor-general and the lieutenant-governors who, according to Monet“are all equally valid expressions of the same monarchy and are all signs and symbols of the same concerns” (“The Canadian Monarchy,” 333)—has been challenged by Richard Toporoski in his review of Mone's book (“Canadian Crown or Queen of Canada?” Monarchy Canada 9 [March 1980], 8–10 and 16). Toporoski argues, and I think convincingly, that the two assumptions underlying this claim are invalid: first, the Monarch is not a representative of the Crown (I shall elaborate on this point later), nor, a fortiori is the governor-general; and second, the lieutenant-governors, not representing the Queen in theirown persons, cannot be treated on an equal footing with the governor-general.

25 Monet,“La Couronne du Canada,” 31.

26 Ibid., 29.

27 John, Farthing, Freedom Wears a Crown (Toronto: Kingswood House, 1957), 131Google Scholar.

28 Ibid., 118.

29 Ralph, Heintzman, “The Meaning of Monarchy, ” Journal of Canadian Studies 12 (1977), 116Google Scholar.

30 Ibid., 117. It is odd that both Farthing and Heintzman should cite Kant. While Kan's writings provide a clear and coherent basis for a civil constitution founded on liberty, they cannot be invoked to defend a civil constitution which is, like the Canadian or the British, founded on authority.

31 Monet,“La Couronne du Canada,” 30.

32 Ibid., 30–31.

33 See Brian, Barke'sThe Symbols of Sovereignty (Newton Abbot, Devon: Westbridge Books, 1979)Google Scholar. For an example of this traditional understanding of symbols in Canada, see Conrad, Swan, Canada: Symbols of Sovereignty (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977Google Scholar). The symbols he refers to are real objects used for a particular purpose, namely the arms and seals borne and used to express civil authority in and over Canada.

34 Toporoski, ”Canadian Crown or Queen of Canada’ 8.

35 Readers interested in how this fundamental change in our understanding of symbols took place are referred to Jacob, Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1968)Google Scholar.

36 A recent account of this traditional view of the monarchy is presented by Clifford Geertz in Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980)Google Scholar. In the conclusion to his study, Professor Geertz captures very well the position of a king in the order of nature:“The long, reiterating chain of exemplary display, linking ‘the Supreme Brahman embodied in the primeval sound’ to ‘the whole of the … country … helpless, bowed, stooping’, crossed at the king a critical juncture between what men could conceive and what, conceiving it, they could be” (130).