Cambridge Baby Number Three

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Surely my truckbuddies have already heard the lovely news that yesterday, being by happy auspices St. George's Day, the Duchess of Cambridge was delivered of a prince around lunchtime in London, and before the day was out the Duke was driving mother and baby home, a merry smile on his face, such as you might expect to see on that of any proud papa.  As is the royal custom in such matters, the baby's name will be announced at a later date.




Yes, it is rather a lot of fuss to be made over an anonymous baby, identical in all essential respects to every other baby in the world, who may or may not ever do anything remarkable. And there are those who will question the fairness and rightness of showering so much attention and status upon any baby, or any family, born to wealth and privilege. However, as I am not running a course in political philosophy here, I feel no need to delve for a reply to that inquiry.

I will merely ask, whether things that are not, strictly speaking, needful in the scheme of things may yet be deemed useful and good. One has only to turn one's gaze from this happy scene beyond the sea to the ugly, sordid, vicious, loathsome orgy of political maneuvering and recrimination on our own shores to be reminded that a republic is not necessarily a garden of sober patriotism and civic virtue. And who will assert that the American system - or any system but an imaginary one - is devoid of undeserved fame or entitled wealth and privilege, sometimes nefariously misused and perverted for utterly selfish ends, or damnable purposes? In England, at least, the wealth and privilege of a crown comes only at the heavy price of lifelong duty, diligence, and impartial conduct in every public word and deed.

I ask you, whether monarchist or no, is it not refreshing to look at the simple happiness of a young, wholesome, thoroughly unpolitical couple with their newborn child, the "brilliant edition of a universal fact," as Bagehot put it, and then to feel that perhaps there is yet some hope left for sanity and decency in this rotten old world?

But there, with all good wishes to little No-name and his family, I must leave you to draw your own conclusions.