Like everybody else, I could hardly help seeing moments of the lying-in-state and burial of Elizabeth II. It was both grand and moving, a fitting envoi to a job well done.
And yet, I could not help thinking of the letter Gouverneur Morris, revolutionary and Constitution writer, sent to the Austrian emperor, asking that Lafayette be released from the prison in Olmutz (now Olomuc in the Czech Republic) where the Austrians were holding him: “Think, also, that forgiveness granted to others is the only unobjectionable title, of which we can avail ourselves before the King of Kings.”