11 NOVEMBER 1871, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

SIR CHARLES DLLICE ON THE THRONE.

THE inopportuneness of Sir Charles Dilke's address to the people of Newcastle is not, we think, the principal objection to his speech, or indeed any objection at all. It may be all true, as the Times says, that he is not about to propose as a substantive motion that on the next vacancy the Throne be declared elective—though a motion of that kind is pretty sure to be made, should events over force on a Regency debate ;—but he is, nevertheless, in the right in boldly speaking out his mind on the broad question, at the certain risk of his seat and the possible cost of all his political career. The policy of obscurantism upon this subject, always very doubtful, has of late become decidedly inexpedient. A large majority of the British people are still, as we believe, convinced that government by King, Lords, and Commons is part of the natural order of things, are unable to conceive how any people not being Americans can exist under any other regime, and would regard a proposal to abolish Monarchy as they would a pro- posal to abolish winter or the ebb of the tide. But we believe it to be also true that a Republican sentiment has sprung up in England, that it has taken a strong hold of a section of the town populations, and that unless it is dealt with openly, reasonably, and we would add kindly, we may find ourselves all in a moment in presence of a terrible evil, an enthusiastic and uncontrollable demand made by a portion of the people for a revolutionary change which the majority are determined not to grant. The cry for Home Rule in Ireland is mischievous enough, but its effects are trifling compared with those which would follow the rise of an unsuccessful Republican party in Great Britain. All questions would instantly be swallowed up in that one, progress would stop, and the country would be hopelessly divided into two camps, one of which would resort, before long, to legal repression, and the other to illegal violence. Let us at least have the matter thought out and public opinion matured before the subject comes up in any substantive form, and this can be secured only by a full and free discussion, as of any other question of paramount poli- tical moment. We doubt, and doubt strongly, if that dis- cussion would end in a decision adverse to the existing regime, the English retaining still, as the Premier said, their sneak- ing kindness for the hereditary principle ; but that is a point which, except to the reigning family, is of comparatively minor importance. The point for the nation, as a whole, is that no such break- in its history, no such change in its fundamental institutions, no such terrific chasm in its political thoughts, should be made without the deliberate assent of a majority sufficient to overwhelm resistance, a majority led by great statesmen, and able to execute its will through con- stitutional forms.

It is not, therefore, as a Republican, but as an inju- dicious and unjust Republican that we condemn Sir Charles Dilke. What on earth is the sense, to say nothing of the decency, of commencing an agitation for a Republic by a personal attack on Queen Victoria for not being enough of a Monarch I—for that is what all these accusations about her economies really mean. It is quite open to anyone who approves of Monarchy as a political or social institution to regret that Her Majesty, by her persistent seclusion, impairs or destroys its charm, but it is not open to the Republican who holds that charm to be evil to attack the enchantress who resigns her weapon. When Sir Charles Dilke hints that Her Majesty exercises undue influence on public affairs, that she, in fact, controls the foreign policy of the country, that hers is a personal reign, he raises an important political ques- tion which it is entirely within his province to discuss, which, while the Prince Consort lived, was perpetually dis- cussed, and not without bitterness of feeling. When, again, he points to the preference conceded by constitutional etiquette to the Royal Family in all military affairs, he rebukes an evil which is, no doubt, inherent in Monarchy, and forms one of the reasons for distrusting its beneficial effect upon affairs. But when he denounces the Queen for saving money by arresting extravagant expenditure in her household, he is, from his own point of view, talk-

ing sheer vulgar nonsense. The ground of his whole idea is that the sustained stateliness usually visible in the exterior life of Royalty is useless or injurious to the national weal, yet he condemns the Sovereign in words which, if they are cor- rectly reported, exceed any usual licence of speech for

moderately retrenching that waste. Is it, then, better to waste, than save, better to buy frippery than heap up cash, better to- be a scatterall than a bourgeois ? But, says Sir Charles Dilke,. the money, if saved by economy, should be paid into the. Treasury. Why ? In order that future Sovereigns may be. actually forced into the wastefulness which is usually so attractive to them, and of which we may one day have our fill ? Sir Charles Mite in the same breath heaps ridicule on the. mediaeval establishments for hunting and cooking maintained by the Court—establishments for which the Throne is about as responsible as a war-ship is for her barnacles,—and declares. it a shame that they should be retrenched,—scolds the Speaker,. as it were, for giving and for not giving Parliamentary dinners.. The Queen has as much right to live as she likes as the Speaker has, and more, and to talk of Her Majesty's " malversations " is, in plain English, to talk discourteous rubbish in order to mislead an audience who do not know the facts. That the Queen's thrift injures Royalty in England is, we have no doubt, true ; the most wasteful people on earth regarding economy in high places as almost a disgrace, and all symbols. requiring to be seen ; but that it injures the people is quite false. It saves them from demands which, let Sir Charles Dilke kick as he likes, must be complied with while the Monarchy endures ; it accustoms them to dissociate political. position from personal splendour, the first condition of Repub- licanism ; and it puts a bridle, slight but still effective, on that mad debauchery of expenditure into which an extrava- gant Court would at this moment plunge the rich of this over- wealthy Empire. The total result of the economy is to foster Republican feeling, which is a good and not an evil, to relieve- the people of all demands from the Court not settled at the be- ginning of the reign, and to reduce the entire expenditure of the. Monarchy—the whole sum allowed for its dignity, its splendour,. and its waste—within the amount it would cost us to paya Sove- reign House of Commons on the American scale. The whole drift of Sir Charles Dilke's argument is to persuade the people that without the Court they would be less taxed, whereas it is as fact demonstrable by figures, a fact as clear as any proposition in statistics, that they would not at present save five shillings;. and would in the future lose, from the incurable preference, of creditors for old institutions over new. That is no, reason for preferring a monarchy, if it is morally injurious OE' politically weakening ; but it is a full and sufficient reason why educated men should not pander by preposterous statements to- the arithmetical incompetence of the English householder.

We confess we almost lack temper to write -upon this. matter. We have never concealed our belief that this country is, by the aspirations of its people, by their unbroken history,., and by their insular genius and manners, more fitted for an aristo- cratic Commonwealth than a Monarchy, that the divergence be- tween her instincts and her political circumstances isa permanent. source of weakness, that one day it may be imperative on our statesmen to modify our institutions, with the consent of the Sovereign and through the regular constitutional forms, in the, Republican sense, but we utterly despise the argument which seems for the moment so attractive to the masses of the North.. To break with the past in order to save twopence-halfpenny, to. terminate a regime of a thousand years because there are five table-dressers at Windsor, to risk a Revolution because a Queen claims control of her own allowances, all this seems to us little 'less mean, little less unstatesmanlike, little less, contemptible than the counter proposition from Birmingham. to keep the Throne, but dress it in cotton velvet. You cannot huckster for the welfare of a nation, or build a President's chair on slime. If we are to set up a Commonwealth, let it be because we believe that under a Common- wealth men are more free, careers more open, aspira- tions more lofty, capacities more unfettered, classes more united, the nation more alive to its responsibilities than under a monarchy, and not because through such a change, each citizen may save the price of a glass of beer. And we will add, if we are to have a monarchy, let us remember that the Throne symbolizes the country ; that in according it some measure of decent and unslavish reverence, we do but respect ourselves ; that firing mud at a flag is neither fair nor effective war. It does not improve the chances of a Republic in Eng- land to associate it in the mind of the monarch with a policy of insult, and in the mind of the people with the utterly false idea that in losing his loyalty an Englishman necessarily loses his refinement of feeling. If ever the Republic comes, the House of Brunswick will live among Os in peace, the first of

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citizens in the prepossessions of the people. There is no excuse whatever for rousing the people against the occupant of the

throne, for embittering a political movement by envenomed personalities, for calling up the strange hatred of our lower

classes for paying anybody outside the Dockyard. The position of an English Sovereign, mocked with the shadow of authority and accused of dictating policy, derided for not wast- ing her income and for demoralizing her people by expenditure, taunted on the hustings for the seclusion and in lecture-rooms for the splendour of her Court, unable to rule but loaded by the people with all the responsibilities of ruling, attacked like a President and fettered like a Constitutional Monarch, is not to-day so dignified or so happy a one that the only road to a Republic should be a Revolution. One would think, to road the language some of our Republicans employ, that the heir of Egbert had stolen her crown, and must be mobbed till she gave it back.