LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. The most suitable length is that of one of our " News of the Week " paragraphs. Signed letters are given a preference over those bearing a pseudonym, and the latter must be accompanied by the name and address of the author, which will be treated as confidential.—Ed. THE SPECTATOR]
EIRE AND THE KING
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—In the House of Commons debate upon the Irish Agreement, only one member—judging from Press sum- maries—appears to have mentioned a point transcending all others in importance. Mr. Somerset, Member for North Belfast, said that " in other agreements reference was made to ' His Majesty's Government.' I wonder if there is any reason why this has been left out of this agreement."
That is a little cryptically put. The facts are that in the preamble of the Agreement the contracting parties are named as the " Government of Eire " and the " Government of the United Kingdom," and these designations are used throughout the Agreement. Whatever advantages, financial or military, are gained by the Agreement—and there is no occasion to dispute these advantages—they are as nothing in comparison with the disaster, I submit, to the Constitution involved in the use of these same designations.
I have no more than a layman's knowledge in such matters, but it appears to me that the absence of the legal title " His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom " in the Agreement, and the replacement of it by the title " The Government of the United Kingdom," if maintained in any sanctioning Bill, would alter our whole Constitution and in particular would destroy the prerogatives of the King. This would be no accident. It has long been the aim of Mr. de Valera.
I do not mean that the Irish Premier has any ill-will towards the King. I believe he has none at all, nor any ill-will towards this country, provided this country gives him a settlement upon his own terms. But his plans for the future association of Great Britain and Ireland, since the days of " Document No. 2," have always been upon a basis which incidentally meant changing the character of the Kingdom of Great Britain. What Mr. de Valera has done and wishes to do in Ireland is a small matter in comparison with the change he desires to effect, for his own needs, in Great Britain. This change is to displace the King from his position as the fount of authority, and make the mere British Government the fount.
He desires a Commonwealth in which the several nations— Great Britain, Australia, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and eventually a unified Ireland—shall take part. But all these Governments will be self-authorised, not drawing their authority from the King. The King would simply become a sort of chairman, chosen to preside over their meetings, and having authority from them to countersign the documents drawn up by the Commonwealth in Council. Into such a congeries the Irish Republic which Mr. de Valera has in view could enter. His position is that he is quite prepared, and indeed anxious, to destroy the Kingdom of Great Britain, not from any special animus towards it, but becauk it is necessary to destroy it in order to create a form of " associa- tion " in which his Ireland can take part.
It is scarcely necessary to observe that the two essential supports of the British Constitution are (/) that the King only acts on the advice of his Ministers, and (2) that his Ministers tender no more than advice to him. The second is as valuable as the first. Monarchical autocracy is checked by the first. Governmental autocracy is checked by the second. The latent insurance in the King's prerogatives preserves us, in the final event, from any possible dominion of bureaucracy.
I am sorry to have to think so, and I should be delighted to find that I were wrong, but it does appear to me that the Government now has abandoned the Monarchy for the relative egg-cupful of pottage gained by the Irish Agreement. What occurred was, I think, this. When it came to drawing up the Agreement the Government was faced with a dilemma, because, without doubt, Mr. de Valera would not have signed it if in it the proper designation of his own Government, " His Majesty's Government in Eire," had been used. Despite the nomination of Mr. Douglas Hyde as " President of Eire " there is no such thing as an Irish Republic. But Mr. de Valera's policy has been to ignore this and to go on, as it were, accumulating the furniture of a Republic though there is no house to put it in. Mr. Douglas Hyde is in a situation analogous to the drawing- room suite, but there is no drawing-room, and he is appropriately parked in the green spaces of the Phoenix enclosure.
But that Eire is still a kingdom Mr. de Valera would not acknowledge, though he cannot deny it. He would not sign a document acknowledging its true status, and so the British Government, His Majesty's Government, was faced with a dilemma. How were the contracting parties to designate themselves ? Whether or no it was Mr. de Valera's sepentine suggestion that the difficulty could be avoided by neither Government " dragging in " the King, I cannot say. But I should imagine it was, as the supposed waiving of the question of title did not mean waiving it at all, but the immediate imposi- tion upon Great Britain of his own policy of dethronement. Deprive the King of the rights of kingship, just once fail to cite him as the fount of authority, and you dethrone him. Is it possible that the Government did not understand what it was doing by giving Mr. de Valera his way in this ?
However, so far at least, he seems to have had his way, and in a document of official character His Majesty's Government has described itself as the Government of the United Kingdom, as though it were an entity independent of the King, and could act without his authority. This surely, to say no more about it, is illegal, and any statute drawn up in such terms would not stand. If a Bill were to be passed confirming the Agree- ment in its present terms and were to receive the Royal assent, this would be equivalent to forcing upon His Majesty an act • of abdication of the powers he has drawn from generations of his predecessors and would be the end of this ancient Kingdom.—I am, dear Sir, faithfully yours,
Easthayes,' Cullompton, Devon. J. M. N. JEFFRIES.
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