MR. GEE'S DREAM. T HE fervour of the Celtic temperament has
seldom been more strikingly displayed than in Mr. Gee's imaginary correspondence with the Postmaster-General. The expected visit of the Queen to Wales had impressed him with a deep sense of the contrast between form and the substance. In name, the Queen is his Sovereign. In fact, she has no just title to his allegiance. She is something else than Queen of England and Empress of India ; she is the "head." of an alien Church. Mr. Gee's imagination refuses to dissociate the two ideas. The " head. " of the Church of England can be no Sovereign for him. Here comes in the poetry of the incident. A prosaic Englishman, if he had wished to make this conviction public, would. have done so in a letter to the Star or the Daily News. A Welshman feels instinctively that it will have a much finer effect if it is, so to say, torn from him. Officious disloyalty is not a pretty thing, but disloyalty which you would keep to your- self if you could, and only proclaim because you are not allowed to nurse it in silence, may be respectable, and even heroic. It was essential, therefore, that Mr. Gee should have an excuse for pouring forth his soul ; and a Welshman, like a Court of Equity, regards that as done which ought to be done. It was part of the necessity of the case that Mr. Gee should be asked by a correspondent to do something which his sensitive conscience would. not permit ; and from this to a belief in the real existence of Mr. Raikes's letter was but a step. As Mr. Gee pictures to himself the slavish alien clergy crowding round their " head," his poetic vision sees the opportunity the Welsh Nonconformists would have if they were asked to join in offering this humiliating homage. While he is thus musing, the fire kindles, and the letter he longs to receive takes shape before his eyes. He repeats it to himself till he dreams that he has actually read it. Yes, the insult has been offered, and a Minister of the Crown has sounded Mr. Gee as to the readiness of the Nonconformist denomi- nations to degrade themselves to the level of the Established hirelings. Now it is his turn to reply ; and in the name of the Nonconformist Churches, he refuses to welcome a Sovereign " while her servants are preparing the worst scourges they can invent to flog us withal, and prisons in which to punish us."
We shall say nothing of the humour shown in this burlesque description of the Tithe Rent-Charge Bill. Of whatever fun there is in exaggeration, Mr. Gee is evidently a master. In his hands, a County-Court summons becomes a scourge, and an order to pay by instalments a prison. It is not, however, with Mr. Gee the humorist, but with Mr. Gee the constitutional politician, that we wish to deal ; and in so doing, we believe we shall clear him of that reputation for disloyalty which his letter has gained him. When his attitude towards the Throne comes to be scrutinised, it turns out to be disloyal only in the sense in which the attitude of the Barons towards King John was disloyal. Mr. Gee has not yet got beyond the feudal idea. English history presents us with three distinct conceptions of the kingly office. In feudal times, the King could, and often did, do wrong ; and when he did wrong, he might be, and often was, punished for it. Under the Tudors and the first Stuarts, the King could do no wrong, because the fact that he did it made wrong right. Since 1688, the King can do no wrong because everything he does is the act of a Minister. Mr. Gee knows nothing of the last two stages. The modern theory of kingship—of the King that reigns but does not govern—has not so much as dawned upon him. The Queen's Ministers are the Queen's servants, and, like other servants, they do what their mistress bids them. It is by her orders that they are preparing " scourges " and " prisons " for Welsh Nonconformists. Probably Mr. Gee believes that the Queen has sent for Mr. Smith and said to him,—" I have invented the most disgracefully unjust and tyrannical measure that can be imagined,' and I com- mand you to carry it through Parliament." What to others is the act of the majority of the House of Commons and of the Cabinet which is charged with carrying out their views, seems to Mr. Gee the Act of the Queen herself. For him, the Sovereign still governs as well as reigns. His simple Celtic mind cannot take in the subtleties by which the divinity that doth hedge a King is now controlled and limited by the more prosaic divinity that hedges a Prime Minister. Lord Salisbury seems to him only an instrument,—a wicked instrument no doubt, as the instruments of wicked monarchs are wont to be ; but still, acting under the orders of some one more powerful, and therefore more wicked, than himself. Mr. Gee knows nothing of " Her Majesty's Opposition ;" he identifies the Queen with the oppressive and tyrannical Government under which Welshmen are for the present condemned to live, and in his inmost heart he probably expects that the next General Election will be the prelude to her abdication. Deprived of her instruments, the Queen would no longer have any power to work her wicked will. She would have only the choice of resigning herself to fate, or handing on the Crown to a Sovereign who would be content to work with those better Ministers whom the nation would find for him.
Regarded in this light, Mr. Gee's conduct becomes innocent, if not praiseworthy. If circumstances were only what he supposes them to be, he would rank with William Tell and other heroes of popular fancy. Do we not all admire the bold men who stood up against our early Kings ? We do not stop to apportion their exact meed of praise or blame ; we feel that a Norman or an Angevin monarch was so likely to be wrong, that the man who resisted him was in that same degree likely to be right. To Mr. Gee, the Queen is a Norman or an Angevin. He has evidently no notion that her political action is marked out for her by others ; that when she seems to be busy in scourging and imprisoning Noncon- formists, she is, in fact, only carrying out the wilt of the Ministers whom the nation has imposed upon her. Perhaps it is reserved for the Gee family to exemplify in their own persons the changes of opinion through which the nation at large has passed. The present Mr. Gee is the feudal Baron, prepared to dethrone his Sovereign if he cannot assert his rights in any milder way. Mr. Gee, junior—if such a being there be—may be the sycophant whose one idea of statesmanship will be to carry out his Sovereign's wishes. Mr. Gee, the grandson, will have come abreast of modern ideas, and may have learnt under a constitutional system to defeat Ministers. instead of bearding monarchs. Still, it would be well if the process could. be hastened. From this point of view, it is matter for rejoicing that something is going to be done for Welsh intermediate education. The condition of Mr. Gee's historical conscience is sufficient proof of the necessity for such a measure. However ready we may be to make excuses for Mr. Gee, on the plea that he is six centuries behind the age, it is inconvenient that he should thus lag in the rear. To hear the Chairman of a County Council and the editor of a newspaper treating the Queen as personally responsible for the measures introduced by her Ministers, is certainly a reason for applying something rather out of the common by way of cure. Why not insert a compulsory clause into the Welsh Intermediate- Education Bill for the special benefit of Mr. Gee ? A year devoted to the study of constitutional history would at least teach him that the Queen deserves neither praise nor blame for the acts of her Ministers. Considering, as we have said, how inconvenient it is that the Chairman of a County Council and the editor of a newspaper should be ignorant of this elementary fact, we should be prepared to see Mr. Gee's political education made free as well as compulsory.
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