PRINCE LEOPOLD'S SPEECH.
PRINCE LEOPOLD'S remarkable speech at the Mansion House on Wednesday, ought to suggest some new idea to the fertile brain of the Prime Minister. In pursuing that notion of his youth, that fresh links ought to be formed between " the Monarch and the Multitude," he has undoubtedly struck into some very dangerous tracks, and tried to introduce a Brummagem Imperialism into Eng- land, just after a similar counterfeit in France had been ignominiously rejected by the good-sense and good-feeling of the French people. But there are other tracks into which he might pursue his old idea which are by no means either dangerous or misleading. No reasonable man can doubt that for nations which still find one of the greatest secrets of their union and strength in the hereditary monarchy, the here- ditary monarchy is a manifest blessing. One of the chief difficulties of national life is the difficulty of holding a nation together, of making it conscious of having in common the same objects of hope and fear, of joy and sorrow, of humiliation and pride. So long as the Throne contri- butes, as it does so materially in England, to the pro- motion of this feeling, it is a rich source of national strength, and even of national happiness. And nothing will make this feel- ing more vivid and effectual, than the ready utilising of the various members of the Royal Family for such public and national services as they may be capable of discharging well. Every public service so discharged by a Prince or Princess of the Blood, strengthens the sense of unity in the nation, by giving new definiteness and a new sphere to that too often blind and almost physical attachment which is all that the Royal Family has, at some periods of our history, inspired. Since the accession of the House of Hanover, there has been wonderfully little to excite the national pride among the outlying members of the Royal Family, while there has from time to time been a good deal of direct dissatisfaction with those who were in the succession to the Throne. Even in the last generation, the brothers of the King were distinctly clumsy persons, who, when entrusted, as some of them were, with military or naval responsibilities, were far oftener found to need skilful apology, than to excite national enthusiasm. But in the present generation the outlook is distinctly better. At least one of the Princesses has elicited a very warm feeling of affection in the nation, while another may perhaps aid her husband to strengthen the bonds of our Colonial Empire.
And now we have Prince Leopold showing many of the best qualities of a real orator, and that, too, in relation to a subject like Education, on which it is extremely difficult to speak with any verve or viva- city. His panegyric on Professor Ruskin, and especially on his teaching, " that the greatness of a nation must be measured not by her wealth, or her apparent power, but by the degree in which all her people have learned to gather from the world of books, of art, of nature, a pure and an ennobling joy ;" his fine and true remark that in providing teachers who are so far wasted that they know a great deal more than they will, for a long time to come, have any chance of teaching, we shall yet be great gainers, because " what they do teach will be better taught for the reserve of knowledge behind,—the methods will be sounder, the personal influence of the lecturer will be more slim ating to his class ;" and lastly, his admirable apprecia- on b h of the difficulty of getting up local enthusiasm in huge a capital as London, and nevertheless of the power a pride inherent in the Londoner's sense that he is the -citizen " of no mean city,"—all showed Prince Leopold to be capable of genuine efforts of oratory, such as would place him high even among the public speakers of the day. Surely such a Prime Minister as Lord Beaconsfield, with an imagination so fertile in resource, especially when it is fired by his genuine worship of Royalty, might find in the discovery of this new vein of power in the Royal Family a means of cement- ing afresh the ties between "the Monarch and the Multitude," to which not even the most thorough-going Radical would object, and which all men who understand the vast social value to England of a popular Royal Family would heartily applaud. If Royal blood can only be allied with distinguished moral and intellectual qualities, such as those of which Prince Leopold seems to give evidence, no one will grudge the great additional influence which the alliance would gain for these qualities, while many would exult in the new popularity which it would lend a deservedly popular Throne, and, therefore, in the new vitality it would give to the strength and unity of the English nation.
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