LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE KING AND THE CONSTITUTION. [TO THE EDITOR OF TER "SPECTATOR:"] Sin,—I have to thank you for the obliging note in your current issue elicited by my request for information as to how you reconcile the King's alleged constitutional inability in any circumstances whatever to refuse his immediate sanction to any Bill passed by the House of Commons in three suc- cessive sessions, with his Coronation Oath. I note that the process is to read into the Oath a spirit altogether irreconcil- able with the letter, and I assume that in order to put yourself logically right you would advocate a drastic revision of its terms. Queen Victoria's sanction to the disestablishment of the Irish Church seems to me beside the point, because at that time the House of Lords was in full possession of its suspensory privilege. Subsequently the House of Lords, acting upon advice in which you, I believe, concurred, relaxed their hold upon that privilege, leaving nothing behind but the exercise of the Royal prerogative as an antidote to civil war. I observe that in another note upon the same subject you seek to establish a parallel between these times and those of Charles I., but there is this important distinction, that at the earlier period there was no constitutional machinery in existence whereby a monarch could appeal to the democracy against the tyranny of an irresponsible caucus.—I am, Sir, Moor Park, Rickmansworth.
EMMY.
[Here are the words, forming the first part of the Corona- tion Oath, on which Lord Ebury founds his argument :—
"Archbishop: Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the people of this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Dominions thereto belonging, according to the Statute. in Parliament agreed on, and the respective Laws and Customs of the same ? King: I solemnly promise so to do."
If these words do not mean that the King shall govern as a constitutional Sovereign—that is to say, as a Sovereign who abides faithfully by the decisions taken by Parliament and by the customs sanctioned by Parliamentary usage—we confess that they have no meaning for us at all. We cannot re-open the controversy of 1911, and we certainly do not admit that the interpretation of the functions of constitutional monarchy can be made to depend now upon an episode which was ended once and for all in that year. We may say briefly, however, that in our opinion the King acted then with unimpeachable discretion, and in the only way in which a constitutional Monarch could possibly have acted after the second election of 1910. The Lords were equally well advised in allowing the Parliament Bill to pass, for the only effect of resistance would have been a swamping creation of Peers. The Bill would have passed in any case, and the outcome of resistance would have been the destruction of the Peerage and pro- longed power for the Liberal Party into the bargain.
We may add here that we have found room for as many as possible of the criticisms of those who dissent in some degree or other from our view. These criticisms are ably presented, and it is just as well that their nature should be considered and understood before we arrive at goodness knows what dangerous situation under the auspices of the present Govern- nient. But we do not propose to encourage a further contro- versy on the constitutional functions of the King. To do so would be simply to defeat the object with which our original article was written—the object of preventing people from dragging the King's name into party politics.—En. Spectator.]
Previous page
