TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE JUBILEE.
THE Jubilee ceremonial was a success. Great and unusual as the occasion was, long as had been the preparations, and restless as men's imaginations had become, there was, when the day had arrived and passed, no sense of failure or inadequacy. The grand procession, with its troops of Princes, including representatives of all the great Houses of Europe ; the scene in the Abbey, which might have called Macaulay from the dead to write a new description ; the outpouring of the mightiest city of the world to rejoice in the length of its Queen's reign ; the illumination which turned that city into a fairyland, or colossal opera-stage flashing with light and colour; the transcendently beautiful day, perfectly bright, yet cool through all its cloudless serenity ; the marvellous order of the millions who assembled, and who, by an instinct noticed on all hands, reserved their awe-inspiring roar of acclaim for the Sovereign alone,—all combined to content the general longing that an event which can occur only at historic intervals should have a celebration that history might worthily record. No such function, so grand in its entirety, so full of meaning in its details, has illustrated modern London, or has brought out so fully the unity of the people, or the completeness of their sense that the Sovereign is their representative, the living symbol of an entity to which each one has some close relation. It is the remotest of improbabilities that any one now living will see such a scene again, and to millions of the young it will serve during the remainder of their lives as a date, a great historic day during which all went right, and neither enemy, nor friend, nor fate marred the superb completeness of a ceremonial through which a Court and a nation endeavoured to display to them- selves, as well as to mankind, their consciousness of a common bond. Great Britain grouping itself in heartiest gratulation round its Queen on the longest and brightest day of the year,— that was the total impression of the 21st of June, 1887.
The scene in the Abbey, to all others a grand picture such as historians centuries hence may describe with no derogation of their dignity, or a great incident marking and breaking as with a pause the otherwise too unbroken rush of modern English affairs, must have roused in the Queen emotions of almost insufferable vividness and number. It was in the Abbey that she, a mere girl, though the heir of every family that has ever reigned in Britain, took up the burden of a sway which ever since, as if developed by some internal and self. derived force, has spread over more people, more territories, more sources of all that yields material prosperity. It is in the Abbey that, when her next visit is paid, she will be buried. She must have thought, as she sat, of the long series of statesmen and soldiers who have helped her to bear her burden, and to whom her success has been due—the "Past Masters," as Punch calls them—and who have departed, for the mostpart in silence, though unforgotten. And she mint have mused, if only for a moment, as certainly every thoughtful man around her did, on the great problem whether or no the Jubilee had closed an era, whether her reign would change its character, or would exhibit to its end that continuousness of prosperity and progress which has been its distinctive mark. We are sick of exulting in such things, and half-believe, as our fore- fathers did, in the ominousness of boastful gratulation ; but it is mere fact that the number of the Queen's own people has nearly doubled during her reign, that her subjects are more by at least seventy millions, that there is room for empires on the new lands which have fallen, as it were by gravitation, into her pos- session. On the mountains of wealth which have accrued to her people, wealth from trade, wealth from discovery, wealth from new subjugations of the forces of Nature—for the triumphs of steam and electricity are but incidents in the Queen's reign— it is, as we feel, unbecoming to dilate ; nor do we know that there is less of boastfulness in dwelling on the victories of thought and energy. But the continuousness of prosperity has been there, whether we boast in it or not ; and the Queen must have asked herself if it would never end, and probably have felt, as we all feel, a keen sense of misgiving, a sort of shudder at what may be hidden within the future time. Why should the British Empire advance for ever, any more than any one of the Empires which have risen, shone, and fallen ? Her power is already fearfully wide, too wide for her available means, though not for her potential resources ; her wealth has grown to proportions un- known in any age or on any continent ; her people are already showing marks of lassitude under a burden of power which allows of no rest from anxiety and thought. If the Queen were responsible in truth as she is in theory, she could never sleep for the echoes of daily triumph or calamity which the telegraph brings us from all earth. The hour of decadence of England must come at last, or history teaches nothing ; and why should it not come now, just when she publicly rejoices through a million throats in the long duration of her content?
It is a most natural thought, and yet, perhaps, its origin is instinctive timidity rather than reason, and the time of decadence, though it mast arrive, may yet be far away. The " Empire, " judged by history, is still young ; for it began with Plessey, and since Plessey only three ordinary generations have passed away. The evidence of history is of little value, for history records no such conditions as those which exist in Britain, no instance where a ruling popula- tion so vast and so energetic was at the same time so free. In all the Kingdoms that have been, the monopoly of action has belonged comparatively to few. We think little as historians of the circumstances which as politicians strike us so often as almost overwhelming ; of the difficulties which seem so great, but are so much smaller than those of old— compare the troubles of to-day with those of Elizabeth's reign, when the mightiest power of Europe was threatening invasion, and a third of the people were hostile to the dynasty ;—of the enemies who are dwarfs by those whom we have beaten—compare Parnell with Napoleon ;—of the com- petitors whose pressure, urgent as it appears, may pass away in a day. Of all external circumstances that affect Great Britain, perhaps the only one that history will care about is the rise of the United States to an equality, which may soon be a superiority, in the world ; but who knows whether that will make for our evil or our good ? The people of America are of our own blood, and what the Kingdom loses the race will gain. There is nothing whatever to alarm in all that is occurring, not even in the acuteness which has come to the chronic struggle with Ireland, if only the ultimate source of all British successes, the national character, remains unaffected. That is the question which really concerns us ; that, and not a fancy that because of a happy and perhaps too exultant day, a time of decadence will set in,— and on that nothing but the events of the future can throw any certain light. We all form opinions, and fancy we know ; but we know next to nothing. That the middle class has grown temporarily soft, and is bemusing itself with dreams of a world in which force shall be valueless, and compulsion be ended, and hardness be accounted evil irrespective of its reasons, is certain ; but the middle class is no longer the people, and no one can tell whether it is really changing its mind, or whether it only fancies itself changed under the influence of leaders who must pass away. The probabilities from analogy are all in favour of the permanence of nations) character ; and if ours remains unaffected, we are thirty millions of the breed who, when they were but twelve millions, set Europe successfully at defiance. Our children may find new paths, as our fathers found the old, and pursue them as energetically, so that the world, now half-wishing for the decay of England, and half-believing it has commenced, may be astounded to find that her history of success has even yet but begun. The Roman Empire endured unbroken four hundred years at least ; and Rome, in her strongest days, had never our resources or our skilL We may be at the commencement of a decline which, when it begins, will be swift ; but we may also be at the threshold of a long line of Sovereigns named "Edward," and find when it has ended that the Jubilee Day of 1887, as it ended one long era of success, so also it began another. There is little use in human forecasts, and least of all in those pessimist prophecies which spring in reality from a belief that as regards man, and especially as regards nations, Providence must always grudge.
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