THE DEATH OF THE GREAT QUEEN. T HE death of the
Queen has given a shock to the English-speaking peoples, a shock as of some im- mense and painful surprise, which is not due entirely to their affection for the dead, deep and true though that affection has undoubtedly been. No one is safe at eighty- two—and the age of the Queen was latterly one of her many claims upon the general regard—yet every one feels, now that she has passed away, a distinct and an unexpected diminution in their faith in the stability of things. That impression, a most rare one, and almost as honourable to a Monarch as his subjects' love, was not due only to the length of the Queen's reign, her freedom from illness, or the success which seemed always to have attended the enterprises she approved, but to a peculiarity in her character best described, though inadequately described, as stability. The daughter of a couple without excep- tional character or capacity ; called to the Throne, even then a great Throne, far too early ; devoted to a husband whom her subjects never fully appreciated ; haunted, as it were, through life by great events, great changes, great discoveries, so that the Western world of her old age bore scarcely a resemblance to the world she knew as a girl, the Queen had the faculty through life of inspiring trust not only in those around her, but in the millions to whom she was only a grand but distant figure. She had during her long reign Ministers of the most varied character, men as different as Melbourne and Peel, Beaconsfield and Glad- stone, and some of them she must have cordially disliked, but no Minister ever suspected her of betraying him, or intriguing against him, or doing anything that would contribute to his downfall. For forty years at least her subjects have never seriously thought of the possibility of the Queen making a blunder, or neglecting a duty, or failing to say precisely what it was wise or expedient should be said. If the Queen appeared at all, men expected that she would be adequate to the occasion, always the worthy bearer of the standard, the steady though motionless pivot of the State. This adequacy extended far beyond political life. Queen Victoria was not a woman of genius, and possessed little personal beauty, yet by the unanimous consent of all who closely approached her she was the most dignified woman in Europe, so dignified that many really great persons never lost in her presence a faint feeling of awe. It never occurred to the most censorious or the most hostile that England could be better represented than by the lady whose pedigree stretched back in an unbroken line to Cerdic the Jarl, who even when he landed nearly fourteen hundred years ago ruled his followers by some right of birth. Under the influence of her steadfast character hostility to the Throne faded away, so that no Republican party ever formed itself, and that the Anti- Monarchical party, which had always existed since Queen Anne's time, and had been perceptible every day at once in the streets and among the great Whig families, died silently out. This was the more remarkable because the Queen was not in her own judgment the mere figurehead so often described. She had a high idea of her own place, not only in the world at large, but in the political world of Britain, believed herself " respon- sible " in the last resort, and would occasionally hold her own as Sovereign with considerable vigour, and usually with success. Her counsel, freely given, had often the effect of a command, and in at least three departments of the State, foreign politics, the organisation of the Army, and the control of the Church, Queen Victoria had always to be reckoned with. It is very difficult to go to war when the Sovereign insists on peace, not easy to keep up a separate army in India when the legal Commander-in- Chief refuses to sign " Indian " commissions, more than hard to promote a Bishop when the head of the Church has decided that he is not the right prelate for the greatest place. Queen Victoria was a considerable force in the State, and that in exerting her influence she never once offended her people is proof not only of her mar- vellous sense, but of the decision of successive Ministers, some of them great men, that that sense was more of an assistance than an embarrassment in their work. That the Queen was the most perfectly constitutional of Sovereigns is now an axiom, and a true one, but the perfection may have arisen in part from other causes than devotion to the system which her husband certainly did not entirely admire. A succession of female Sovereigns would probably be a failure—just imagine the regular "political great lady" on the throne—but it is true that good women in all grades prefer that their business should be administered for them by men they trust, and that they trust their agents with a completeness, an absence of suspicion and of desire to interfere to which men rarely attain. That the Queen felt no jealousy of her Ministers is explicable, for, as we have said, she never lost the serene conviction that they were her Ministers, and that the head of the State was herself ; but her power of reconciling herself to advisers so different must have arisen either from an unusual measure of justice in her own mind—which is a great quality, and not a very common one—or from a genuine conviction that even in a Monarchy the will of the people ought to be obeyed. Whatever the cause, Queen Victoria was able to reconcile as no Sovereign has yet done a profound conviction as to her own prerogative with unfaltering and unregretting obedience to constitutional law. That reconciliation, which set an example to the whole Monarchical world, was her first claim to the wonderful place which she will occupy in future histories of her State.
The causes which, as time rolled on, transmuted the rather tepid loyalty which the English have usually felt towards their " temperate " Kings into the deep affection felt throughout her Empire towards Queen Victoria are difficult to analyse. It is so hard to separate any Sovereign's personality from the events of his reign. Something of the glamour which is produced by con- tinuous and amazing success undoubtedly entered into the heartfelt worship which was ultimately paid to the Queen, and which rendered even the rumour of any slight to her a cause of political danger, the people simply hating the person or the nation suspected of the offence ; but there was something more for which even the virtues of the Queen do not account. Without the virtues there would have been no lave; but there was something besides the virtues, which were those of a million people, that drew the popular heart towards the Queen. It was, as we believe, first of all the conviction, the well-founded conviction, that the Queen really, and not conventionally, loved her people, understood them, was proud of them, sympathised in :their triumphs and misfortunes as a mother would in her sons, and was ready at any moment to postpone herself to what she believed to be their best interests. Now that the Sovereign can no longer be the War-Lord, this is the conviction which most quickly warms loyalty into flame, and this had passed into the minds of the entire people, was expressed by every Colonist of British blood, and was felt, dimly it may be, but often with wonderful results, even by the countless multitudes of dark men whom Providence had placed beneath her sceptre. There is a Ghoorka regiment which will die man by man before "the great Queen's present" falls into an enemy's hands ; and there has never been a moment in all this tedious war when a wave of the Queen's finger to the dark races of South Africa would not have terminated the existence as well as the independence of the Boers. The historian of the future will know much more than any of us do of the real influence of Queen Victoria. Let him record for one fact that when she died there was not a subject within Britain or the white Colonies who could recollect without a sob in his throat that he would never again sing or hear "God Save the Queen."
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