MONARCHY IN COMMISSION. L ORD BROUGHAM used to say that the
British Con- stitution would never be fairly tested until a man of genius had ascended the throne,—a calamity from which the House of Hanover has hitherto always preserved its people, and apparently always will. They have been living illustrations of the great truth that, for purposes of constant nutrition, home-made bread is better than the rarest and most expensive delicacies. The idea of the lively Chancellor probably was that a man of genius would not be content to play the retiring part of an English King, but would either master his Ministers by sheer ability, a contingency Mr. Bagehot also thought possible, or, by making some desperate effort to obtain power, would upset the lumbering constitutional coach altogether. Mr. St. Lee Strachey, in the vivacious brochure which he has just published, describing "How England Became a Republic," suggests that a King with a genius for politics, and perhaps a love affair with a subject, might, in his utter weariness of a life of luxury, ceremony, and political inaction made to seem almost immoral by his apparent responsibility, seek another solution of the problem. He might, if conscious of unusual powers and ordinary ambition, be determined to renounce the throne and enter Parliament, a resolution which, however, he would find impeded by all manner of difficulties, owing to the total absence alike of legal provision for the case, and of historic precedent for so unconstitutional an act. The imaginary Prince of the pamphlet is not prepared for revolutionary measures which might injure the country, and his Premier tells him that, sorry as he is for him, he must, while he is alive, continue to bear the burden of the Crown. The country is not prepared for any radical change of system :— "It is necessary," says the aged Premier, "that your personal feelings and ambitions should be sacrificed for the good of the country at large. I can see no possible way of setting you free. To let you resign, and to appoint the next heir, would be an im- mense difficulty. If you married and had children, we should have a family of Pretenders, and a thousand fools and enthusiasts would be for ever proclaiming their adherence to their real Sovereign.' To change our system of government, and to set up a Republic, would be still more objectionable. The notion of all the politicians and all the leader-writers in the three kingdoms engaged in the work of constitutional mongering is one from which every reason- able and every patriotic man must recoil in disgust. If a Republic were to be established the whole Constitution would go into the melting-pot, and we should have the evening papers discussing whether the legislative and administrative functions of Govern- ment ought or ought not to be divided. Your Majesty will, I feel sure, see that everything must be done to avoid such a catastrophe. Besides, even if the new Constitution were to be theoretically as good as the old, it would take us a hundred years and more to learn how to work it. As it is, we know exactly how each part is adjusted, supported, and compensated. Time has rubbed every angle away and reduced the friction to the irreducible minimum. We have, in fact, a mechanism of Government as perfect as human ingenuity can make it. To maintain this it is worth while to make a sacrifice of one member of the community."
The King, however, is not content, and after weeks of anxious cogitation, he at last discovers a constitutional "way out," in which his Premier, who is a man of sense and experience, is able to concur. He proposes to place the Throne, as the office of Lord High Admiral is always, and the Viceroyalty of Ireland is occasionally placed, "in Commission." Parliament assents, and the Commission, consisting of the Lord Chief Justice, the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Senior Admiral of the Fleet, the Senior Field-Marshal, and a member of the House of Brunswick, in future exercises, apparently with entire success, all the ceremonial and formal functions of the Monarchy,—that is, in fact, all the functions which, by the time the man of genius arrived, would be remaining to the Kingship. That is, of course, a half-jesting suggestion,—first, because its author is a rather strong Constitutionalist and. Monarchist ; and secondly, because the assumed difficulty of abdication does not in reality exist. No King of England, it is true, has ever abdicated, though the first two Georges were always threatening to do so; but, nevertheless, abdication is quite possible, and provided for by legal pre- cedent. A Sovereign of the United Kingdom has only to quit it, taking no Minister with him, and the constitutional machine stops. No law becomes valid and no commission can be granted without the Sovereign's signature, and Parliament to prevent anarchy would be compelled to follow the precedent set in the time of James II.,— namely, to declare that the King's departure beyond seas constituted an abdication, and that consequently, the throne being vacant, it could be refilled by Parliamentary decree. Nevertheless, though it is not serious, the brochure has a merit of its own which induces us to notice it in our political columns. It is, so far as we know, an absolutely original suggestion for a Constitution which would be neither Monarchical nor Republican, but midway between the two, which would, in fact, in the event of a failure of the dynasty or any similar contingency, leave the existing system at work without incurring the dangers inherent in the election either of President or Protector. It is at this moment at work in Servia, where the " Regents " occupy, until the King's majority, precisely the position of Mr. Strachey's "Commissioners of the Sovereignty," and it would seem to be, if Constitutional Monarchy is really the semi-divine thing which English- men used to suppose it, the most logical form which that method of government could assume. It keeps the Sovereignty, but renders it passive, yet without imposing upon the Sovereign a duty of self-effacement which, we agree with Lord Brougham, a King of genius or of fiery political convictions would probably be unable to endure. A Commission can always be inactive without shame, par- ticularly if it is heavily paid, as Mr. Strachey suggests, in order to perform that particular function, and can keep on existing comfortably long after it has become in all but seeming moribund. What would a country lose in adopting such a system, as it might do for a time if a King were too bad to bear, yet refused to abdicate or to sign the Act creating a Regency, while politicians dreaded or disliked the im- mensity of the changes involved in declaring a Republic ? Only one thing, as we conceive, the vitality of the State. "Practical men" are apt to deride the influence of ideas in politics ; but no State ever has lived, or can live—as we are now seeing in Brazil—without the universally diffused idea which we call loyalty. That loyalty is possible to a monarch, is the teaching of all history. That loyalty can be evoked by a dynasty, we see in the instance of Austria-Hungary, where nothing else gives the composite Empire its momentum, or, indeed, prevents it from separating into many highly antagonistic fractions. That loyalty to a Republic can be even intense, we all know from the history of America during the Lincoln Presidency, when a million of men gave their lives to preserve a Republic without a name or an adjective by which to describe her devoted and successful people. And millions of men have died, and may die again, out of loyalty to a purely abstract thought, the one embodied in the word "Islam," which means in practice the abstract right of Mahommedans to ascendency in any country in which Mahommedanism is the religion of the State. But loyalty to a Monarchy in Commission, and intended to remain in Commission, is very nearly inconceivable. There is nothing tangible enough, or dignified enough, or semi-sacred enough to be loyal to, and with the disappearance of the impulse would disappear the binding cement of empire. The Commission would attract no Monarchists, unless they were patiently reason- able and given to thinking, which no population of magnitude ever is, and would be to Republicans, and even to those worshippers of "the State" who exist under all forms of government, a standing offence and reason for vitriolic ridicule. The Council of Ten was obeyed, no doubt, for ages ; but then, the Council of Ten was not only representative of the abstract "Venice," but em- bodied in itself her full and intensely active power. Their "High Mightinesses " the Dutch Commissioners of the Sovereignty fought many a good battle ; but the people could not stand them long, and got rid of them for the great House, Royal in all but name, which, after reigning as Stadtholders for a century, finally took the Crown. The only instance of a genuine sovereignty theoretically as well as really exercised by a group, is that of the East India Company, and strangely successful as its career was, we doubt if it was ever reverenced as a sove- reignty apart from the British Monarchy ; its own army rose against it, and when it died, all its servants illuminated their houses. A State must have an idea in it of some sort to keep it from rottenness, and Mr. Strachey's jesting suggestion, original as it is, and applicable as it might be to a momentary emer- gency—though even then we should prefer, with the old Parliamentarians, to clothe Mr. Speaker Peel with semi- Royal attributes—would never keep a State alive through an historic period. The Monarchy in Commission would die of a general wish that it should be one thing or the other. Limited Monarchy does not flourish very well anywhere except in Britain, and it flourishes here because, though it is neither Monarchy nor Republic, it is something else towards which all Englishmen have learned, in a long course of historic development, to feel a sentiment which, whenever the State is in danger, is a hearty loyalty.
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