THE MARQUIS OF LORNE'S APPOINTMENT. T HE appointment of the Marquis
of Lorne to be Governor- General of Canada is a step which does credit to all concerned in it, and is indeed an appointment of a kind which has frequently been recommended in these columns. It is nothing new to find the Queen's children ready to spend time and labour in the service of the State, but to leave England for some years involves many sacrifices to any one no matter how pleasant may be the conditions under which the term of absence is to be passed, and the Princess Louise will not be less likely than those placed in a lower station to feel the change. To her husband, the main disadvantage of the post will be the subordination in which he will inevitably stand towards his wife. The Canadians are enthusiastically loyal, but this very quality will tend in this particular instance to make them indifferent to the Governor-General. By the side of the Queen's daughter, the Queen's representative will, in a sense, hold the second place. The social dignity of the one must overshadow the official dignity of the other. The Government deserves the praise which now-a-days should always be given to those who step outside the beaten track of safe appointments. The residence in Canada of a member of the Royal Family will be an experiment in Colonial administration,—an experiment which we are glad to see tried, which ought, we think, to be tried—but not the less an experiment. It is probable that it will have the best possible influence on the relations between the Dominion and the Mother-country, that it will draw closer the ties which already unite the two, and set an example of new ties, which may be extended with advantage to other parts of the Empire. But while it may do all this, or rather because it may do all this, it may also do the reverse. An extraordinary appeal to Canadian loyalty cannot leave the Canadians exactly as it found them. If the result is not to bind them to us more intimately, it can hardly fail to alienate them in some degree from us. And because the Government have had the courage to look this possibility, remote as it un- doubtedly is, well in the face, they deserve the praise of not having been content to let well alone, but of having recognised that courage is a virtue in administration as well as prudence. It is easy to forget this in times when criticism is abundant, and when the blame that follows failure comes much more surely and quickly than the commendation which follows success.
The main advantage to be looked for from this appoint- ment has already been indicated. It is in some respects a better thing that the Marquis of Lorne should succeed Lord Dufferin, than that a Prince of the Blood should have been sent out as Governor-General. A Viceroy must be subject to the Sovereign's advisers. He has a large field open to his discretion, but the boundaries of it are plainly though not narrowly marked out, and the Secretary of State must in the last resort be his chief. There is just a chance that if the Governor- General of Canada were himself a Royal personage, the re- lations between him and the Home Government might become strained. He would get on well enough with his own Minis- ters, because in form they are his servants. But the Ministers; of the Queen would be, even in form, his superiors, and this is not a light in which Princes are accustomed to regard the- politicians with whom they have been acquainted at home.. Yet in spite of this, the gain to be derived from the presence of one of the Queen's children in a colony is great and unmis- takable. It gives the colonists that visible object of loyalty which does so much to strengthen the sentiment. We know how this works in England. There are millions of our countrymen who are firmly convinced that the Queen is.
almost omnipotent, that the acts done in her name are really her acts, that the policy pursued in her name is really her policy. They have seen the Queen, or they know those who have seen her. In one way or another, she is a real and living personality to them. To educated Englishmen, loyalty has become a composite thing, made up in part of appreciation of the solid advantages of Constitutional Monarchy over other forms of government, and in part of respect for the Queen's personal virtues. But to the mass of the nation it is still a simple sense of reverence for the Sovereign, con- sidered neither as a system, nor as an individual, but as some- thing partaking of the characteristics of each. Supposing that the Queen were to choose to live abroad, and never again to. be seen by her subjects, all the essentials of Constitutional.- Monarchy would remain unchanged. But to a vast number of her subjects, the whole system would be unhinged. England would be a hive without its Queen, and there would be nearly as pervading a sense of bereavement as among a community of bees. In the Colonies loyalty has to subsist without these aids. The Sovereign must remain an abstraction, except to the.• few who have visited England. To have one of the Queen's children actually living amongst them will be an immense help and stimulus to loyalty. The appointment of the Marquis of Lorne secures this advantage with the smallest possible admixture of risk. For the visible strengthening of loyalty the presence of the Princess Louise in the Dominion will be as valuable as the presence of the Duke of Edinburgh or the Duke of Connaught. But the Princess Louise will only provide expression for the personal and ceremonial side of the sentiment. She will be the head of Canadian society, but not the head of the Canadian Administration. There will be no danger of the Viceroy not being duly subordinate to the Secretary of State, because the Viceroy will not be a Royal personage. There will be a possibility, hitherto unrealised, of drawing out the loyal feelings of the Canadians, because the Viceroy's wife will be a Royal personage. There are two possible drawbacks to this appointment which it will be well if all who are concerned in giving it effect will carefully bear in mind. The first is that the Marquis of Lorne will succeed a singularly popular Viceroy. Under any circumstances, the new Governor-General would have to contend against this disadvan- tage. It would be a quite unusual piece of good-fortune to find Lord Dufferin's equal in Lord Dufferin's successor. But the peculi- arity of the present case is that the expectations of the Canadians will be greatly excited, and that their liability to disappointment will be proportionate. Not much would, ordinarily speaking, be expected of Lord Dufferin's successor. The line taken about him would be, that two pieces of good-fortune are not to be looked for together. But in this case, popular expectation will be- excited to a very high degree. The new Governor-General is a husband of a Royal Princess, and his wife goes with him. Such a combination of facts will be quite sufficient to make Canadians look forward as to something altogether beyond the common run of Governors, and if they do not find anything beyond the common run of Governors, they will be propor- tionately angry. If the Marquis of Lorne fails, he will drag down the Princess Louise with him ; and the con- sciousness of this ought to be, and no doubt will be, the strongest possible motive for deserving, if not for command- ing success. It may not be superfluous to point out that success is won by different methods in different hands. His- connection with the Royal House will give the new Viceroy an immense advantage at starting, and it may be well not to risk this by too great activity of rule. The husband of & Princess can afford to sit still, where other men must be up- end doing. The other danger we have in view has its origin in the same circumstances. The new Governor-General, having to follow Lord Dufferin, and being properly desirous that bra Viceroyalty should not be less successful than his predecessor's, will naturally consider what is the special element in his own reign by which it can be best marked off from all others. He will not be in doubt for a moment on this point. The Viceroy- alty of the Marquis of Lorne will be the Viceroyalty of the husband of one of the Queen's daughters. It will be, of all modern English Viceroyalties, the representation most like the thing represented. Consequently the tendency of the new Governor-General will be to take much upon himself, and to take it in the right and in the person of the Prin- cess Louise. Done with judgment, this assumption may be a source of popularity, and therefore of strength. The presence close to office, if not in office, of one of the Royal Family being regarded as an honour by the Canadians, anything that gives prominence to it will be taken as increasing the honour. They will not wish to have a Princess in disguise in the Dominion. They will prefer that she should assume her proper state, and live among them in her degree as the Queen lives among her English people. But this very desire on their part has an element of risk in it. Nothing would so surely alienate the Canadians, and undo all that the appointment is designed to effect, as anything like the appearance of personal Government. Through her husband, an English Princess is about to be brought into contact for the first time with a far ruder democracy than any that is to be encoun- tered in England. Through her husband, she will have to apply the principles of Constitutional Government under far more trying conditions than any that the Queen has become acquainted with. Efforts are sure to be made by the party which is in a minority to enlist the name and influence of the Princess Louise on its side, and the Governor-General will have to be on his guard against a designing deference, which will not scruple to inflict a lasting injury on the prestige of the Crown in Canada, if by so doing it can serve a momentary purpose of its own.
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