THE AMBITION OF PRINCES. •
WE should not wonder if the Abdication of Amadeo turned out a great blow to the cause of Monarchy. It is cer- tainly a great blow to the House of Savoy. That House has been greatly indebted throughout its history to an idea of its unusual qualities in the way of pluck and persistency ; to the notion that with all their faults the members of the family could be trusted to remain in front, to sit still on their thrones and to put down opposition. There is no doubt, of course, of King Amadeo's courage ; but he certainly has not shown persistency, and the reputation of his House as a sort of reservoir of pos- sible Kings will be proportionately weakened. So we con- ceive will be the general cause of monarchy. The strength of that cause is the belief still existent, though greatly impaired in strength, that the relation between King and people is in some sense self-dependent ; that he is a little more than a Chief Magistrate ; that his right to transfer his people to other rulers, and theirs to dismiss him while he performs his duties, are not self-evident facts. Granting the contract between him and them, it is one which, like marriage, ought to have in it an element of perpetuity, and is lowered by being reduced to a temporary arrangement. That a Prince can take to a throne as a pleasant occupation, continue in it for two years, and then abandon it as, on the whole, an uncom- fortable business, is a great shock to the semi-sacredness of the monarchical idea. It is true the same shock was given by Leopold of Belgium, but it was not given in the same way. When he appealed to his people in 1848 he was menaced, as he thought and observers thought, by a formidable insurrection, and ba stating hie perfect willingness to depart if his people wished it, he was appealing to something as sacred as his own right, the ultimate consent of the governed. He succeeded too, and died reigning, but Amadeo, who made no such appeal, has not suc- ceeded, but has gone away in, to put the best face on it, a majestic and royal huff. The presumption of the circumstances, therefore, is that a monarchy may be temporary, that the next monarch may go away ; that reigning is an employment subject to dismissal, not an employment conveying a freehold ; that a throne is only a post tenable during success, and rather below than above a first-class judgeship. That will not exalt the function of reigning, and will greatly increase the visible utility of Presidents, who are abler men than Kings, and if Kings are to come and go, can do all that Kings can do very much better.
These considerations do not, however, seem to have much weight with Princes, to judge by the scurry of the Bourbons towards the Spanish Throne. They are all after it, and foremost in the race is the Duke de Montpensier, a man who has already missed his opportunity once. What is his probable motive for a pursuit in many ways out of keeping with his character ? We can understand Don Carlos, who, like the Comte de Chambord, says the throne is his by the gift of God and hereditary right, and that he can no more give it up than it can give him up, and who in claiming it is only doing his duty, as he believes, towards him- self and his country. He is, in his own theory of the position, King of the Spains already, and not contending for the Crown, but for the right to perform duties appertaining to his already ex- isting rank. He Would be wanting to himself and his responsibi- lities if he did not contend. Of course, in reality, much lower motives help to influence his action, but his theory is at all events consistent, and not without nobility. We can even understand the pretension of the Comte de Paris as heir of a system which he holds to be essential to France, and to be bound up with the house of Orleans, while Prince Jerome's attitude is the most in- telligible of all. He says, "I can rule France, and other men can- not. I want to do the work, and if those who own the work, the masses of France, will give it me to do, I will do it ; " but what is the motive of the Duke de Montpensier, or any other man in his position ? Ambition to perform a great duty ? Doubtless that must
influence any strong man, did, we dare say, influence Leopold of Saxe-Coburg when he accepted Belgium, and may have been among the thoughts which must have crowded on Maximilian when he accepted at the hand of a French Emperor one of the many Crowns across the ocean which his family had once possessed. He could not have all Philip II. had owned, but at least he could have a part. But if this motive influences Princes so very strongly, how is it that they never become Premiers ? If they want merely to govern, why not govern in the simplest way in any country which will accept them? They never do, even in countries like Russia, where family favour would give them their full scope ; or countries like Germany, where they might obtain departments far more easily than other men. Only in England has a collateral Prince a great office, and that one does not make him responsible to Parliament. It would seem as if the Kingship were desired more than power, the rank more than the duty ; that the stimulating motive of Princes when racing for a Crown was the very ordinary one,—de- sire of promotion for themselves and their children in the society of the world. And we have very little doubt that this is so, that it is caste-feeling in an intense form which prompts most Princes to abandon easy, pleasant, and dignified lives for positions of great uncertainty, great exertion, and in some cases, at least, great personal danger, with very little power and a great deal of wearying etiquette. They want to be at the top of the tree, to enjoy general deference instead of class deference, to feel themselves the equals of any human beings, a feeling they have not while they remain subjects. The feeling, of course, is nearly universal, we should say quite, but that in some men it is so feeble as to be nearly invisible ; but it must exist in great strength in Princes, or they would not be so ready to strike blows at the first principle of their Order, hereditary right. They are all Legitimists by birth, and all ready to take the place of the legitimate sovereign their relationship to whom constitutes their first claim. Nobody ever hears of a Prince who will not be King because some other relation ought to be. Our own William III. was a very noble person in many ways, and at heart a thorough King, with no democratic doubts, but he upset James Il.'s claims without any apparent scruple. James II. had abdicated ? Well, Mary, his own wife, had not, and he could have seated her and reigned in her name without any particular exertion. He would have had as much work, as much power, and more popularity, but he would not have had the kingship, and he wanted that. Men who knew Louis Philippe well say that he never ceased to be a Legitimist, that he never thought himself fully entitled to the throne, that his whole attitude towards himself and others would have been changed by the death of the Comte de Chambord, but he took the Crown all the same. Born at the top of the world, a Bourbon and a millionaire, he still hungered for promotion so sharply that he put down his own strongest prejudice g or convictions to attain a prize he never could thoroughly enjoy. So, apparently, would almost any Prince, and the Kings know it, and that is the cause of the intense and almost feminine jealousies revealed in the memoirs of Royal Houses, the ultimate reason why Princes within the succession must not govern. When by any chance this caste-feeling is not gratified, the throne so eagerly sought becomes of little importance. Louis Philippe felt the Czar's address, Mon anti instead of Monfrixe, with a bitterness that seems incredible in a mind so cool and so avaricious ; and the Duke d'Aosta clearly suffered more from the slights passed upon him by his Court than from Carlist insurrections. His rank was not acknow- ledged, and his object, so far as he was a willing agent in his own election, was that it should be acknowledged. His father showed just the same feeling in 1860, when he positively refused to accept the Crown of Italy if he were to be called King of the Italians, which to him seemed a lower or more bourgeois denomination than King of the Italians' territory. The strength of the desire among Princes is a curious proof of the universality of this form of ambition, which we are accustomed to consider rather a low one, and a curious proof, too, that the Kingship exercises a strong spell over the imaginations of the royal caste itself, as well as of the people, a spell it fails to throw over the noblesse. A throne is not in their line of promotion, and the kingship does not impress theta very much. Hardly any Prince would refuse the Crown of Denmark, small as it is, and though its possession involves a life upon a very" melancholy" shore ; but we doubt if a great English noble, say Lord Derby or the Duke of Devonshire, would accept it at a gift. They no more want it than a General wants to be Archbishop of Canterbury. He wants to be a Field-Marshal, and to a Royal prince a throne is the baton, the Blue Ribbon for which nobles struggle, the pro- motion which so elevates him in his own eyes, that for it he will
give up the principle which alone makes of his rank a reality. It is the nobles, not the Princes, who are shocked by a "usur- pation."
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