TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE PRINCE OF WALES.
THE absorbing anxiety of the week has diminished towards its close. The Prince of Wales, who was given up in Sandringham on Wednesday, and all over England on Thurs- day, rallied on the evening of the 14th, the tenth anniversary of his father's death, and by all the latest accounts there is now a fair chance of ultimate recovery. The doctors even yet do not declare themselves very sanguine, and the disease is one in which dangerous relapses frequently occur ; but it is clear that the Prince possesses the strong vitality, the capacity for holding on in spite of adverse circumstances which has always distinguished the Guelfs, and under Pro- vidence this quality, which is not health and not strength, but something separate from them all, will, we trust, enable him to pull through without permanent injury to his consti- tution. We do not pretend to understand the conflicting and sometimes absurd accounts of the Prince's condition, but it is quite clear, from the little trustworthy information vouch- safed, that there is reasonable ground for the national feeling of renewed hope. Another day or two will, we trust, change hope into conviction, and relieve the Empire of an anxiety which has weighed seriously upon its cheerfulness and its energies, although it has in compensation revealed some of its more latent good qualities, and especially an extent and depth of genuine loyalty, of that old attachment to a family, an attachment of instinct rather than of conviction, which has taken politicians by surprise, and shows that the position of the Heir Apparent in the country has been materially changed. The journals seem to think it quite natural that the people should sympathize deeply with the Prince of Wales, mourn over his suffering, and exult in his recovery ; but the truth is the sympathy, especially in its extent and its genuineness, is a novel feature in our history. The Princes of Wales of the House of Brunswick have usually been detested, and have never been popular with more than a section of the people. They have never, before this generation, seemed able to accept their somewhat painful position patiently, have usually gone into Opposition, and have always tried to obtain personal power as centres of some party to which they made promises which when once called to the Throne they perceived it was impossible to keep. The two last Princes of the name, Frederic, who died, and George, afterwards George IV., were more despised and disliked than any persons within the realm. The present Heir Apparent has pursued a wiser course. Ho has been as Constitutional as his mother. Not ten men in England could say definitely to which of the great parties he belongs even in conviction, and on no single occa- sion has he made his personal influence conspicuous to the embarrassment of public affairs. His anxiety for Denmark in 1864 was not paraded, and was too natural to excite remark ; and if, as was rumoured, he disliked the disestablishment of the Irish Church, his opinion was not permitted to impede the course of the Queen's Government. Ho has led, in fact, the political life an Heir Apparent in this country should lead, and has never led before, and he has his reward in the eager sympathy of the entire nation, unclouded by party dis- likes or political rancours. The unity of feeling throughout the Empire about his illness, the intense desire that he should win his gallant struggle with death, has been manifested in the most unexpected quarters and the most striking forms, till we scarcely know which is the more dramatic incident, the solemn service performed on his behalf in all the Fire temples of Western India by a race to which his own is modern, and under forms before which our rituals are of yesterday ; or the address of sympathy and hope which all the Democratic or Republican Societies of Groat Britain are signing to their Queen, an address, wo venture to say, almost unexampled in our history, as evidence of the strength of the bond which unites the people and the throne. Had the Prince been the life of a party, had he even paraded his political convictions, no explosion of national sentiment such as has so impressed the Continent would have been even possible. Unanimous loyalty can only be felt to one who is above or outside the parties ; and the nation, by common consent, has attributed this position—his only fitting one—to its future King. In a King of England all qualities, whether virtues or defects, are unimportant before that one, and that one the nation, in its grief and anxiety, has unani- mously acknowledged. His recovery will be the gain of all, and therefore all—apart altogether from their human interest in seeing one so great struck down so, low, in watching, as it were, by a dying bed—feel a true pleasure in the prospect of his escape. The newly aroused sympathy has cleaned men's memories, and the Prince will find, on his return to the world, that he may begin his career• absolutely anew, amidst a nation strongly, perhaps perma- nently, inclined to be both lenient and loyal.
None in England, we suspect, will feel deeper gratitude to Heaven for the Prince's recovery than the Ministers of the Crown. Though of no party, the Prince is one of the pivots of the machine, and an unfavourable turn to his illness would have thrown all political business out of gear. Everything must have stopped till the Monarchy was safe. A Regency Bill is always one of the most embarrassing of proposals ; the debates about it are always sterile, and although, as it hap- pens, precedent and opinion are in this instance pretty nearly agreed, the nation is fortunate in its exemption both from the certainty of an irritating discussion and the chance of political risk. We know what the Prince is ; we do not know what his son may be. On the last occasion on which the same circumstances occurred, the death of Frederic, Prince of Wales, in the lifetime of George II., it was provided by Parliament that in the event of the demise of the Crown, the Princess of Wales should be Regent, with the aid of a Council composed of nine great officers of State. That precedent must have been followed, and would not with some modifications have been difficult to follow ; but the dis- cussion would have brought up a host of constitutional questions at the very worst time, and probably in the most useless form, and it must be a direct and immense relief to the Cabinet that it need never be commenced. The fewer breaks there are in the succession, the less of vagueness and expectation as to the character of the next ruler, the better for a monarchy to which continuity, custom, habit, are all of the first elements of strength. It is quite clear from the national demeanour during this week, that the Ultras had misread the feeling of the people, had mistaken a mood for a mind, and that the Prince of Wales might mount the throne to-morrow as popular a Sovereign, to say the very least, as any one of his House, his mother alone excepted, has ever been. The recovery of the Prince will, therefore, be a source of as much pleasure to reflecting politicians as to the multitude which does not reflect, but only feels that an accustomed friend has lain for weeks in peril of his life.
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