[To THIS EDITOR Of THE "Srscrerop...] SIR,—I am reluctant to
trouble you again, especially as I am on the whole convinced that you are right in deprecating the petition suggested by Mr. Arnold White. At the same time I cannot help urging that if your theory of Automatic Prerogative be sound, there is no remedy for any extrava- gance which the Coalition Cabinet may commit. If the Prerogative is really automatic, the Monarchy has already more completely perished than it did when King Charles I. was beheaded. To vary the American simile I quoted in any last, a gramophone tuned to say Le Roy to vault would be as good a King of England as King George V. now is. Your correspondent " Scrutator " (Spectator, August 16th) rightly points out that the King really did descend into the arena of politics when in 1911 he pledged himself to a swamping creation of peers. In your reply to Lord Ebury's letter you ask whether he blames the late Queen Victoria for not having vetoed the Disestablishment of the Irish Church. I cannot answer for Lord Ebury, nor will I go so far as to say that I do, but I ask your permission to point out that her not having done so was the cause of the present situation. The extreme Conservative and Protestant Party in Ireland, led by Isaac Butt and Colonel King-Harman, pointed to the wording of the Church clause in the Act of Union, and raised the cry that Disestablishment, by annulling that clause, annulled the whole Act. If I may speak of myself, I was in those days a supporter of Disestablishment, and I still think that the " irrevocable " clause in the Act of Union was a mistake, but Isaac Butt and King-Harman had a semblance of law and logic on their side, and the cry they raised was taken up by the Fenians, to conciliate whom the Church had been die- established. And so the whirligig of time has brought in its revenges, and the Spectator (!) exhorts the Monarchy to commit suicide and thus save itself from slaughter. Surely every reader of Macaulay knows the true history of the disuse of veto and the absence of the King from Cabinet Councils. King George I. spoke no English and George II. hardly any, so they did not sit with their Ministers. Their legislation was their Ministers' legislation, and they had no need to say Le Roy s'avisera. The German-speaking monarchs were automatic rubber-stamps, and George III. did tell his Ministers that he would veto certain Bills if they were pressed upon him. A veto which would have been used if challenged can hardly be called an obsolete prerogative. But the practical aspect of this question is infinitely more important than any historical dissertation. I ask, then, what
resource is left to the people except the Royal prerogative ? I admit that you are probably right, and Mr. Arnold White wrong, as regards an actual veto of the Home Rule Bill, but there remains the prerogative of dissolving Parliament. Is that also obsolete, automatic, and only to be exercised in obedience to Ministers' advice ? And if subjects petition the King to dissolve, are they "dragging the King into politics" ?
—I am, Sir, &cc., EDWARD STANLEY ROBERTSON.
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