WHO IS THE "KING CONSORT" ?
OF all the rounds that Folly takes, the most varied and idle is "the round of the press." A report which has been making that grand tour is too absurd to be true—though some men hardened to political experiences will ask, What is the measure of absurdity ? It is, that Prince Albert intends, at the wedding, before it, or after it, to get himself dubbed "King Consort.' We wholly disbelieve the story, if only on the ground that the Prince knows too well the reasons against it.
He is not likely, at such a moment, to add even a feather's weight to any jealousy of the German element in our Court ; for the lightest of feathers may be "the last." He is too well read not to know that our history ignores such a person as a King Con- sort; and of all inventions it is the one that would be least popular emanating from the Department of Practical Science and Art. Even if it were in the first instance purely titular, it would excite natural jealousies, and just. It would be an encroachment. It might become a very ominous encroachment. At times in our history we have bad a Prince Regent, and the want might again occur; nay, it might—be the occasion averted1—become an act of wisdom in Parliament to appoint Prince Albert himself to the post ; and who fitter than the Prince Consort of one generation to be Prince Regent in the next? Yet he would be a bold Minister who should ask Parliament to make a King Consort into a "King Regent," distinguishable only by a shadow from a King_Regnant. Say that a virtuous Prince would not in possession forget the proxy, still it would be a dangerous precedent for encroachment towards reigning power through the Court. No; such a dream has never haunted that virtuous pillow. It is a vain phantom, first sent into the world by some Archimago in the office of a journal called the Court Circular, which is, mysteriously enough, an organ of fashion, which "explains" the royal acts of Naples in a manner the most rose-coloured. But no British King Consort can be cooked in that pocket /Etna. The idea is natural to the foot of Vesuvius, where the Bourbons sit in occupation; but here it would cause something worse than an Italian earthquake—a statequake. The idea might be natural to any lackey of a Queen Christina, who enjoys the spectacle of a King Consort in happy Spain ; but we doubt whether Prince Albert, like Whitbread, would thank his Queen "for offering to make him such a thing."
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