TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE MONARCHY.
SOMETHING of natural human pride must have flecked the melancholy with which most Englishmen have read the accounts of the funeral of the Duke of Clarence. To desire respect for our dead is a universal instinct, born at once of affection and of piety ; and hardly in modern history has respect in its fullest sense been shown in a way so striking to the general imagination. We are not speaking of the stately yet quiet ceremonial in St. George's Chapel, where the group representing so many of the Kings and States of Europe, all assembled to do honour to a coffin, bore adequate testimony to the place in the world occupied by the deceased Prince, but rather of the unofficial and spontaneous evidence offered by the demeanour of the Queen's subjects throughout the world. It is contrary to our manners, and, indeed, to our institutions, that subjects should be " ordered" to mourn, merely as subjects, even for a future King ; and yet on five con- tinents labour halted for half-a-day to show that an event was happening which compelled the most dis- persed of modern peoples to acknowledge, in sadness and quiet, that they felt a common bond. The shutting of shops simultaneously in London and Melbourne, in Toronto and Calcutta, in Durban and Vancouver's Land, is an incident in a mournful pageant which could not have happened in any other age, and which brings home to all men with irresistible force what a place on this planet is occupied by the dominion over which the Queen presides, and which on Wednesday voluntarily testified to its sorrow that its head and standard-bearer should have suffered such a blow. It was not only that London mourned through all its endless grades—nine thousand cabmen, for one item, draping their whips in crape—but that cities in every quarter of the world, cities scattered over the great islands of the South Pacific, cities in North America, cities in Southern Africa, cities in the great Asiatic peninsula so crammed with dusky life, mourned also as sincerely, that is, with as deep a consciousness that one who was related to all, and who interested all, had prematurely passed away. Grant that much of the sorrow was " conventional," " ceremonial," or " factitious." so are most of the public Borrowings and rejoicings of the world ; yet those who voluntarily share in them are testifying to the presence, the effective presence, of some common tie which they would not voluntarily weaken even by abstaining from a form. Who goes willingly to a -funeral ? and who doubts that all who do go, testify in going that some link of affection, or circumstance, or respect, or interest, bound them in some way strongly to the dead ? The group that stands about a grave cares—no matter from what motive, for it can never be a hostile one—for the tenant of that grave ; and this group in St. George's Chapel represented, as the evidence proves, a world in itself, not only the thirty-eight millions at home, but the other millions who are stumbling over earth, founding Republics, building cities, organising trades, ruling dark races, making fortunes, but all willing on the day of such a funeral to halt for a moment in their toil, straighten their backs, and think with regret that one has passed from among them who should some day have been their first. To those who can see, we can imagine no pageant half so impressive as this momentary halt of toil through fifty States all under one common banner, nor any so clearly indicative that the disintegrating forces which ultimately break up all Empires, have in the British Empire as yet done but little of their destructive work. While all can feel, as Englishmen everywhere on Wednes- day seemed to show they felt, a common reverence for the same Throne, a common affection for its occupant, a common feeling as regards any incident, grievous or joyous, which affects its fortunes, the tie of our unity will not readily be broken.
Would that unity survive the Monarchy ? That is a question which our children, be the particular generation what it may, will one day have to answer in long histories, and we fear those histories will be sad. We who write, and who are so often now upbraided with con- servatism, have always acknowledged to a tinge of Re- publican feeling, a dislike of privilege in anv shape, which necessarily includes a distaste for the hereditary principle ; but we acknowledge also that the price of its abrogation is too heavy a one to pay, for with the Monarchy the Empire would also in all human probability depart. We cannot see the nexus, other than loyalty to a common Throne, a Throne founded by history and not by us, a Throne the origin of which recedes into the twilight time, which can act as the Imperial bond. The dream of a Federal Republic is a dream, for if we understand our country- men, they will no more consent to be governed from Melbourne than from St. Petersburg, or pay any respect they can help to any authority whatever not emanating from themselves alone, which sprung up yesterday. An alliance of all who speak English is possible, and would make the world very peaceable—as India is peaceable,— very prosperous—as the United States are internally pros- perous,—and exceeding dull ; but an Anglo-Saxon Federal Republic is beyond either hope or fear. There would not be one general tradition to soothe away incessantly lacerated local prides, or to override the local peculiarities of feeling- which every country displays, and which in Colonies rise to all the dignity of distinctive opinions. We say nothing of interests, for interests do not govern, or Ireland would be the most loyal member of the general body, and Canada would be lost next week ; but the feelings which defend Empires, which have their root in history, and are as much beyond the reach of argument as the great religions are, would be either paralytic or in a state of constant and furious inflammation. The heir to the status of the Monarchy would be and must be the British Parliament ; and outside this island—we will not in- clude even the two islands—Parliament is at once despised and hated, despised for its chatter and liability to emotion and vacillation, hated for the supercilious superiority it claims over other Parliaments. It lacks, too, the first essential of a common authority, that strange impartiality which sooner or later infects and preserves all Kings ; which made the Emperors of Rome declare the citizenship universal, and caused Constantine, by descent a Roman, to found a new capital in supersession of Rome ; which in- duces our Queen to take such pride in the " R. et I.," that she signs it when signing is almost a breach of compact ; and which makes the Austrian Emperor of to-day doubt whether it is better for him to be a German or a Slav, and take refuge from the doubt in the pretension to be Caesar, and therefore above both. An impartial Parliament, im- partial, we mean, between those who elect and those who do not elect it, is an impossibility, a contra- diction in terms ; and with the belief in the impartiality of the governing power, would disappear all affection for it, while of reverence, especially that wholly volun- tary reverence which is so marked a feature of life in the British dominion, there would be no trace. We see our Parliaments think, and human reverence can hardly stand that strain. It is not the Throne to which the Colonies object, or even the Cabinet, but Parlia- ment, which they think, with a perfectly natural if rather amusing pride, is no better than their own. The British world will never put on crape because a Speaker is dead. Failing Parliament, the only nexus of Empire even conceivable is the British people. and it may answer for itself if it thinks that it is loved. American or Australian, Canadian or Africander, the Englishman born abroad has but one reply,—that the Englishman born at home is the most respectable of beings, with much strength, many virtues, and a grand history, but that of all men with white faces he is the least agreeable. His quality of superciliousness, which cannot be cured, overweights in the eyes of all but a. reflective few his other virtues, and his character would everywhere but in India be, not a bond, but a disintegrating force. It is not because he was Briton that the Duke of Clarence was mourned. There can, we fear, be no substi- tute for the Monarchy, which governs no one, affronts no one, forgets no one, but presides over all tranquilly, and as if it owed. its origin to Nature ; and unless a substitute can be found, the Empire, deprived of it, must pass away. Loyalty has been its strong cement, and by loyalty we mean that regard for the common tie which Englishmen in all the ends of the earth showed on Wednesday towards the memory of the young man borne to his untimely grave within St. George's Chapel. There are influences which reason hardly acknowledges, yet which cannot be replaced ; and one of them, for Englishmen at least, is the half- traditional, half-mystical influence of the Throne.
Previous page
