TOPICS OF THE DAY.
'THE DUCHESS OF KENT, AND Tau, HOUSE OF C OBITRG.
MHE grief of a nation for any individual not actually reg- ..1. nant or personally illustrious for services performed; must always be liable to something of formal seeming. Yet it would be a mistake to assume that because, among the thousands who will mourn the Duchess of Kent, few can feel individual bitterness of regret, the sadness will be any the less sincere. Men, fortunately for humanity, can sorrow for benefactors they have never known,. and. the deceased Princess had established the strongest title to the gratitude and. esteem of all true Englishmen. The very extent of the success which the Duchess achieved in. her life work has; indeed, almost blinded us to the greatness of' the task it de. volved on. her to perform. So thorough has become the accord between the throne and the people, so entirely has the Queen realized the English ideal of constitutional sove- reignty, that this generation half believes a faultless monarch part of the natural order of• things. It half forgets in its supreme contentment at the result, the instruments by whose hands that result was for so many long years prepared. It is none the less certain that for much of the internal peace they now enjoy, Englishmen are indebted to the Royal lady whose remains, will on Monday be interred. That the Duchess of Kent brought up the future. Queen in every womanly virtue, and every English principle, is but. one of the services the benefit of which we have felt for a, genera- tion. It is her especial praise that she presented to England a Queen worthy to reign over not only a high-principled; but a free nation. For fifteen years, through) difficulties which now seem. almost incredible, the Duchess of Kent held on to her great. aim to train up a Sovereign of England, and not the chief of an English party. The fierce party strife .of those evil days, when the alteration of the succession was gravely planned, is now remembered only by the historian. Yet it is certain, that the faintest swerve to the right hand or the left, the slightest concession, more especially to the Orange side, would often have relieved the Duchess of Kent from obstacles which must have seemed to her almost insur- mountable.. That the concession was never made; is a service for which every Englishman does wisely to be grateful to the memory of the dead. This generation can scarcely realize what effect a. Sovereign devoted to personal aseendancy,,or even to one party in the State, would hue upon their political pro- aperity. Yet they may understand if they remember the hatred, some recent Premiers have temporarily incurred, and remember, at the same time that an English Sovereign is an irremovable Premier. The malice a. party leader may excite ceases witlrhis fall, but animosity against a party Sovereign can, in the nature of things, terminate only in a revolution or a grave. That England, daring one reign at least, has never felt a momentary distrust of the throne, never doubted that the deliberate will of the nation would be executed by the national representative, is a. gain politicians can hardly over-estimate; and which may well add a sorrowing grati. tude to the regretful sympathy with the Royal House the nation has been so prompt to express. The English life of the Duchess of Kent marks a singular era in the fortunes of her House. In. 1818, when she, then the widowed Regent of the little principality, of Leiningen, accepted the almost penniless Duke of Kent, the House of Saxe-Coburg was scarcely known in Europe except by Re- publican denunciations. Its head, it is true, ruled, as his, heir rules still, the little principality which gives the family its rank, but he was not then the leader of German political opinion. Prince Leopold, it is true had married the heiress of the British crown, but his personal importance terminated with her death, and. he,. however high, in rank,, was, as regards politics, simply a great pensioner. The Duchess lived to see her House,, strengthened by the frank adoption of a great principle, rise to the level of the highest families of the world, and strike its roots broad and deep in the European system. If the marriage lately announced should be com- pleted, six of her grandfather's descendants will_ have sat on thrones, which may yet become more numerous. The reign- ing Duke of Saxe-Coburg has gained no territory, but he is the accepted advocate of that unity for which every German hopes and will one day strive. Prince Leopold, after reject- ing the throne of Greece, accepted that of Belgium, and became the most popular, and one of the most influential, of continental sovereigns. A grand-daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg is Queen of Great Britain. A Prince of the line is King of Portugal, one Princess will be Queen of Prussia, another, it is said, will mount the throne of Hesse- Darmstadt, and leave the race still rich in possible sovereigns. of the future. The House is now the only one which oc- cupies more than one first-class throne, the only one which, occupies more than two thrones of any kind. A few years more, and a clear. fourth of the European world will be ruled by a family which in 1818- had fewer subjects than are contained in many an English county. And they have effected this great advance solely by influence, without pro- ducing one great soldier, without adding one to the long list of conquered peoples. The Hapsburgs, at the zenith of their prosperity, had fewer subjects ; the Bourbons have not suc- ceeded in acquiring so many independent kingdoms. The rise is one which, however extraordinary, Englishmen at least may witness without fear, for of the nine families who so nearly divide' Europe—Coburg, Romanoff, Hapsburg, Ho- henzollern, Bourbon, Bonarparte, Savoy, and Othman—the House of Coburg alone has been steadily and' unswervingly constitutional. It is not impossible that half a century hence half Europe may look back to the lady we now mourn as the uncrowned ancestress of their constitutional kings.
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