SIR CHARLES DUNE IN THE COMMONS.
NOBODY has much right to congratulate himself on the management of Tuesday's debate. Sir Charles Dilke made out a very poor case against the management of the Civil List in a speech which was studiously tame ; the extreme Royalists, represented by Lord Bury, talked mere nonsense about the oath of allegiance, which cannot be intended to bar the proposal of any change in the Constitution to be legally made with the Sovereign's assent ; Mr. Gladstone, with all his fire and animation, left his strong case very obscure, and the House as a body showed a discreditable want of tact. Sir Charles Dilke, as we understand his discursive speech, has formally surrendered his most formal charge, that the Queen does not pay income-tax, and has substituted for it a compli- ment, that she does pay it, though not required to do so by law,—in other words, that she makes a great annual present to the Treasury ; he has informally surrendered his second charge, that the Court is wildly extravagant, confining himself now to an accusation of undue accumulation ; and has repeated his two remaining charges, that money saved on the Civil List goes to the Privy Purse instead of the Treasury, and that ceremonial expenses are thrust on the Estimates which have no business to be there. Of these last two charges, again, the former is the only formidable one from the Repub- lican point of view, for the latter affects not the Court, but the House of Commons. Every item of expen- diture in the Estimates must be and is voted by them after any explanation that they may choose to demand, and they cannot cavil afterwards at the unfairness of their own acts. Nobody compels them to spend the preposterous sum which, as Sit Charles asserts, has been spent on a palace in which there is no room for State guests, or State receptions, or State ceremonies. It may be very mean of a Ministry to ask for a national grant to the Duke of Edinburgh to enable him to buy presents—though his gifts of such presents were in part at Royal visitors' passage-money ; but still it is the act of a Ministry responsible for its acts, and should be met, if at all, by a direct refusal to vote the money demanded. No expla- nation of this point was required, except that the Treasury thought it expedient to ask for the money, and that the Commons consented to grant it in the regular way, and after all proper forms had been complied with. If the money, as Sir Charles thinks, ought to have come out of the Civil List, the House should have said so at the proper time, and can say so if it pleases whenever a similar vote recurs. It is the charge as to the use of the surplus produced by savings on the Civil List which is serious, and on this Mr. Gladstone was ex- tremely and, as we think, unnecessarily obscure, rather trying to whittle away the accusation than to answer it. He says the Crown is burdened with an Army of private pensioners, most of them bequeathed by former Sovereigns ; that it has paid them during this reign £600,000, and that consequently savings of £20,000 a year or BO effected by good manage- ment furnish no grounds for so much fuss about Her Majesty's wealth. That is quite true, the Queen having just as much right to grow rich as anybody else ; but it is no reply what- ever to the Member for Chelsea, who wants to know why the savings effected by good management, be they little or great, have not gone to the Treasury. We believe there is a perfect and complete answer, namely, this,—that in 1837, when the Civil List was resettled, the idea of Parliament was to prevent the incessant demands of previous reigns, and fix a lump sum within which the Sovereign must keep. It was therefore understood, and we believe formally announced by Mr. Spring- Rice, that savings on certain classes of expenditure in the Civil List were to go to the Crown. Indeed, how could it be other- wise, when the essence of the arrangement was that the Civil List was granted as compensation for the surrender during one life of the right of the Crown to its entailed lands. The Queen might have saved their rental. Nobody, it, is true, expected a member of the House of Brunswick to save,—the usual course of that House having been to spend twice its income, and then persuade the Commons, by piecrust promises, to make up the deficiency—or anticipated that the Queen would marry a Prince with a genius for private finance ; but this was the understanding, and a perfectly fair and business- like one it was. The Court was tempted to keep its accounts straight. Englishmen think the Court economizes a great deal too much, retires too far from the world, and does not treat foreign visitors well ; but that is the Sovereign's business, not the country's, more especially as it is certain that a blunder in the other direction would be bitterly resented. Statesmen, we know, will not acknowledge it, but we very much doubt if Mr. Gladstone could venture to ask Parliament for sums like those wasted by George III. We have no more right to com- plain if the Queen saves money than we have if the Viceroy of India saves money, provided that both alike keep within their contract. We believe that the Queen has done so most scrupulously, and do not see why a charge to the contrary should not have been denied as clearly as the immensity of the Queen's accumulations was denied by the Premier. As it is, there will be a vague impression throughout the country that something has been kept back, whereas nothing has been kept back except an open avowal that the economies of the Court, whether popular or not, are entirely legal, and very beneficial to the State. It is, we suppose, incumbent on the Premier to be most ceremonious and reticent when speaking of the Sovereign ; but Englishmen with all their bluntness are not unfair, and understand perfectly well that if the Sovereign is never to apply to them for money—and this is admitted to be their wish—she must have a reserve fund collected against a rainy day. It is not open to Parliament to object to extravagance and in the same breath censure thrift.
The impression that all has not been said which should have been said will be deepened by the preposterous indis- cretion of the aristocratic Members, who tried four or five times over to stifle the debate, once by a misuse of the oath of allegiance, twice by a count-out, once by "seeing strangers," and once by a discreditable riot, which the Speaker was unable to repress. Of all the arguments ever produced in favour of a Republic, Mr. Auberon Herbert's has probably the least foundation. He says that the existence of Monarchy is the reason for the existence of that herd of wealthy prodigals who at this moment raise outrageous display into a national taste and an universal standard of success in life. We say, on the contrary, that the existence of the Monarchy is the reason why they do not eat us all up, that the hereditary idea is the
restrains that mad debauch of prodigality into which, if the millionaires were the only figures visible in society and wealth were the only distinction among men, this country would inevitably fall. But Mr. Herbert's error was no reason for the -scene which followed, which belonged to a bygone age, and which will be interpreted by Republicans throughout England as proof positive that it is of no use to appeal to Parliament, and that they must of necessity agitate out-of-doors, the very iconduct for which the rioters reproach the Member for Chelsea. We have no particular respect for the English Re- publican party, who have ruined their cause for a generation by imbecile mismanagement, by basing it on "a miserable haggle" over twopence-halfpenny, and by the perfectly crazy blunder of allowing it to be connected in the national mind with a menace to the right of individual property. But if the aristocratic Members of the House think they can suppress the discussion of the loftiest political idea of history—of the only political idea which at this moment has advocates faith- ful unto death or unto slaying, of the idea which their own race everywhere outside these Islands has adopted with such vehemence that no other is ever so much as considered—by yelling and braying and cock-crowing, then they are commit- ting the blunder of aristocrats in all ages, that of despising their foes. Englishmen are not to be silenced so. The time has arrived for Republican opinions to be heard in the House of -Commons, as in every other free assembly in the world, and if the arguments of the Republicans are feeble, or their allega- tions rash, or their numbers few, so much the better for con- servatives, so much the easier the task of listening to nonsense so easily voted down. We confess ourselves utterly impatient with Sir Charles Dilke, and his chat with coalheavers on the cost of the Throne, and his grand question about the cost of the liveries of the Queen's trumpeters ; but the strongest of English Royalists owe him at least this acknowledg- ment,—that he has been frank, that he has not tried to lower the Monarchy on pretence of preserving it, that he has not tried to mutilate it for its own good, but has avowed calmly and distinctly that he is Republican. The Monarchy is in no danger either from Sir Charles alio or the people, but those are not its friends who prevent its opponents from exposing the weakness of their case by howling them into silence. The House heard Sir Charles Dilke, and the result was that he had only four supporters. The House refused to hear Mr. A. Herbert, and the result is -that the Republicans enjoy all the prestige of having been unfairly treated by a mob. Is the case of the Monarchy so bad that 'even within the walls of Parliament it can be -defended only by an appeal to force ?
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