THE QUEEN'S DIFFICULTIES.
WHEN the Queen makes mistakes,—and she has made one or two in reference to the Solent accident, though the explanation which has been published this week has gone a good way towards effacing the remembrance of one of them,—we ought never to forget that the whole gravamen of the error is apt to consist in the fact that she has forgotten, what she so seldom forgets, how many things any of her subjects may do without any offence, which it is impossible for her to do without very serious offence. Take, for instance, the two errors committed or permitted by the Queen in relation to this Solent collision. The first was a letter to Prince Leiningen, in which Her Majesty expressed her satisfaction with all that had been done on the Royal yacht on the day of the collision ; and the second was the letter of General Ponsonby to the Marquis of Exeter, in which the Queen's wish was expressed to the members of the Cowes Yacht Club that the yachts would, for the sake of safety, as much as possible avoid the habit of approaching the Royal yachts to gain a sight of the Queen. Now, the first mistake, which was the most serious, since it seemed to convey an opinion of the Queen's own as to a matter which was under the consideration of a coroner's jury, was clearly a mistake solely because it was the Queen who made it. Mr. Heywood, the owner of the 'Mistletoe,' which was run down, had expressed at one time a conviction that the collision was purely accidental, and that no one was to be blamed for it ; but on hearing the evidence of the officers of the Royal yacht, he changed his mind, and volunteered an opinion that it was mismanagement on their part which caused the fatal event. No one thought of blaming Mr. Heywood for giving public ex- pression to this view. it was a most natural thing that he should be swayed towards the opinion that his yacht had not had a fair chance. It was probably equally natural that the Queen, feeling the utmost regard, both personal and official, for Prince Leiningen, and long accustomed to trust in the skill of Captain Welch, should have been more ready to believe that the fault could not have been on their aide. And if the Queen's
opinions were as little likely to weigh with juries as Mr. Heywood's, mighty cloud of anonymity and irresponsibility which renders no one would have blamed her for expressing her confidence. But of course it is not so. A word, which is a word, and nothing more, in any ordinary subject's mouth, is an event, a power, in the Queen's mouth. True, it may not always be a power on the side she intends. English juries are apt to be vexed by any- thing which seems to them like an attempt to overawe them, and if the jury had brought in a verdict of manslaughter against Prince Leiningen and Captain Welch, it is most likely that it would have been due in great measure to the disposition to kick against
the pricks which such tribunals feel. Still, in whichever direction the expression of the Queen's opinion was likely to disturb the even balance of justice, it was only because it was the Queen's opinion, and not the opinion of a private person, that it was in danger of disturbing the balance at all. And similarly, though General Ponsonby's letter to the Marquis of Exeter, as President of the Cowes Yacht Club, might perhaps have been resented as conceived in imperfect taste, even if its request had been conveyed by any private owner who had just had the mis- fortune to run down another yacht, and so cause the loss of three lives, yet almost all the irritation it created in England was due to the special dignity and authority of the source from which it pro- ceeded. The letter, unguarded as it was by any reserve of judg- ment as to the cause of the collision with the ' Mistletoe,' and un- accompanied by any hint that the high speed of the Royal yachts might with advantage be abated in the crowded season in future, seemed to lay blame by implication on the victims of the recent catastrophe ; and of course, a hasty private opinion, however -one-sided, to that effect would have hardly produced any special result beyond a sharp retort ; whereas such an opinion, understood to come from the Queen, could neither be ignored nor directly assailed. Doubtless the advisers who did not dissuade the Queen from permitting the sending of these letters made a very serious blunder. In the case of the letter to Prince Leiningen, it should have been pointed out to her that, as regards the matter at issue, the Queen's opinion was worth nothing more at all than that of any other landsman who happened to be within eyeshot of the collision. And as regarded the letter to the Marquis of Exeter, the least sagacious of counsellors might have suggested that the interpretation which we now know to be repudiated by the Queen would be certainly attached to the language used, unless care were taken expressly to bar it, and that the omission to make any reference to the dangerous speed of the Queen's yacht at such a season would also be misconstrued.
But while every thinking person must concur in this view of these errors of judgment, a great many will fail to see that these errors of judgment chiefly consist in this, — that the Queen's advisers have forgotten how much less liberty of comment on any -controverted issue the Monarch can have than any of her own subjects. No doubt it is inevitable that it should be so. The command of a great weight of authority must impose extreme reticence in using it. You could not allow the " Woolwich Infant" to be fired-off from a room whence you might safely -enough discharge a rifle. The Queen must either confine the use of her personal liberty within very narrow limits indeed, or she must resign her authority. Personages so high do more than they intend by giving an opinion on an ordinary transac- tion. Their words are with power, whether they will or no, and consequently their words must be few and cautious. This is the condition of Royal life in England. But then we ought all of us to recognise at once that it is a very hard and unnatural condition, and that an occasional error in observing it ought to be very leniently judged in the case of a Monarch who so seldom makes a mistake of the kind as the Queen. Very few of us can realise at all how very artificial must be the life in which it is necessary not merely to keep a watch on your lips, but even on occasion to refuse that personal sup- port and encouragement to deserving servants which their ser- vices seem to claim. The Queen, of course, must take her own view -of what she observes, and she must feel the same kind of bias, when cases of conflicting testimony arise, as any other person. But while any other person might freely express his view and let the public see his bias, the Queen ought to do nothing of the sort. In order to be Queen, she must renounce in great measure the right to express individual opinions, and even to reward individual fidelity by public support. It seems probable that no one can tell by mere force of imagination how difficult such a role is. A great part of all the happiness and spring of life arises from the free give-and-take of mutual support and encouragement. If you are debarred from that, and enveloped, even in relation to private concerns, in a it impossible to say "I think so-and-so," or if not to say this, yet to act in public in accordance with the saying, you must sacrifice to a very great extent feelings and volitions which are part and parcel of the personal character,—you must deliberately deny yourself the pleasure of being yourself. In a constitutional country, this has, of course, become comparatively easy to the Monarch, as regards things properly political, but we are apt to forget how great a struggle it must be to extend this traditional, and no doubt in a great measure habitual, self- restraint in matters of politics, to the issues and vexations of private life. It cannot be an easy thing, when you see a near relative freely accused of negligence from which loss of life has resulted, and you happen to have a very strong prepossession on that subject yourself, to keep your feelings as much in abeyance as if it were a question of a Reform Bill or of the system of Army Purchase ; nay, to let the public dogmatise or draw what inferences it will, without even having the satisfaction of expressing your own belief as one of them, and indeed one who may at least know more of what happened than any of the critics, leader-writers, and jurymen on whose expressions of opinion so much depends. An ordinary Englishman who did not "stand to his friends," as it is called, in such a case, would be thought ungenerous and cowardly. And though it is certainly the Queen's duty to remember that she never can wisely exercise the liberty in such matters which belongs as of right to one of her own subjects, yet we, on our parts, must not forget how unique and difficult the duty we thus impose upon her, especially in relation to the personal issues of social life, is. And no doubt we ought to remember the same thing in extenuation of the counsellors who, as we say, have foolishly permitted such letters as General Ponsonby's to the Marquis of Exeter. It is very convenient to assume that the Queen is responsible for nothing, and that when there is blame at all to be laid on any one, it must be laid on some of her advisers. But as a matter of fact, we must perfectly well know that it cannot be so easy, perhaps not always even possible, for advisers to neutralise the Queen's individuality alto- gether in such matters ;—to restrain her from making evident her own bias. In the first place, of course, the views of so character- istically influence-exerting a mind as the Queen's are pretty sure to affect her advisers at least as much as the views of her advisers affect her, and sometimes perhaps even more. And in the next place, there is a point at which it must be most difficult, if not impossible, to argue against the Queen's wishes, even if they seem somewhat rash and likely to risk her popularity. After you have interposed all the checks you can imagine to prevent any im- prudent assertion of the Monarch's individual opinions, there will remain points at which it is, and always will be, impossible to prevent them from showing themselves clearly enough to the country over which she reigns.
On the whole, while we entirely agree with the view that both the recent letters about the accident in the Solent were ill- advised, and calculated to create the irritation which they have created, we do not think that England is half enough aware of the extraordinarily artificial character of the social arrangements which are intended to prevent such mistakes, or of the remarkable self-restraint and self- abnegation which make mistakes like these in the Queen's reign so exceedingly exceptional. It is the most natural thing in the world that the Queen should take the view which her near relative and her other officers take of such matters as the recent collision in the Solent. But it is a very artificial arrangement indeed which leads us to expect,—and expect legitimately,—that her personal bias should not be revealed to the world. The wonder is, not that now and then such arrangements should fail, but that, through the wise self-restraint of the Queen and the sagacity of her advisers, it should be a very remarkable and exceptional thing when they do fail.
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