TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCE OF WALES.
THERE is a rumour abroad about the forthcoming matrimonial alliance of the heir-apparent to the British throne with a Princess of Prussia. German newspapers, solemn always and full of eru- dition, inform us that all the particulars of tins union have lung been determined,—ariiinged, in fact, at the time of the nuptials of our Princess Royal with young Prince Frederick William of Prussia. 'It was then settled, we are given to understand, that there should be a " Double Marriage" between the royal families of Great Britain and of Hohenzollern : such Double Marriage as was seriously contemplated a century ago by the then monarchs of England and Prussia, but unfortunately broken off at the eleventh hour, to the great grief of a certain Crown-Prince Frederick, no less than of his latest British biographer. Indeed, history tells us that German Princes have always been very fond of arranging these cross-alliances as we might call them ; and that it is owing to the principle which they involve, that the whole of European royalty is at the present moment one vast family of brothers, sisters, and cousins. The Emperor Napoleon is, we believe, the only monarch of the western world not di- rectly related to this august family ; though even he, by means of more or less distant cousinship, is somewhat drawn towards the mystic circle. With this single exception, if it is such, the whole of the royal houses of Europe form but one family, all the members of which are blood relations. The stock or root of this family is in Germany—the " fatherland" preeminently—and it is there, apparently, that a continual desire is felt more and more to unite the branches of this tree, more and more to engraft like on like. The title of courtesy of "Mon frere," by which Euro- pean sovereigns address each other, is to become ultimately a com- plete reality.
This progressive tendency towards a close family union of all the irresponsible rulers of the civilized world is a rather impor- tant fact in modern history, and one deserving the attention of others than heralds and pursuivants at arms. Like everything else in this sublunary world of ours, there are at least two sides from which this question may be envisaged, a favourable and an unfavourable. On the one side, there is an undoubted ad- vantage in these family alliances of kings for the general peace of Europe. Though, as we all know, brothers do sometimes quarrel and have disagreeable misunderstandings, yet on the whole, the contrary is the ease, nature having made the wise provision that of all ties which keep men together, none shall be so strong and so powerful as the tie of blood. A mere glance over the political events of the last four or five centuries shows that international wars have almost invariably been guided, if not actually planned by sovereigns not connected by family alliances ; and, that these wars have diminished in Europe in a direct ratio to the in- crease of relationship between the different princes. It would be easy to adduce examples of this proposition, even during so re- cent a period as that from the Congress of Vienna, and the esta- blishment of the Holy Alliance up to the present time. This is the bright side of the question of royal family alliances ; but while properly valuing the advantages so conferred, we have not the less to consider the reverse of the medal. The latter aspect may be resumed under two principal heads : the danger threaten- ing to the freedom of nations by a too intimate alliance of their rulers, and the peril menacing the royal race itself in such un- natural restraint of blood. Perhaps to the first of these possibi- lities not too much importance need be attached, since it is pretty well agreed that if a nation is really ripe for freedom
worthy of enjoying liberty, no sovereign or association of sove- reigns will ever be powerful enough to prevent such enjoyment. Remains, therefore, the second and more immediate peril of princely alliances: the degeneracy of the Royal race. With- out subscribing in full to Mr. Darwin's theories about the progress of the species by means of " natural selection," it isyet a fact not to be denied that a certain amount of intermix- ture between different races is absolutely necessary for the physical as well as moral well-being of the human family. The conforma- tion to this rule has an apt illustration in our own little island, where Saxon, Dane, Celt, Norman, Scot, and Pict, intermarrying for a thousand generations, have produced one of the finest races on earth, one sending its offshoots through all the corners of the habitable globe, and girding the earth with the sound of its speech. Again, the non-observance of this rule is as visibly elu- cidated in the history of many Oriental tribes ; and even in cer- tain instances in the condition of small sections of the population of Europe. There are villages in some of the upper cantons of Switzerland, regions surrounded by mighty mountain walls, and shut off by almost impassable barriers from the rest of the world, where the inhabitants have been in the habit of intermarrying for centuries, and where the result has been that either the race has died out completely, or, worse still, has been transformed into that horrible form of human degeneracy, known as cretin. With such examples before us, we may well fear for the future of the great European family of sovereigns, should the tendency to intermarriages continue among. them. It is a rather curious fact in the history of modern European nations, that whereas in the great bulk of the population th,ere., has been for a long period past a continually increasing spread of among the different ranks and classes, just the subject, has been the case in the one select rank above the anb , th class of sovereign families. Peer and peasant now jostle each other in the street, wear the same garments, eat very nearly the same food, and, as citizens of the state, have precisely the same duties and responsibilities, and obey the same laws. A inesalliarioe of a coroneted marquis with a poor and pretty milliner does not startle the world very much now-a-days ; and the 'rise of a lawyer's clerk to the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, is, even by the Conservatives of this generation; looked upon as rather natural than otherwise. But, strangely enough, while thus the barriers which the pride of rank and birth of former times created' are drawn away one by one, there is a huge boundary of a new kind forming at the very pinnacle of society, and creating a deeper chasm than ever. Royalty- is separating itself from the people, and form- ing, what never it was before, a distinct class, the different mem- bers of which are strictly, on a level, but unconnected with any other class below. According to this new law of Ebenbtirtigkeit, as exposed in the Almanach de Gotha, a Prince of Lichtenstein, sovereign of a territory of one-and-a-half square miles, may ask the hand of a Princess Royal of Great Britain, in strict propriety, but, in return, would have a right to think it presumptuous if even the youngest of his eleven daughters were demanded in marriage by the possessor of half an English county, the lord of a thousand acres. The former'union, though unequal in the high- est degree, would be enregistered as perfectly en regle ; the latter, a match of far more parallel interest, would be set down as a decided mesalliance. While all the other ranks of society flow into each other, joining more and more, royalty acknow- ledges no connecting root with any other class, but will stand alone and by itself, like the gods of Greece on the Olympian Hills, only difftrin,g greatly in their portrait galleries. This desire, we say, of forming the royal families of Europe into a distinct class, unapproachable from below, has its origin in Germany, the country of princedom, par excellence. In all the rest of European countries, England included, the principle was unknown until within a comparatively recent period of modern times. Every tyro in English history is aware that our Kings of old married the daughters of the land, considering them perfectly ebenbiirtig, and fit, in every respect, to be their consorts on the throne. It was only a century ago, in the reign of the third' George, that the Legislature of the realm was asked to interfere with this illimited liberty of royalty to choose consorts wherever and whenever they liked. Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, son of Frederick Prince of Wales, having married, on the 2d of Oc- tober, 1771, Mrs. Horton, widow of Mr. Christopher Horton, of Cat- ton Hall, Derbyshire, George III. became so enraged at this act of his weak-minded brother that he not only issued an order for- bidding the Duke and his Consort to appear at Court, but at the same time forwarded a message to Parliament, recommending a legislative provision for preventing any of the Royal family from marrying without the consent of the sovereign. But, humble though the Legislature was at that period in respect to all Govern- ment measures, the Royal Marriage Act prepared by the ministers met with extraordinary resistance in both Houses. The Teutonic notion of royalty, as a class by itself, seemed repulsive to the British mind, and the Peers as well as the representatives of the people, employed every degree of parliamentary skill to defeat the Bill, or at least to obstruct its progress. New motions were con- tinually made, either to expunge the original clauses, or to amend the most exceptionable parts, and the result was that in the end Ministers had to let the veto of the King be limited to the age of twenty-five. But even the concession was far from being ap- proved of in the Lower House, where Mr. William Dowdeswell became the leader of a compact minority, who argued that if English Princes were by law allowed to govern the realm at the age of eighteen, they scarcely ought to be forbidden by law to marry according to their own choice before the age of twenty-five. Popular wit at once embodied this argument in some lines which came to be sung throughout the land " Quoth Dick to Tom,—This Act appears
Absurd as I'm alive, To take the Crown at eighteen years The Wife at twenty-five.
The mystery, how shall we explain ? For sure as Dowdeswell said,
Thus early if they're fit to reign They must be fit to wed.
Quoth Tom to Dick,—Thou art a fool And little know'st of life.
Alas ! 'tis easier far to rule A kingdom than a wife."
But popular wit, no more than parliamentary opposition, was able to obstruct the determined will of the king, and the minis- terial phalanx in the Legislature, and after several months of hos- tile resistance on the part of the Liberals, the bill passed, March 24, .1772, the third reading by the small majority of 168 against 115. The Act thus voted, enacted that no member of the royal family, being under the age of twenty-five years, should contract marriage without the sovereign's sanction ; but that on attaining the stated age, they should be at liberty, should such sanction be withheld, to solemnize the proposed union, under the further con- dition that, having announced to the Privy Council the name of the perion they wished to espouse, an entire year should elapse without either House of Parliament addressing the sovereign against it. Thus originated the famous Royal Marriage Act, *doh is still holding in bonds the.princes of British lineage, for- bidding them to do what is allowed to the' most humble of sub-
jects, and controlling their feelings-in the very point -where hu- man sentiments should be most free and unrestrained. We do away in our time with so much that is dark and unwholesome; we pride ourselves so greatly in elevating the purely human above the narrow confines of fortuitous circumstances : would it not then be a step in the right direction, if we began to think of reconsidering the Royal Marriage Act with a view to its repeal ?
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