TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE QUEEN.
T"Queen has reigned longer than any previous Sovereign of these islands. She has seen rise and decline and die out men and interests and policies and movements, not by the score, but literally by the thousand. Great statesmen, great Generals, great poets, have played their parts before her and have passed away, and she alone remains. Old men can recall no other cry but that of "God Save the Queen," and such phrases as " the King's subjects," "the King's Palace," and "King's Counsel" are unknown and unremembered phrases save among a score or so of white-haired grandfathers. In truth, the Queen has outreigned and outlived every one and every- thing save only the love and fidelity of the nation. She received the flower of loyalty bruised, battered, and half- ruined from her Hanoverian predecessors, but in her bands it has revived and grown to what we see it now. Think for a moment of the position the Queen now occupies. It wants not the zeal and enthusiasm of a worshipper of Monarchy, but merely eyes to see and a brain to under- stand, to proclaim her the most striking, the most splendid, the noblest figure in the whole English-speaking world. There has never been before, and in all probability never will be again, such a spectacle as that of the woman who now wears the crown of the United Kingdom. For sixty years she has held one of the most trying and most diffi- cult positions in the world, and yet has come through her great ordeal unscathed. We do not wish on such an occa- sion to heap on her the blasphemies of flattery or to say that she has made no mistakes. She has made mistakes like every other human being, but it is not too much to say that they have been mistakes of the head, never of the heart. She has always done what she believed to be her duty, and this is enough. Perhaps the most marvellous thing about the Queen's reign is the fact that she has never sacrificed any one to her own personal advantage. Of almost every other Sovereign of whom history tells us there have been men and women who have been able to say, and say truly, "I did my best to serve my Sovereign. I sacrificed everything for him, and for a time my services were used and accepted ; but in the end I was forgotten and put aside." No one can say that truly of the Queen. Her loyalty to those about her has been tried again and again, and has never failed. She may have had likes and dis- likes, and prejudices reasonable or unreasonable, like every other human being, but from that cynicism which looks upon men and women like pawns on the chess- board, to be moved about at will, and thrown aside when the game is over, she has not a trace. This absence of all cynicism is indeed the ruling characteristic of the Queen. The cynical man plays with human hopes and motives, and disbelieving alike in himself and in all the world, is content to forget his instruments, because he declares that under like circumstances they would forget him. What makes this absence of cynicism the more extraordinary in the Queen is the fact that her life has been passed in the atmosphere which of all others is likely to breed this canker of the mind. Throughout her reign the Queen has seen and known everything at close quarters. The veils behind which the politicians work have been drawn aside for her, and she has seen even good men struggling, pushing, and fighting for their own personal objects as even good men will fight when inflamed by ambition. To see such spec- tacles and yet to remain simple-hearted and untouched by cynicism is hardly less than a miracle. The Queen possesses also the quality which is the co-relative of the want of cynicism. She is by the common consent of all who know her the most truthful of human beings. People may say what they will, but that again is not a common quality in Sovereigns. Bacon from his vast ex- perience quotes with approval the dictum of Solomon that "the heart of the King is inscrutable." And so as a rule it is. But such inscrutability and truthfulness do not keep house together. The King, to make his heart inscrutable, even if he refuses to descend to actual falsehood, must practise an economy of truth which is but little removed from falsehood. And how great must be a Sovereign's temptation to adopt such inscrutability. It is their surest protection from so much that makes their lives difficult and uneasy. That the Queen has not made her heart inscrutable or wrapped her true nature in mystery and disguise, but has instead stood forth to the world a truth- speaking, straightforward, falsehood-defying woman, is among her highest claims to honour. That she has never sighed as an honourable woman, and obeyed the temptation. to lie like a politic Queen, adds a grace above all graces to her fame. Next, the Queen must deserve praise, and praise without stint, for her perfect discretion. Think of the secrets that she has known touching the honour and happiness of hundreds of men and women. Yet who dare- say that the Queen by a chance or foolish word ever betrayed the confidences which have been made known to her ? It is part of the etiquette of our Constitution that the Queen is told everything. She knows what great soldier once showed gross cowardice before the enemy. Yet he died honoured by all. A careless remark from her might have let the world into the secret of how this man was bribed by foreign gold, how that man, once respected by all and filling some great post of trust, had, in truth, many a dark stain upon his life. The Queen has seen the ugly, knotted, uneven side of the tapestry of life as a, confessor in the Roman Church sees it, but she has as- rigidly respected and observed the trust of her high office- as if she had been a priest. The country may not have known in detail the Queen's loyalty, truthfulness, and discretion, those qualities which above all others go to. make up high character, but instinctively it has grasped them. Ask the man in the street why he respects and loves the Queen, and he will tell you in a moment. It is not because she is the lawful Queen of these islands, and con- forms to the requirements of the Act of Settlement—i.e., is the heir of the body of the Electress Sophia, joins in the Communion of the Church of England, and has not intermarried with a Papist—but because he thinks it his duty to love his Sovereign, because of her high and noble character. It is because he knows the Queen to be a woman not only of pure life, but a woman endowed in the- highest degree with all that makes a human being worthy, that he loves the Queen. Life, the world knows well, requires an art, and it is because the Queen has practised this arb so nobly and with so much devotion to the highest ideals,. that she is so much loved. Mark, too, that the Queen owes the love which she inspires not merely to the belief that she loves England, and would sacrifice herself in an instant to. the national interests. The country is proud of that, but it has felt the same of many of its great men, and yet not accorded them the feelings reserved for the Queen. The people feel that the Queen, though she loves the country,. loves honour and truth and righteousness more, and there- fore the foundation of her patriotism is of the surest. She would not, and, could not, act basely even to serve and save the State.
We come back, then, to this. Her personal character is the chief glory of the Queen. It is much that during her reign we have grown so happy, so rich, so powerful ; but it is more that she has shown us that a woman may take so great a share in the ordering of human affairs, and yet remain "unspotted from the world." It is a lesson we all need to learn, and it has been given us in a way by which all men may profit. There may be some force in saying that it is easy to do right if one is rich. There is none in saying that it would be easy to do right if only one were a Sovereign. No task is in reality harder than that imposed upon a King or Queen,—especially if the Sovereign is bound by a Con- stitution such as ours. The constitutional Monarch has added to every other temptation incident to Royal power the temptation to intrigue against the Ministers who are imposed upon him by the public voice, and who are empowered to speak and act in his name. When the Monarch believes the policy chosen by his Ministers to be wrong or foolish or dangerous the temptation to use indirect means to oppose them must sometimes be extreme. Depend upon it, it can never be easy to be a constitutional King. But the Queen, though in sixty years she must again and again have differed from her Ministers, has never stooped to intrigue against them as did her grandfather and her uncle. The notions of intrigue and the Queen in conjunction are inconceivable. Loyalty, truthfulness, and discretion are not the qualities on which intrigues are built. But as we have said, and as we must say again, loyalty, truthfulness, and discretion are the Queen's characteristics: Long may the nation enjoy the rule of one who is marked by such qualities, and may they become the ideals of her successors. That is the prayer of all the Queen's subjects. The Queen has set them an example of truth and honesty, and has shown them enthroned the ideal which all the English-speaking peoples instinctively desire to follow. That ideal is to behave, in all times and in all places and in all trials, like an English gentleman. The Queen has fulfilled this ideal, and in fulfilling it has won for herself the love and admiration of all her people.
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