TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE "QUARTERLY REVIEW " ON THE MONARCHY.
WE recommend all English politicians, whether Tory or Liberal, who care either for political freedom or for the Constitutional system, to read with careful attention the first article in the Quarterly Review for April. Its author, while nomi- nally writing an answer to the well-known and most able pam- phlet, by " Verax," on " The Crown and the Cabinet," lays down with a certain air of authority principles which, if they were accepted—and we know them to have made a certain progress —would place both the Constitution and the Monarchy in the gravest peril. In an article which, in spite of its many assumptions and its historical inaccuracies, is not without ability, he proposes that Englishmen should revert to the Constitution as it was under William III.,—that is, that " public opinion," lifting itself above the Parties, should place the control of Foreign Affairs and War in the hands of the Crown. He says this must be, because,— WE recommend all English politicians, whether Tory or Liberal, who care either for political freedom or for the Constitutional system, to read with careful attention the first article in the Quarterly Review for April. Its author, while nomi- nally writing an answer to the well-known and most able pam- phlet, by " Verax," on " The Crown and the Cabinet," lays down with a certain air of authority principles which, if they were accepted—and we know them to have made a certain progress —would place both the Constitution and the Monarchy in the gravest peril. In an article which, in spite of its many assumptions and its historical inaccuracies, is not without ability, he proposes that Englishmen should revert to the Constitution as it was under William III.,—that is, that " public opinion," lifting itself above the Parties, should place the control of Foreign Affairs and War in the hands of the Crown. He says this must be, because,— " In a nation that is self-governed opinion will be the ruling power, but in international dealings it must be evident to all reasonable beings that force is still supreme. If a nation, therefore, values its independence, it must be prepared to use its force, and for this purpose it must be ready to give generous and ungrudging support to its sovereign power. The Monarch is at once the head and the arm of the constitution, in whose judgment rests the decision of peace and war, and on whose will depend the movements of the military and naval forces of the country. Moreover, the Sovereign, and not his Ministers, is the visible representa- tive of the national majesty in the eyes of all foreign Powers. Consti- tutional arrangements are nothing to absolute monarchs ; it is the monarch of each nation who is in their view responsible for all the actions to which the nation collectively commits itself. Hence the English Sovereign has a double interest in the conduct of foreign affairs ; first, the security of his country, and next, the maintenance of his per- sonal honour. Therefore, though, on the principle of self-government, the opinion of the Queen may not in the decision of home affairs be of more value than that of her poorest subject who possesses a vote, yet in foreign questions it is obvious that her interest is beyond all comparison greater than that of any other single Englishman, and may even be compared to that of the nation itself. Hence it follows that, not only by virtue of her prerogative, but by the nature of things, she must be allowed a large personal share in the control of our foreign policy."
And he further says not only that this is so, but that it ought to be so, for " on what grounds is it to be believed that the ordinary Englishman, ignorant of elementary geography, still more ignorant of history, unacquainted with foreign languages, manners, and modes of thought, and peculiarly susceptible of insular prejudice, can judge with sagacity of imperial ques- tions, requiring the deepest knowledge of human nature and the most accurate acquaintance with principle and detail ?" The House of Commons cannot maintain a consistent policy, and the Sovereign can. The House of Commons cannot select suitable allies, and the Sovereign can. The Empire has been enormously increased, and,—
" If they are the true children of their fathers, Englishmen will show that they know how to maintain both liberty and empire by placing full confidence in their Sovereign. Our Empire rests upon opinion, and the Crown is the centre to which all sound opinion, independently of party, should gravitate. Her Majesty and all the members of the Royal Family have shown how clearly they understand that tho interests of the Crown and the nation are identical ; and in the opportunities of collecting, centralising, and directing opinion, it is plain that no in- fluence can compare with that of the monarch. We ought not to refuse to contemplate possibilities because they seem to be remote. Let us sup- pose that parties disappeared, and Parliament, once more deliberately confining itself to its old office of control, left all initiative in the hands of the Executive. What obstacle would be thereby opposed to rising energy and ambition ? Honour and place would still be open to all who distinguished themselves in council. Ministers no doubt would be selected more at the discretion of the Sovereign, and though they would still be responsible to the people, they would cease to be what they now tend to become, its creatures. if it be said that such a constitutional balance would be dangerous to freedom, we answer that, even if it were, it is the natural consequence of self-government under the English Constitution, and therefore a contingency that freedom must be prepared to face. But the supposed danger is a phantom, arising out of recol- lections of days when the Crown wielded almost absolute power, whereas the Crown has now no solid support but opinion ; and if a monarch should ever be blind enough to mistake his interest, and bold enough to encroach on his subjects' liberties by force, it is incredible that in a people accustomed to centuries of freedom, there should not be sufficient means of self-defence. Our true defence against over- centralisation lies in our habits of municipal independence. The policy of Conservidism is plain. It is to localise whatever of our interests is domestic, and to centralise whatever is imperial These prin- ciples are as binding on us now as ever, but what private person is in a position to say how they ought to be applied, to understand the exact point at which the interests of England are touched, either by aggres- sion on English rights, or on the rights of others no less essential than our own to the maintenance of European Law ? There is only one quarter in which the knowledge exists, in which the unity and con- tinuity of England's policy are kept ever clearly in view apart from the
illusions of party warfare. That quarter is the Crown, represented by the Ministry. There is only one member of the nation on whom the foreign relations of the country in respect of its honour and majesty bear with an immediate and personal effect. That member is the Queen." •
We have made these long extracts from the text of the article- because we know how readily the new Tories resort to the assertion that they have been misrepresented, and therefore give them all the benefit they can derive from the use of their own words, but we must burden our article with one more ex- tract. This time it is not from the Quarterly, but from Mr. Disraeli's greatest and frankest political novel, Coningsby."' It is thus that he makes his ideal character, the serene and unimpassioned Sidonia, describe the policy of the future :- "'I suspect the reverse,' replied Sidonia. 'The tendency of ad- vanced civilisation is in truth to pure Monarchy. Monarchy is indeed a government which requires a high degree of civilisation for its fall development. It needs the support of free laws and manners, and of a widely-diffused intelligence. Political compromises are not to be- tolerated except at periods of rude transition. An educated nation recoils from the imperfect vicariate of what is called a representative government. Your House of Commons that has absorbed all other powers in the State, will in all probability fall more rapidly than it rose. Public opinion has a more direct, a more comprehensive, a more- efficient organ for its utterance, than a body of men sectionally chosen. Tho Printing-press is a political element unknown to classic or feudal times. It absorbs in a great degree the duties of the Sovereign, the Priest, the Parliament ; it controls, it educates, it discusses. That public opinion, when it acts, would appear in the form of one who has no class interests. In an enlightened age the Monarch on the throne,. free from the vulgar prejudices and the corrupt interests of the subject, becomes again divine !"
Is it possible to doubt that the author of the essay in the Quarterly has drunk deeply of the Premier's wisdom, and expresses in the dull and prosy English that Englishmen best understand, the self-same ideas with which the brilliant Syrian thirty-four years ago startled England, and which now at last are coming to the front as ideas to mould our English Constitu- tional policy ? Or is there any doubt that his object is to tell us that because the Queen and her family think that Russian policy should be defeated—an indecorous hint, for which he is responsible, and not the Spectator—therefore the people should be ready for war with Russia ? They can manage tariffs, but must leave higher affairs to their superiors, for he argues :—" It is therefore plain that, in the view of Verax,' the nation is not only competent to decide on the direction of its internal interests, but to originate and control the course of foreign policy. Now, for our part, we think it can be very conclusively proved, both from reason and experi- ence, that a House of Commons elected on the principle of- numerical representation is utterly unqualified for the functions which its flatterers would thrust upon it."
It is hardly necessary, we imagine, to prove to Constitutional Tories, the grave and quiet men who are just now so powerless,. but who wish always for freedom, though on the old lines, that the doctrines here laid down are utterly fatal to tha Constitution as now understood, and that they involve per- sonal government in all the important Departments, Foreign Affairs, the Army, the Navy, and Finance. It is simply impossible for the Sovereign to create a Foreign Policy, or make durable alliances, or resolve on Was or Peace, without complete control of the necessary machinery, without the power to settle how many soldiers there shall be, and what number of ships, and what extent of taxation. To allow the King to initiate and manage a great foreign policy, and then to refuse him the soldiers, sailors, and money required to make it successful, would be only to make England ridiculous in its own eyes and the eyes of all the world. He must be allowed to keep in readiness the necessary Army and the required Naval strength, to offer the pay which will draw sufficient men or to impose a conscription, to accumulate the needful stores, and when war is imminent to raise the needful loans suddenly and without warning, and how much of our boasted freedom would be left to us then ? It is nonsense to say that the sanction of Parliament is to be asked, for if the sanction is asked in sincerity Parliament must dictate the policy it is asked to support, and the Reviewer's proposal goes hopelessly to pieces. He obviously contemplates that Parliament, or rather the opinion which rules Parliament, shall on such matters as foreign affairs or war always support the Sovereign, and the liberty of always support- ing him cheerfully is all that he is willing to concede. That will not, we imagine, be enough for the English people, which in- tends to remain self-governing even when the Subject of dis- pute is the killing of its soldiers, and which is already pur- chasing " Verax " by the thousand, and suspiciously asking what all this talk about the Monarch and the Multitude means ; but we do not want to discuss that just now. Our contention is that whether the people like them or not, these proposals imply not constitutional freedom, as we and our fathers have known it, but personal government on all the greater affairs of political life. If they are accepted, Englishmen may, for what we know, conquer the world ; but they will not be freemen, will not have the right even seriously to discuss their own dearest interests, but will be a people free only for muni- cipal affairs. They may regulate the Police, but not the Army ; settle the amount of rates, but not the amount of national taxation ; decide on their action in regard to the franchise, but not on their action in regard to foreign States. They may make any currency law they like, but must vote any millions foreign policy requires ; may invent all the new guarantees for liberty they choose, but must go to war when- ever and wherever they are bid. It is scarcely necessary to answer such rubbish. The work is done when it is exposed, when quiet Tories are shown what they are expected to do, when old aristocrats and landed squires and cultivated lawyers are informed that they are no longer to have influence on politics, or even a veto on mad wars, but are to approve whatever a King and his Minister may lay before them as a policy. But we want to point out briefly the excessive danger to which theories of this kind expose an institution on which even new Tories, we presume, place some value,—namely, the Throne. No scheme the wit of man can devise can permanently separate re- sponsibility and power, and if opinion is to vest the Crown with all this new authority—authority as great as George III. ever claimed, and greater than he could without a nominee Parliament have enjoyed—it will invest it also with a new responsibility. Suppose there is failure, who is to answer to the people, who most assuredly will have their answer to the full ? The Ministry ? Then the Ministry, a mere Committee elected by Parliament, must dictate the policy to be pursued, and the Reviewer's arguments are nullities. The Crown ? Just think for a moment what that means. The Reviewer justly ridicules the absurd agitation which on the news of the Crimean disasters arose among the people against Prince Albert, and the preposterous belief—a belief which rose as high as Mr. Roebuck—that he was a traitor, and had intended the expedition to fail. But just imagine, if the Prince had been really responsible, if he had ordered war, if his arrangements had failed, if he had neglected the Commis- sariat, if, in short, he had been as powerful as the Reviewer would have an English King to be, could anything have saved him from the exasperation of the people ? We believe firmly that had such been the case, and Prince Albert King of England, Great Britain would have been at this moment a Republic, and the Royal Family, whom the Quarterly so indiscreetly mentions, Hanoverian nobles with great estates. The safety of the Throne, which, as we have so often argued, is essential to our moderated liberty, depends on its release from responsibility, on its relief from the burden of personal power, on the willingness of its occupant to confide in the Ministry whom the people choose, and to support the policy which they, through their representatives, have accepted. That the King should remonstrate, and argue, and influence, and do all these things with the force inseparable from ancient kingship, is most legitimate ; but to oppose a policy or dictate one is to emerge from the seclusion in which alone our English Kings or any kings are safe, and to lower the Crown to its position in the countries where defeat implies, if not a revolution, at least an abdication of the throne.
We cannot imagine how any one who remembers the Crimean war, who recollects how near we were to an ostracism of the aristocracy, how tremendous might have been the result if all Mr. Layard's charges had been justified, or if an aristocrat had not been found competent to conduct a war, can even wish for such a position for the English Monarchy, unless, indeed, he wishes—which we do not believe—that it should fall like a Ministry which has been beaten in war. Suppose, as matters stand, that we go to war, and as usual when we go to war, sustain reverses, that the expedition to Gallipoli or elsewhere proves a Walcheren expedition, what will happen ? Amidst a roar of public execration such as we have never yet heard—the roar of the householders, not of the ten-pounders—the Ministry will be driven from power, to be replaced probably by some man not now known,—but the Monarchy will be as safe as after Waterloo. But let the Quarterly's ideas prevail, let it be known that the war is a war of the Royal Family as he would have it—we intend no dis- respect to them in quoting such ideas—and what would happen ? If the best happened, the old order of things would be restored, with written guarantees under which " prerogative " would disappear from our system ; while, if the worst,—we leave the picture to the historian of the future. Of all the enemies of the English Monarchy, those who plead as the Quarterly does for the revival of its powers under the Tudors or the Stuarts are the most directly dangerous to that lengthened, dignified, and prosperous continuance for which the infinite majority of sensible Englishmen now pray.
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