TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE QUEEN'S NEXT EFFORT.
THE present not offering the brightest hopes of Ministerial success, the Examiner of last Sunday cheered the "confiding Liberals" by this Mysterious promise of something to be looked for at a future time- " The Queen has exercised her prerogative for the deliverance of her people from the burdens and restrictions which cramp their commerce and circum- scribe their industry; and, should need be, this will not be the last effort which her Majesty will wake for this great object." The meaning of this oracular enunciation we cannot satisfactorily make out, though we have pondered over it with much meditating. It may resemble the Delphic response to Pyrrhus, " Credo te, Eacida, Romanos vincere posse " ; which being interpreted, after the event, was found to mean exactly the reverse of what its dupe expected : and perhaps our Queen is about to stipulate for Free Trade from Sir ROBERT. On the other hand, it may be that a larger " coup d'etat " is meditated by the high prerogative Whigs ; and, instead of seizing Sugar-duties without the authority of Par- liament, they may be about to dispense with Parliament altoge- ther, and let us enjoy the blessings of a maternal despotism. Or it may be that the mysterious "not last effort" referred to one or the other of a couple of Whig catch-at-straw-tales which have been going about during the week. The graver scheme evidently ema- nates from the reading Whigs—students in the school of MACAULAY and BULLER, who prefer " ordinances " to laws : the other as clearly comes from the Bedchamber department. The graver plan is to this effect. If the Crown should be beaten in the contest to which its " friends" have committed it with the Country, the Conservatives are to be denied "a Cabinet." The Queen is to insist upon a reversion to the older forms of govern- ment; and official business is to be laid before the Council—that is, the Privy Council,* and debated and decided in full divan ; to which, we suppose, Whigs are to be summoned in force, while Tories are excluded, unless, like vulgar fellows, they talk about their rights, when they may be struck off the Privy list. That this plan would be unconstitutional, in the strict letter, we will not undertake to assert. The Cabinet Council, we believe, originated with CHARLES the Second, but did not assume its present shape till after the Revolution. Its first establishment was owing to the Privy Council becoming too large for business. The number, form, and composition of the King's Council, is moreover, accord- ing to BLACKSTONE a matter altogether resting with the Crown, provided the Councillors be natural-born subjects and take the re- quisite oaths. To deny a Ministry "a Cabinet," and to insist upon affairs being laid before the Privy Council, is perhaps a prerogative of the Crown, as it certainly is to choose the Council ; and HARRY the Eighth, when addressing the Yorkshire rebels, in 1536, uttered nothing but constitutional truth, however right royally he might express himself, when he said- " It appertaineth nothing to any of our subjects to appoint Us Our Council, ne We will take it so at your hands. Wherefore henceforth iemember better the duties of subjects to your King and Sovereign Lord, and meddle no more of those nor such like things as ye have nothing to do in." This right, however, like any other right, is to be exercised with discretion ; and it might seem scarcely discreet to revive a form which even the careless and indifferent CHARLES the Second felt himself compelled to alter as too cumbrous for his times. Not to dwell upon the practical difficulty of giving effect to the decisions of this Council, (for what nominal Minister would, by affixing his signature, or the Great or Privy Seal, become responsible for measures which he did not advise, or perhaps opposed ?) we may observe that Parliament has also the right of considering the ap- pointments to the Council, just as it has of deciding upon the choice of Ministers or public measures. The composition of this Council seems always to have been regarded with jealousy ; and one case of Parliamentary interference took place under the reign of a young Sovereign whom Parliament subsequently had to depose- " One of the charges against the Archbishop of York, the Duke of Ireland, and the Earl of Suffolk, in the 11th Ric. H. was, that they had often induced the King to assemble Councils composed of certain Lords, Justices, and others, without the assent or presence of the Lords of the Great Council.'" At the same time, let it be remembered, that if this part of the prerogative were even an absolute instead of a discretionary and questionable right, there is no prerogative to compel Sir ROBERT PEEL and Lord STANLEY, or any one else, to take office under such absurd and silly conditions. Is there no limit to Whig treachery ? must they, as a necessity of their nature, the more confidentially they are trusted the more deeply betray ? In the Bedchamber intrigue, they committed their young mistress to a personal contest, about "personal pretensions," through which, as we remarked at the time, "at the next election, she will, according to all human probability, have to submit to Mi- nisterial domination and personal triumph, and that of the most offensive nature, and on a most derogatory subject of contest." t They have in this very election committed her to a contest with her people, in which she will "in all human probability" be de- feated by them. We do not suppose that all the old Whigs are * It appears to have been in primitive times called the "Continual or Permanent Council," in contradistinction to the "Great Council"; and it seems to have taken its last name from the members being sworn to secrecy- " Secret " or "Privy Council." See the Prefaces to the Proceedings and Ordi- nances of the Privy Council of England, edited by Sir HARRIS NICOLAS. Spectator, No. 570, lit June 1839; "The New Whig Notion on Great Constitutional Questions." approvers of this precious scheme, for the instinct of a gentleman may serve instead of historical knowledge or common sense ; but many of the party are evidently prepared to commit her still further, for their own sordid purposes—to commit her to a contest on a point which, if theoretically correct, is practically absurd, and could only end in rendering her little, insuring her defeat, and exasperating her victors. The second story relates to an " effort " in the obstetric line; and the plan has evidently been concocted by the Bedchamber people, with a due admixture of old women, nurses, and accou- cheurs. According to these oracles, the golden age is about to be restored: they are engaged in an eclogue, taking Vutores "Polio" for their model, and they anticipate a reconciliation more wonderful than the rather short one between note ANTONY and AUGUSTUS, and predict, from the birth of a prince or princess, miracles as great as the poet foretold on the appearance of his patron's son.
" Redeunt Saturnia regna :
Jam DOTEG progenies ecelo demittitur alto. To modo nascenti puero quo ferrea primum Desinet, ac toto surget gens aurea mundo, Casts fare Lucina. - - - - ------ Te duce, si qua manent, sceleris vestigia nostri, Irrita perpetua solvent formidine terms.
Nec magnos metuent armenta leones. Occidet et serpens, et fallax herbs veneni Occidet."
In plain English, the meaning of all this is, that Whig minorities (armenta) are no longer to fear Tory majorities (magnos leases). Nay, Toryism itself is to become extinct, venom and all. When Parliament meets, routine business—granting supplies and impos- ing taxes—is alone to be discussed ; and the Houses will be pro- rogued till the spring, "on account of the interesting situation of the Queen." Conjured by Lueina, Sir ROBERT PEEL and his followers are to consent to give their opponents two clear quarter- days, in order not to disappoint her Majesty's Whig longings, which it is apprehended, and Sir JAMES CLARK is ready to vouch for it, might have serious effects. Nay, by next spring, favente Lueina, or some other goddess or god, (who knows ?) her Majesty may again be in a situation too " interesting " to be "agitated": : so that, by a proper selection of times for meeting and proroguing Parliament, the Whigs may be able to carry on the Queen's government for a long time to come. All that the Whigs would have to do would be to beseech " casta Lueina " against what the Examiner, at an sera when its cue was to "speak evil of dignities," called "the accidents of birth,"1-. no misreckoning in the "time." We are loath to dissolve a pleasing illusion,—for what is hope but a series of illusions ? and yet, who without hope could bear to live ?—still we must direct the attention of the expectants of a secular millennium to a line in the more cautious ancient "Polio," which may qualify their hopes from Tory self- denial—
" Puma tamen suberunt prism vestigia frandis."
Which, looking at the context, means that the extinction of' Toryism is an exploit reserved for the " retas firmata" of the coming prince.
"The accidents of birth bear hard upon us."
POPULAR ENTHUSIASM.
POPULAR enthusiasm is like fire, a good servant but a bad master. Popular enthusiasm can accomplish any thing; but it depends upon the direction given to it whether its work shall be for good or for evil. The popular enthusiasm excited at the time of the Reform Bill could have effected any thing ; but the Whigs only wanted it to secure them in office ; and that being accomplished, their next effort was to "let off the steam." This was a sad miscalculation on their part : the Tories were superior to them in the art of management and in the prestige attendant upon a long possession of power, and were (there is no great flattery here) their equals in talent and honesty. Popular enthusiasm, blind and misguided, was the only counterbalancing power they could oppose to the advan- tages possessed by the Tories. The Whigs, discovering the error of their attempt to dispense altogether with popular enthusiasm, hit upon the bright conception of keeping alive just as much popular enthusiasm as would serve their purpose : they undertook to keep it alive, but not too strong, by feeding it sufficiently to pre- vent its going out altogether, but not enough to make it rampant. The experiment was the exact counterpart of that related by Evan Dhu in Waverley—the endeavour of some wise Scotchman to bring his mare to live upon nothing, by gradually reducing its allowance of provender. The result has been the same—" just as he brought her to live on a straw a day, the puir brute died." Ministers have extinguished popular enthusiasm, in their attempt to reduce its strength to a manageable pitch. The wide-spread apathy seen in the present election shows that popular enthusiasm no longer exists. Their appeals to it fall unavailing on "the dull cold ear of death:' The Whig attempts to get up a movement by the stimulus of their Budget, remind us forcibly of what RABELAIS tells of the experi- ments upon gases instituted by Panurge on the body of a dead mule.
Previous page
