English Constitution — The Monarchy, part 1

I.

The use of the Queen, in a dignified capacity, is incalculable.

Without her in England, the present English Government would fail and pass away.

Most people when they read that the Queen walked on the slopes at Windsor--that the Prince of Wales went to the Derby--have imagined that too much thought and prominence were given to little things.

But they have been in error; and it is nice to trace how the actions of a retired widow and an unemployed youth become of such importance.

The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government.

The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.

It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.

The nature of a constitution, the action of an assembly, the play of parties, the unseen formation of a guiding opinion, are complex facts, difficult to know and easy to mistake.

But the action of a single will, the fiat of a single mind, are easy ideas: anybody can make them out, and no one can ever forget them.

When you put before the mass of mankind the question, "Will you be governed by a king, or will you be governed by a constitution?"

the inquiry comes out thus--"Will you be governed in a way you understand, or will you be governed in a way you do not understand?"

The issue was put to the French people; they were asked, "Will you be governed by Louis Napoleon, or will you be governed by an assembly?"

The French people said, "We will be governed by the one man we can imagine, and not by the many people we cannot imagine".

The best mode of comprehending the nature of the two Governments, is to look at a country in which the two have within a comparatively short space of years succeeded each other.

"The political condition," says Mr. Grote, "which Grecian legend everywhere presents to us, is in its principal features strikingly different from that which had become universally prevalent among the Greeks in the time of the Peloponnesian War.

Historical oligarchy, as well as democracy, agreed in requiring a certain established system of government, comprising the three elements of specialised functions, temporary functionaries, and ultimate responsibility (under some forms or other) to the mass of qualified citizens--either a Senate or an Ecclesia, or both.

There were, of course, many and capital distinctions between one Government and another, in respect to the qualification of the citizen, the attributes and efficiency of the general assembly, the admissibility to power, etc. ; and men might often be dissatisfied with the way in which these questions were determined in their own city.

But in the mind of every man, some determining rule or system--something like what in modern times is called a CONSTITUTION--was indispensable to any Government entitled to be called legitimate, or capable of creating in the mind of a Greek a feeling of moral obligation to obey it.

The functionaries who exercise authority under it might be more or less competent or popular; but his personal feelings towards them were commonly lost in his attachment or aversion to the general system.

If any energetic man could by audacity or craft break down the Constitution, and render himself permanent ruler according to his own will and pleasure, even though he might govern well, he could never inspire the people with any sentiment of duty towards him: his sceptre was illegitimate from the beginning, and even the taking of his life, far from being interdicted by that moral feeling which condemned the shedding of blood in other cases, was considered meritorious: he could not even be mentioned in the language except by a name (_tyrannos_, despot) which branded him as an object of mingled fear and dislike.

"If we carry our eyes back from historical to legendary Greece, we find a picture the reverse of what has been here sketched.

We discern a government in which there is little or no scheme or system, still less any idea of responsibility to the governed, but in which the mainspring of obedience on the part of the people consists in their personal feeling and reverence towards the chief.

We remark, first and foremost, the King; next, a limited number of subordinate kings or chiefs;

afterwards, the mass of armed freemen, husbandmen, artisans, freebooters, &c. ; lowest of all, the free labourers for hire and the bought slaves.

The King is not distinguished by any broad, or impassable boundary from the other chiefs, to each of whom the title Basileus is applicable as well as to himself: his supremacy has been inherited from his ancestors, and passes by inheritance, as a general rule, to his eldest son, having been conferred upon the family as a privilege by the favour of Zeus.

In war, he is the leader, foremost in personal prowess, and directing all military movements; in peace, he is the general protector of the injured and oppressed; he offers up moreover those public prayers and sacrifices which are intended to obtain for the whole people the favour of the gods.

An ample domain is assigned to him as an appurtenance of his lofty position, and the produce of his fields and his cattle is consecrated in part to an abundant, though rude hospitality.

Moreover he receives frequent presents, to avert his enmity, to conciliate his favour, or to buy off his exactions; and when plunder is taken from the enemy, a large previous share, comprising probably the most alluring female captive, is reserved for him apart from the general distribution.

"Such is the position of the King in the heroic times of Greece--the only person (if we except the herald, and priests, each both special and subordinate) who is then presented to us as clothed with any individual authority--the person by whom all the executive functions, then few in number, which the society requires, are either performed or directed.

His personal ascendancy--derived from Divine countenance bestowed both upon himself individually and upon his race, and probably from accredited Divine descent--is the salient feature in the picture: the people hearken to his voice, embrace his propositions, and obey his orders: not merely resistance, but even criticism upon his acts, is generally exhibited in an odious point of view, and is indeed never heard of except from some one or more of the subordinate princes."

The characteristic of the English Monarchy is that it retains the feelings by which the heroic kings governed their rude age, and has added the feelings by which the Constitutions of later Greece ruled in more refined ages.

We are a more mixed people than the Athenians, or probably than any political Greeks.

We have progressed more unequally.

The slaves in ancient times were a separate order; not ruled by the same laws, or thoughts, as other men.

It was not necessary to think of them in making a constitution: it was not necessary to improve them in order to make a constitution possible.

The Greek legislator had not to combine in his polity men like the labourers of Somersetshire, and men like Mr. Grote.

He had not to deal with a community in which primitive barbarism lay as a recognised basis to acquired civilisation.

WE HAVE.

We have no slaves to keep down by special terrors and independent legislation.

But we have whole classes unable to comprehend the idea of a constitution--unable to feel the least attachment to impersonal laws.

Most do indeed vaguely know that there are some other institutions besides the Queen, and some rules by which she governs.

But a vast number like their minds to dwell more upon her than upon anything else, and therefore she is inestimable.

A republic has only difficult ideas in government; a Constitutional Monarchy has an easy idea too; it has a comprehensible element for the vacant many, as well as complex laws and notions for the inquiring few.

A FAMILY on the throne is an interesting idea also.

It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.

No feeling could seem more childish than the enthusiasm of the English at the marriage of the Prince of Wales.

They treated as a great political event, what, looked at as a matter of pure business, was very small indeed.

But no feeling could be more like common human nature as it is, and as it is likely to be.

The women--one half the human race at least--care fifty times more for a marriage than a ministry.

All but a few cynics like to see a pretty novel touching for a moment the dry scenes of the grave world.

A

princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind.

We smile at the Court Circular; but remember how many people read the Court Circular!

Its use is not in what it says, but in those to whom it speaks.

They say that the Americans were more pleased at the Queen's letter to Mrs. Lincoln, than at any act of the English Government.

It was a spontaneous act of intelligible feeling in the midst of confused and tiresome business.

Just so a royal family sweetens politics by the seasonable addition of nice and pretty events.

It introduces irrelevant facts into the business of government, but they are facts which speak to "men's bosoms" and employ their thoughts.

To state the matter shortly, royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions.

A Republic is a government in which that attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting actions.

Accordingly, so long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to the understanding.

Secondly.

The English Monarchy strengthens our Government with the strength of religion.

It is not easy to say why it should be so.

Every instructed theologian would say that it was the duty of a person born under a Republic as much to obey that Republic as it is the duty of one born under a Monarchy to obey the monarch.

But the mass of the English people do not think so; they agree with the oath of allegiance; they say it is their duty to obey the "Queen," and they have but hazy notions as to obeying laws without a queen.

In former times, when our Constitution was incomplete, this notion of local holiness in one part was mischievous.

All parts were struggling, and it was necessary each should have its full growth.

But superstition said one should grow where it would, and no other part should grow without its leave.

The whole cavalier party said it was their duty to obey the king, whatever the king did.

There was to be "passive obedience" to him, and there was no religious obedience due to any one else.

He was the "Lord's anointed," and no one else had been anointed at all.

The Parliament, the laws, the press were human institutions; but the Monarchy was a Divine institution.

An undue advantage was given to a part of the Constitution, and therefore the progress of the whole was stayed.

After the Revolution this mischievous sentiment was much weaker.

The change of the line of sovereigns was at first conclusive, If there was a mystic right in any one, that right was plainly in James II.

; if it was an English duty to obey any one whatever he did, he was the person to be so obeyed; if there was an inherent inherited claim in any king, it was in the Stuart king to whom the crown had come by descent, and not in the Revolution king to whom it had come by vote of Parliament.

All through the reign of William III.

there was (in common speech) one king whom man had made, and another king whom God had made.

The king who ruled had no consecrated loyalty to build upon; although he ruled in fact, according to sacred theory there was a king in France who ought to rule.

But it was very hard for the English people, with their plain sense and slow imagination, to keep up a strong sentiment of veneration for a foreign adventurer.

He lived under the protection of a French king; what he did was commonly stupid, and what he left undone was very often wise.

As soon as Queen Anne began to reign there was a change of feeling; the old sacred sentiment began to cohere about her.

There were indeed difficulties which would have baffled most people;

but an Englishman whose heart is in a matter is not easily baffled.

Queen Anne had a brother living and a father living, and by every rule of descent, their right was better than hers.

But many people evaded both claims.

They said James II.

had "run away," and so abdicated, though he only ran away because he was in duresse and was frightened, and though he claimed the allegiance of his subjects day by day.

The Pretender, it was said, was not legitimate, though the birth was proved by evidence which any Court of Justice would have accepted.

The English people were "out of" a sacred monarch, and so they tried very hard to make a new one.

Events, however, were too strong for them.

They were ready and eager to take Queen Anne as the stock of a new dynasty; they were ready to ignore the claims of her father and the claims of her brother, but they could not ignore the fact that at the critical period she had no children.

She had once had thirteen, but they all died in her lifetime, and it was necessary either to revert to the Stuarts or to make a new king by Act of Parliament.

According to the Act of Settlement passed by the Whigs, the crown was settled on the descendants of the "Princess Sophia" of Hanover, a younger daughter of a daughter of James I. There were before her James II.

, his son, the descendants of a daughter of Charles I. , and elder children of her own mother.

But the Whigs passed these over because they were Catholics, and selected the Princess Sophia, who, if she was anything, was a Protestant.

Certainly this selection was statesmanlike, but it could not be very popular.

It was quite impossible to say that it was the duty of the English people to obey the House of Hanover upon any principles which do not concede the right of the people to choose their rulers, and which do not degrade monarchy from its solitary pinnacle of majestic reverence, and make it one only among many expedient institutions.

If a king is a useful public functionary who may be changed, and in whose place you may make another, you cannot regard him with mystic awe and wonder; and if you are bound to worship him, of course you cannot change him.

Accordingly, during the whole reigns of George I. and George II.

the sentiment of religious loyalty altogether ceased to support the Crown.

The prerogative of the king had no strong party to support it; the Tories, who naturally would support it, disliked the actual king; and the Whigs, according to their creed, disliked the king's office.

Until the accession of George III.

the most vigorous opponents of the Crown were the country gentlemen, its natural friends, and the representatives of quiet rural districts, where loyalty is mostly to be found, if anywhere.

But after the accession of George III.

the common feeling came back to the same point as in Queen Anne's time.

The English were ready to take the new young prince as the beginning of a sacred line of sovereigns, just as they had been willing to take an old lady, who was the second cousin of his great-great-grandmother.

So it is now.

If you ask the immense majority of the Queen's subjects by what right she rules, they would never tell you that she rules by Parliamentary right, by virtue of 6 Anne, c. 7. They will say she rules by "God's grace"; they believe that they have a mystic obligation to obey her.

When her family came to the Crown it was a sort of treason to maintain the inalienable right of lineal sovereignty, for it was equivalent to saying that the claim of another family was better than hers: but now, in the strange course of human events, that very sentiment has become her surest and best support.

But it would be a great mistake to believe that at the accession of George III.

the instinctive sentiment of hereditary loyalty at once became as useful as now.

It began to be powerful, but it hardly began to be useful.

There was so much harm done by it as well as so much good, that it is quite capable of being argued whether on the whole it was beneficial or hurtful.

Throughout the greater part of his life George III.

was a kind of "consecrated obstruction".

Whatever he did had a sanctity different from what any one else did, and it perversely happened that he was commonly wrong.

He had as good intentions as any one need have, and he attended to the business of his country, as a clerk with his bread to get attends to the business of his office.

But his mind was small, his education limited, and he lived in a changing time.

Accordingly, he was always resisting what ought to be, and prolonging what ought not to be.

He was the sinister but sacred assailant of half his ministries; and when the French Revolution excited the horror of the world, and proved democracy to be "impious," the piety of England concentrated upon him, and gave him tenfold strength.

The Monarchy by its religious sanction now confirms all our political order; in George III.'

s time it confirmed little except itself.

It gives now a vast strength to the entire Constitution, by enlisting on its behalf the credulous obedience of enormous masses;

then it lived aloof, absorbed all the holiness into itself, and turned over all the rest of the polity to the coarse justification of bare expediency.

A principal reason why the Monarchy so well consecrates our whole state is to be sought in the peculiarity many Americans and many utilitarians smile at.

They laugh at this "extra," as the Yankee called it, at the solitary transcendent element.

They quote Napoleon's saying, "that he did not wish to be fatted in idleness," when he refused to be grand elector in Sieyes' Constitution, which was an office copied, and M. Thiers says, well copied, from constitutional monarchy.

But such objections are wholly wrong.

No doubt it was absurd enough in the Abbe Sieyes to propose that a new institution, inheriting no reverence, and made holy by no religion, should be created to fill the sort of post occupied by a constitutional king in nations of monarchical history.

Such an institution, far from being so august as to spread reverence around it, is too novel and artificial to get reverence for itself; if, too, the absurdity could anyhow be augmented, it was so by offering an office of inactive uselessness and pretended sanctity to Napoleon, the most active man in France, with the greatest genius for business, only not sacred, and exclusively fit for action.

But the blunder of Sieyes brings the excellence of real monarchy to the best light.

When a monarch can bless, it is best that he should not be touched.

It should be evident that he does no wrong.

He should not be brought too closely to real measurement.

He should be aloof and solitary.

As the functions of English royalty are for the most part latent, it fulfils this condition.

It seems to order, but it never seems to struggle.

It is commonly hidden like a mystery, and sometimes paraded like a pageant, but in neither case is it contentious.

The nation is divided into parties, but the crown is of no party.

Its apparent separation from business is that which removes it both from enmities and from desecration, which preserves its mystery, which enables it to combine the affection of conflicting parties--to be a visible symbol of unity to those still so imperfectly educated as to need a symbol.

Thirdly.

The Queen is the head of our society.

If she did not exist the Prime Minister would be the first person in the country.

He and his wife would have to receive foreign ministers, and occasionally foreign princes, to give the first parties in the country; he and she would be at the head of the pageant of life; they would represent England in the eyes of foreign nations; they would represent the Government of England in the eyes of the English.