(1876.)
The subjects for our solemn consideration are the seclusion of her Most
Gracious Majesty, and the complaints thereanent published in several
respectable journals. In order to investigate the matter thoroughly, we
constituted ourselves (the unknown number x) into a special Commission
of Inquiry. We are happy to state that the said Commission has concluded
its arduous labors, and now presents its report within a week of its
appointment; surely the most prompt and rapid of commissions. The cause
of this celerity we take to be the fact that the Commissioners were
unsalaried; we being unanimously of opinion that had we received good
pay for the inquiry throughout the period of our session, we could have
prolonged it with certain benefit, if not to the public yet to
ourselves, for a great number of years. If, therefore, you want a
Commission to do its work rapidly vote no money for it. And do not fear
that the most headlong haste in gathering evidence and composing the
report will diminish the value of such report; for when a Commission has
lasted for years or months it generally rises in a quite different state
of the subject matter from that in which it first sat, and the report
must be partly obsolete, partly a jumble of anachronisms. In brief, it
may be fairly affirmed as a general rule that no Commission of Inquiry
is of any value at all; the appointment of one being merely a dodge by
which people who don’t want to act on what they and everybody else see
quite well with their naked eyes, set a number of elderly gentlemen to
pore upon it with spectacles and magnifying glasses until dazed and
stupid with poring, in the hope that this process will last so long that
ere it is finished the public will have forgotten the matter altogether.
And now for the result of our inquiries on this subject, which is not
only immensely important, but is even sacred to our loyal hearts.
A West-end tradesman complains bitterly that through the absence of the
Court from Buckingham Palace, and the diminished number and splendor of
royal pomps and entertainments, the “Season” is for him a very poor
season indeed. The Commissioners, find that the said tradesman (whose
knowledge seems-limited to a knowledge of his business, supposing he
knows that) is remarkably well off; and consider that West-end tradesmen
have no valid vested interest in Royalty and the Civil List, that at the
worst they do-a capital trade with the aristocracy and wealthy classes
(taking good care that the punctual and honest shall amply overpay their
losses by the unpunctual and dishonest); that if they are not satisfied
with the West-end, they had better try the East-end, and see how that
will suit them; and, in short, that this tradesman is not worth
listening to.
Numerous fashionable and noble people (principally ladies) complain that
they have no Court to shine, in. The Commissioners think that they shine
a great deal too much already, and in the most wasteful manner, gathered
together by hundreds, light glittering on light; and that if they really
want to shine beneficially in a court there are very many very dark
courts in London where the light of their presence would be most
welcome.
It is complained on behalf of their Royal Highnesses the Prince and
Princess of Wales that they have to perform many of the duties of
royalty without getting a share of the royal allowance. The
Commissioners think that if the necessary expenses of the heir to the
throne are really too heavy for his modest, income, and are increased by
the performance of royal duties, he had better send in yearly a bill to
his Mamma for expenses incurred on her account, and a duplicate of the
same to the Chancellor to the Exchequer; so that in every Budget the
amount of the Civil List shall be equitably divided between her Majesty
and her Majesty’s eldest son, doubtless to their common satisfaction.
It is complained on behalf of various foreign royal or ruling personages
that while they in their homes treat generously the visiting members of
our royal family, they are treated very shabbily when visiting here. The
Commissioners think that Buckingham Palace, being seldom or never wanted
by the Queen, and very seldom wanted for the reception of the English
Court, should be at all times open for such royal or ruling visitors;
that a Lord Chamberlain, or other such noble domestic servant should be
detailed to attend on them, and see to their hospitable treatment in all
respects; and that to cover the expenditure on their account a fair
deduction should be made from her Majesty’s share of the Civil List,
which deduction, being equitable her Majesty would no doubt view with
extreme pleasure.
It is complained on the part of her Majesty’s. Ministers, that when they
want the royal assent and signature to important Acts of Parliament,
they have to lose a day or two and undergo great fatigue (which is
peculiarly hard on men who are mostly aged, and all overworked) in
travelling to and from Osborne or Balmoral. The Commissioners think the
remedy plain and easy, as in the two preceding cases. Let a law be
passed assuming that absence, like silence, gives, consent; so that
whenever her Majesty is not in town, the Speaker of the Commons or the
Lord Chancellor, or other great officer of State, be empowered to seal
and sign in her name, and generally to perform any of her real and royal
duties, on the formal demand of the Ministry, who always (and not the
Queen) are responsible to Parliament and the country for all public
acts.
A taxpayer complains that for fourteen years her Majesty has been
punctually drawing all moneys allotted to support the royal dignity,
while studiously abstaining from all, or nearly all, the hospitalities
and other expensive functions incident to the support of the said
dignity. The Commissioners consider that her Majesty is perchance
benefiting the country more (and may be well aware of the fact) by
taking her money for doing nothing than if she did something for it;
that if she didn’t take the said money, somebody else would (as for
instance, were she to abdicate, the Prince of Wales, become King, would
want and get at least as much); so that while our Government remains as
it is, the complaint of the said taxpayer is foolish.
Another Taxpayer, who must be a most mean-minded fellow, a stranger to
all sacred sympathies and hallowed emotions, says: “If a washerwoman,
being stupified by the death of her husband, neglected her business for
more than a week or two, she would certainly lose her custom or
employment, and not all the sanctity of conjugal grief (about which
reverential journalists gush) would make people go on paying her for
doing nothing; and if this washerwoman had money enough of her own to
live on comfortably, people would call her shameless and miserly if she
asked for or accepted payment while doing nothing; and if this
washerwoman had a large family of boys and girls around her, and shut
herself up to brood upon her husband’s death for even three or four
months, people would reckon her mad with selfish misery. The
Commissioners (as soon as they recover from the stupefaction of horror
into which this blasphemy has thrown them) consider and reply that there
can be no proper comparison of a Queen and a washerwoman, and that
nobody would think of instituting one, except a brute, a Republican, an
Atheist, a Communist, a, fiend in human form; that anyhow if, as this
wretch says, a washerwoman would be paid for a week or two without
working, in consideration of her conjugal affliction, it is plain that a
Queen, who (it will be universally allowed) is at least a hundred
thousand times as good as a washerwoman, is therefore entitled to at
least a hundred thousand times the “week or two” of salary without
performance of duty—that is, to at least 1,923 or 3,846 years, whereas
this heartless and ribald reprobate himself only complains that our
beloved Sovereign has done nothing for her wage throughout “fourteen
years.” The Commissioners therefore eject this complainant with
ineffable scorn; and only wish they knew his name and address, that they
might denounce him for prosecution to the Attorney-General.
A Malthusian (whatever kind of creature that may be) complains that her
Majesty has set an example of uncontrolled fecundity to the nation and
the royal family, which, besides being generally immoral, is likely, at
the modest estimate of £6,000 per annum per royal baby, to lead to the
utter ruin of the realm in a few generations. The Commissioners, after
profound and prolonged consideration, can only remark that they do not
understand the complaint any better than the name (which they do not
understand at all) of the “Malthusian;” that they have always been led
to believe that a large family is a great honor to a legitimately united
man and woman; and that, finally, they beg to refer the Malthusian to
the late Prince Consort.
A devotedly loyal Royalist (who unfortunately does not give the name and
address of his curator) complains that her Majesty, by doing nothing
except receive her Civil List, is teaching the country that it can get
on quite as well without a monarch as with one, and might therefore just
as well, and indeed very much better, put the amount of the Civil List
into its own pocket and call itself a Republic. The Commissioners remark
that this person seems the most rational of the whole lot of
complainants (most rational, not for his loyalty, but most rational as
to the grounds of his complaint, from his own point of view; in
accordance with the dictum, “A madman reasons rightly from wrong
premises; a fool wrongly from right ones,”) and that his surmise is very
probably correct—namely, that her Majesty is really a Republican in
principle, but not liking (as is perfectly natural in her position) to
publicly profess and advocate opinions so opposed to the worldly
interests of all her friends and relatives, has been content to further
these opinions practically for fourteen years past by her conduct,
without saying a word on the subject. The Commissioners, however, find
one serious objection to this surmise in the fact that if her Majesty is
really a Republican at heart, she must wish to exclude the Prince of
Wales from the Throne; while it seems to them that the intimate
knowledge she must have of his wisdom and virtues (not to speak of her
motherly affection) cannot but make her feel that no greater blessing
could come to the nation after her death than his reigning over it. As
this is the only complaint which the Commissioners find at once
well-founded and not easy to remedy, they are happy to know that it is
confined to the very insignificant class of persons who are “devotedly
loyal Royalists.”
The Commissioners thus feel themselves bound to report that all the
complaints they have heard against our beloved and gracious Sovereign
(except the one last cited, which is of no importance) are without
foundation, or frivolous, or easily remedied, and that our beloved and
gracious Sovereign (whom may Heaven long preserve!) could not do better
than she is now doing, in doing nothing.
But in order to obviate such complaints, which do much harm, whether ill
or well founded, and which especially pain the delicate susceptibilities
of all respectable men and women, the Commissioners have thought it
their duty to draw up the following project of a Constitution, not to
come into force until the death of our present beloved and gracious
Sovereign (which may God, if so it please Him, long avert!), and to be
modified in its details according to the best wisdom of our national
House of Palaver.