great evil. In a country where people did not care for the outward show
of life, where the genius of the people was untheatrical, and they
exclusively regarded the substance of things, this matter would be
trifling. Whether Lord and Lady Derby received the foreign ministers,
or Lord and Lady Palmerston, would be a matter of indifference; whether
they gave the nicest parties would be important only to the persons at
those parties. A nation of unimpressible philosophers would not care at
all how the externals of life were managed. Who is the showman is not
material unless you care about the show.
But of all nations in the world the English are perhaps the least a
nation of pure philosophers. It would be a very serious matter to us to
change every four or five years the visible head of our world. We are
not now remarkable for the highest sort of ambition; but we are
remarkable for having a great deal of the lower sort of ambition and
envy. The House of Commons is thronged with people who get there merely
for "social purposes," as the phrase goes; that is, that they and their
families may go to parties else impossible. Members of Parliament are
envied by thousands merely for this frivolous glory, as a thinker calls
it. If the highest post in conspicuous life were thrown open to public
competition, this low sort of ambition and envy would be fearfully
increased. Politics would offer a prize too dazzling for mankind;
clever base people would strive for it, and stupid base people would
envy it. Even now a dangerous distinction is given by what is
exclusively called public life. The newspapers describe daily and
incessantly a certain conspicuous existence; they comment on its
characters, recount its details, investigate its motives, anticipate
its course. They give a precedent and a dignity to that world which
they do not give to any other. The literary world, the scientific
world, the philosophic world, not only are not comparable in dignity to
the political world, but in comparison are hardly worlds at all. The
newspaper makes no mention of them, and could not mention them. As are
the papers, so are the readers; they, by irresistible sequence and
association, believe that those people who constantly figure in the
papers are cleverer, abler, or at any rate, somehow higher, than other
people. "I wrote books," we heard of a man saying, "for twenty years,
and I was nobody; I got into Parliament, and before I had taken my seat
I had become somebody." English politicians are the men who fill the
thoughts of the English public: they are the actors on the scene, and
it is hard for the admiring spectators not to believe that the admired
actor is greater than themselves. In this present age and country it
would be very dangerous to give the slightest addition to a force
already perilously great. If the highest social rank was to be
scrambled for in the House of Commons, the number of social adventurers
there would be incalculably more numerous, and indefinitely more eager.
A very peculiar combination of causes has made this characteristic one
of the most prominent in English society. The middle ages left all
Europe with a social system headed by Courts. The Government was made
the head of all society, all intercourse, and all life; everything paid
allegiance to the sovereign, and everything ranged itself round the
sovereign--what was next to be greatest, and what was farthest least.
The idea that the head of the Government is the head of society is so
fixed in the ideas of mankind that only a few philosophers regard it as
historical and accidental, though when the matter is examined, that
conclusion is certain and even obvious.
In the first place, society as society does not naturally need a head
at all. Its constitution, if left to itself, is not monarchical, but
aristocratical. Society, in the sense we are now talking of, is the
union of people for amusement and conversation. The making of marriages
goes on in it, as it were, incidentally, but its common and main
concern is talking and pleasure. There is nothing in this which needs a
single supreme head; it is a pursuit in which a single person does not
of necessity dominate. By nature it creates an "upper ten thousand"; a
certain number of persons and families possessed of equal culture, and
equal faculties, and equal spirit, get to be on a level--and that level
a high level. By boldness, by cultivation, by "social science" they
raise themselves above others; they become the "first families," and
all the rest come to be below them. But they tend to be much about a
level among one another; no one is recognised by all or by many others
as superior to them all. This is society as it grew up in Greece or
Italy, as it grows up now in any American or colonial town. So far from
the notion of a "head of society" being a necessary notion, in many
ages it would scarcely have been an intelligible notion. You could not
have made Socrates understand it. He would have said, "If you tell me
that one of my fellows is chief magistrate, and that I am bound to obey
him, I understand you, and you speak well; or that another is a priest,
and that he ought to offer sacrifices to the gods which I or any one
not a priest ought not to offer, again I understand and agree with you.
But if you tell me that there is in some citizen a hidden charm by
which his words become better than my words, and his house better than
my house, I do not follow you, and should be pleased if you will
explain yourself."
And even if a head of society were a natural idea, it certainly would
not follow that the head of the civil Government should be that head.
Society as such has no more to do with civil polity than with
ecclesiastical. The organisation of men and women for the purpose of
amusement is not necessarily identical with their organisation for
political purposes, any more than with their organisation for religious
purposes; it has of itself no more to do with the State than it has
with the Church. The faculties which fit a man to be a great ruler are
not those of society; some great rulers have been unintelligible like
Cromwell, or brusque like Napoleon, or coarse and barbarous like Sir
Robert Walpole. The light nothings of the drawing-room and the grave
things of office are as different from one another as two human
occupations can be. There is no naturalness in uniting the two; the end
of it always is, that you put a man at the head of society who very
likely is remarkable for social defects, and is not eminent for social
merits.
The best possible commentary on these remarks is the history of English
history. It has not been sufficiently remarked that a change has taken
place in the structure of our society exactly analogous to the change
in our polity. A Republic has insinuated itself beneath the folds of a
Monarchy. Charles II. was really the head of society; Whitehall, in his
time, was the centre of the best talk, the best fashion, and the most
curious love affairs of the age. He did not contribute good morality to
society, but he set an example of infinite agreeableness. He
concentrated around him all the light part of the high world of London,
and London concentrated around it all the light part of the high world
of England. The Court was the focus where everything fascinating
gathered, and where everything exciting centred. Whitehall was an
unequalled club, with female society of a very clever and sharp sort
superadded. All this, as we know, is now altered. Buckingham Palace is
as unlike a club as any place is likely to be. The Court is a separate
part, which stands aloof from the rest of the London world, and which
has but slender relations with the more amusing part of it. The first
two Georges were men ignorant of English, and wholly unfit to guide and
lead English society. They both preferred one or two German ladies of
bad character to all else in London. George III. had no social vices,
but he had no social pleasures. He was a family man, and a man of
business, and sincerely preferred a leg of mutton and turnips after a
good day's work, to the best fashion and the most exciting talk. In
consequence, society in London, though still in form under the
domination of a Court, assumed in fact its natural and oligarchical
structure. It, too, has become an "upper ten thousand"; it is no more
monarchical in fact than the society of New York. Great ladies give the
tone to it with little reference to the particular Court world. The
peculiarly masculine world of the clubs and their neighbourhood has no
more to do in daily life with Buckingham Palace than with the
Tuileries. Formal ceremonies of presentation and attendance are
retained. The names of levee and drawing-room still sustain the memory
of the time when the king's bed-chamber and the queen's "withdrawing
room" were the centres of London life, but they no longer make a part
of social enjoyment: they are a sort of ritual in which nowadays almost
every decent person can if he likes take part. Even Court balls, where
pleasure is at least supposed to be possible, are lost in a London
July. Careful observers have long perceived this, but it was made
palpable to every one by the death of the Prince Consort. Since then
the Court has been always in a state of suspended animation, and for a
time it was quite annihilated. But everything went on as usual. A few
people who had no daughters and little money made it an excuse to give
fewer parties, and if very poor, stayed in the country, but upon the
whole the difference was not perceptible. The queen bee was taken away,
but the hive went on.
Refined and original observers have of late objected to English royalty
that it is not splendid enough. They have compared it with the French
Court, which is better in show, which comes to the surface everywhere
so that you cannot help seeing it, which is infinitely and beyond
question the most splendid thing in France. They have said, "that in
old times the English Court took too much of the nation's money, and
spent it ill; but now, when it could be trusted to spend well, it does
not take enough of the nation's money. There are arguments for not
having a Court, and there are arguments for having a splendid Court;
but there are no arguments for having a mean Court. It is better to
spend a million in dazzling when you wish to dazzle, than
three-quarters of a million in trying to dazzle and yet not dazzling."
There may be something in this theory; it may be that the Court of
England is not quite as gorgeous as we might wish to see it. But no
comparison must ever be made between it and the French Court. The
Emperor represents a different idea from the Queen. He is not the head
of the State; he IS the State. The theory of his Government is that
every one in France is equal, and that the Emperor embodies the
principle of equality. The greater you make him, the less, and
therefore the more equal, you make all others. He is magnified that
others may be dwarfed. The very contrary is the principle of English
royalty. As in politics it would lose its principal use if it came
forward into the public arena, so in society if it advertised itself it
would be pernicious. We have voluntary show enough already in London;
we do not wish to have it encouraged and intensified, but quieted and
mitigated. Our Court is but the head of an unequal, competing,
aristocratic society; its splendour would not keep others down, but
incite others to come on. It is of use so long as it keeps others out
of the first place, and is guarded and retired in that place. But it
would do evil if it added a new example to our many examples of showy
wealth--if it gave the sanction of its dignity to the race of
expenditure.
Fourthly. We have come to regard the Crown as the head of our morality.
The virtues of Queen Victoria and the virtues of George III. have sunk
deep into the popular heart. We have come to believe that it is natural
to have a virtuous sovereign, and that the domestic virtues are as
likely to be found on thrones as they are eminent when there. But a
little experience and less thought show that royalty cannot take credit
for domestic excellence. Neither George I., nor George II., nor William
IV. were patterns of family merit; George IV. was a model of family
demerit. The plain fact is, that to the disposition of all others most
likely to go wrong, to an excitable disposition, the place of a
constitutional king has greater temptations than almost any other, and
fewer suitable occupations than almost any other. All the world and all
the glory of it, whatever is most attractive, whatever is most
seductive, has always been offered to the Prince of Wales of the day,
and always will be. It is not rational to expect the best virtue where
temptation is applied in the most trying form at the frailest time of
human life. The occupations of a constitutional monarch are grave,
formal, important, but never exciting; they have nothing to stir eager
blood, awaken high imagination, work off wild thoughts. On men like
George III., with a predominant taste for business occupations, the
routine duties of constitutional royalty have doubtless a calm and
chastening effect. The insanity with which he struggled, and in many
cases struggled very successfully, during many years, would probably
have burst out much oftener but for the sedative effect of sedulous
employment. But how few princes have ever felt the anomalous impulse
for real work; how uncommon is that impulse anywhere; how little are
the circumstances of princes calculated to foster it; how little can it
be relied on as an ordinary breakwater to their habitual temptations!
Grave and careful men may have domestic virtues on a constitutional
throne, but even these fail sometimes, and to imagine that men of more
eager temperaments will commonly produce them, is to expect grapes from
thorns and figs from thistles.
Lastly, constitutional royalty has the function which I insisted on at
length in my last essay, and which, though it is by far the greatest, I
need not now enlarge upon again. It acts as a DISGUISE. It enables our
real rulers to change without heedless people knowing it. The masses of
Englishmen are not fit for an elective government; if they knew how
near they were to it, they would be surprised, and almost tremble.
Of a like nature is the value of constitutional royalty in times of
transition. The greatest of all helps to the substitution of a Cabinet
government for a preceding absolute monarchy is the accession of a king
favourable to such a government, and pledged to it. Cabinet government,
when new, is weak in time of trouble. The Prime Minister--the chief on
whom everything depends, who must take responsibility if any one is to
take it, who must use force if any one is to use it--is not fixed in
power. He holds his place, by the essence of the Government, with some
uncertainty. Among a people well-accustomed to such a Government, such
a functionary may be bold: he may rely, if not on the Parliament, on
the nation which understands and values him. But when that Government
has only recently been introduced, it is difficult for such a Minister
to be as bold as he ought to be. His power rests too much on human
reason, and too little on human instinct. The traditional strength of
the hereditary monarch is at these times of incalculable use. It would
have been impossible for England to get through the first years after
1688 but for the singular ability of William III. It would have been
impossible for Italy to have attained and kept her freedom without the
help of Victor Emmanuel: neither the work of Cavour nor the work of
Garibaldi were more necessary than his. But the failure of Louis
Philippe to use his reserve power as constitutional monarch is the most
instructive proof how great that reserve power is. In February, 1848,
Guizot was weak because his tenure of office was insecure. Louis
Philippe should have made that tenure certain. Parliamentary reform
might afterwards have been conceded to instructed opinion, but nothing
ought to have been conceded to the mob. The Parisian populace ought to
have been put down, as Guizot wished. If Louis Philippe had been a fit
king to introduce free government, he would have strengthened his
Ministers when they were the instruments of order, even if he
afterwards discarded them when order was safe, and policy could be
discussed. But he was one of the cautious men who are "noted" to fail
in old age: though of the largest experience and of great ability, he
failed and lost his crown for want of petty and momentary energy, which
at such a crisis a plain man would have at once put forth.
Such are the principal modes in which the institution of royalty by its
august aspect influences mankind, and in the English state of
civilisation they are invaluable. Of the actual business of the
sovereign--the real work the Queen does--I shall speak in my next paper.
II.
The House of Commons has inquired into most things, but has never had a
committee on "the Queen". There is no authentic blue-book to say what
she does. Such an investigation cannot take place; but if it could, it
would probably save her much vexatious routine, and many toilsome and
unnecessary hours.
The popular theory of the English Constitution involves two errors as
to the sovereign. First, in its oldest form at least, it considers him
as an "Estate of the Realm," a separate co-ordinate authority with the
House of Lords and the House of Commons. This and much else the
sovereign once was, but this he is no longer. That authority could only
be exercised by a monarch with a legislative veto. He should be able to
reject bills, if not as the House of Commons rejects them, at least as
the House of Peers rejects them. But the Queen has no such veto. She
must sign her own death-warrant if the two Houses unanimously send it
up to her. It is a fiction of the past to ascribe to her legislative
power. She has long ceased to have any. Secondly, the ancient theory
holds that the Queen is the executive. The American Constitution was
made upon a most careful argument, and most of that argument assumes
the king to be the administrator of the English Constitution, and an
unhereditary substitute for him--viz., a president--to be peremptorily
necessary. Living across the Atlantic, and misled by accepted
doctrines, the acute framers of the Federal Constitution, even after
the keenest attention, did not perceive the Prime Minister to be the
principal executive of the British Constitution, and the sovereign a
cog in the mechanism. There is, indeed, much excuse for the American
legislators in the history of that time. They took their idea of our
Constitution from the time when they encountered it. But in the
so-called Government of Lord North, George III. was the Government.
Lord North was not only his appointee, but his agent. The Minister
carried on a war which he disapproved and hated, because it was a war
which his sovereign approved and liked. Inevitably, therefore, the
American Convention believed the King, from whom they had suffered, to
be the real executive, and not the Minister, from whom they had not
suffered.
If we leave literary theory, and look to our actual old law, it is
wonderful how much the sovereign can do. A few years ago the Queen very
wisely attempted to make life peers, and the House of Lords very
unwisely, and contrary to its own best interests, refused to admit her
claim. They said her power had decayed into non-existence; she once had
it, they allowed, but it had ceased by long disuse. If any one will run
over the pages of Comyn's Digest or any other such book, title
"Prerogative," he will find the Queen has a hundred such powers which
waver between reality and desuetude, and which would cause a protracted
and very interesting legal argument if she tried to exercise them. Some
good lawyer ought to write a careful book to say which of these powers
are really usable, and which are obsolete. There is no authentic
explicit information as to what the Queen can do, any more than of what
she does.
In the bare superficial theory of free institutions this is undoubtedly
a defect. Every power in a popular Government ought to be known. The
whole notion of such a Government is that the political people--the
governing people--rules as it thinks fit. All the acts of every
administration are to be canvassed by it; it is to watch if such acts
seem good, and in some manner or other to interpose if they seem not
good. But it cannot judge if it is to be kept in ignorance; it cannot
interpose if it does not know. A secret prerogative is an
anomaly--perhaps the greatest of anomalies. That secrecy is, however,
essential to the utility of English royalty as it now is. Above all
things our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about
it you cannot reverence it. When there is a select committee on the
Queen, the charm of royalty will be gone. Its mystery is its life. We
must not let in daylight upon magic. We must not bring the Queen into
the combat of politics, or she will cease to be reverenced by all
combatants; she will become one combatant among many. The existence of
this secret power is, according to abstract theory, a defect in our
constitutional polity, but it is a defect incident to a civilisation
such as ours, where august and therefore unknown powers are needed, as
well as known and serviceable powers.
If we attempt to estimate the working of this inner power by the
evidence of those, whether dead or living, who have been brought in
contact with it, we shall find a singular difference. Both the
courtiers of George III. and the courtiers of Queen Victoria are agreed
as to the magnitude of the royal influence. It is with both an accepted
secret doctrine that the Crown does more than it seems. But there is a
wide discrepancy in opinion as to the quality of that action. Mr. Fox
did not scruple to describe the hidden influence of George III. as the
undetected agency of "an infernal spirit". The action of the Crown at
that period was the dread and terror of Liberal politicians. But now
the best Liberal politicians say, "WE shall never know, but when
history is written our children may know, what we owe to the Queen and
Prince Albert". The mystery of the Constitution, which used to be hated
by our calmest, most thoughtful, and instructed statesmen, is now loved
and reverenced by them.
Before we try to account for this change, there is one part of the
duties of the Queen which should be struck out of the discussion. I
mean the formal part. The Queen has to assent to and sign countless
formal documents, which contain no matter of policy, of which the
purport is insignificant, which any clerk could sign as well. One great
class of documents George III. used to read before he signed them, till
Lord Thurlow told him, "It was nonsense his looking at them, for he
could not understand them". But the worst case is that of commissions
in the army. Till an Act passed only three years since the Queen used
to sign ALL military commissions, and she still signs all fresh
commissions. The inevitable and natural consequence is that such
commissions were, and to some extent still are, in arrears by
thousands. Men have often been known to receive their commissions for
the first time years after they have left the service. If the Queen had
been an ordinary officer she would long since have complained, and long
since have been relieved of this slavish labour. A cynical statesman is
said to have defended it on the ground "that you MAY have a fool for a
sovereign, and then it would be desirable he should have plenty of
occupation in which he can do no harm". But it is in truth childish to
heap formal duties of business upon a person who has of necessity so
many formal duties of society. It is a remnant of the old days when
George III. would know everything, however trivial, and assent to
everything, however insignificant. These labours of routine may be
dismissed from the discussions. It is not by them that the sovereign
acquires his authority either for evil or for good.