experience with which few Ministers could contend. The king could say:
"Have you referred to the transactions which happened during such and
such an administration, I think about fourteen years ago? They afford
an instructive example of the bad results which are sure to attend the
policy which you propose. You did not at that time take so prominent a
part in public life as you now do, and it is possible you do not fully
remember all the events. I should recommend you to recur to them, and
to discuss them with your older colleagues who took part in them. It is
unwise to recommence a policy which so lately worked so ill." The king
would indeed have the advantage which a permanent under-secretary has
over his superior the Parliamentary secretary--that of having shared in
the proceedings of the previous Parliamentary secretaries. These
proceedings were part of his own life; occupied the best of his
thoughts, gave him perhaps anxiety, perhaps pleasure, were commenced in
spite of his dissuasion, or were sanctioned by his approval. The
Parliamentary secretary vaguely remembers that something was done in
the time of some of his predecessors, when he very likely did not know
the least or care the least about that sort of public business. He has
to begin by learning painfully and imperfectly what the permanent
secretary knows by clear and instant memory. No doubt a Parliamentary
secretary always can, and sometimes does, silence his subordinate by
the tacit might of his superior dignity. He says: "I do not think there
is much in all that. Many errors were committed at the time you refer
to which we need not now discuss." A pompous man easily sweeps away the
suggestions of those beneath him. But though a minister may so deal
with his subordinate, he cannot so deal with his king. The social force
of admitted superiority by which he overturned his under-secretary is
now not with him but against him. He has no longer to regard the
deferential hints of an acknowledged inferior, but to answer the
arguments of a superior to whom he has himself to be respectful. George
III. in fact knew the forms of public business as well or better than
any statesman of his time. If, in addition to his capacity as a man of
business and to his industry, he had possessed the higher faculties of
a discerning states man, his influence would have been despotic. The
old Constitution of England undoubtedly gave a sort of power to the
Crown which our present Constitution does not give. While a majority in
Parliament was principally purchased by royal patronage, the king was a
party to the bargain either with his Minister or without his Minister.
But even under our present Constitution a monarch like George III.,
with high abilities, would possess the greatest influence. It is known
to all Europe that in Belgium King Leopold has exercised immense power
by the use of such means as I have described.
It is known, too, to every one conversant with the real course of the
recent history of England, that Prince Albert really did gain great
power in precisely the same way. He had the rare gifts of a
constitutional monarch. If his life had been prolonged twenty years,
his name would have been known to Europe as that of King Leopold is
known. While he lived he was at a disadvantage. The statesmen who had
most power in England were men of far greater experience than himself.
He might, and no doubt did, exercise a great, if not a commanding
influence over Lord Malmesbury, but he could not rule Lord Palmerston.
The old statesman who governed England, at an age when most men are
unfit to govern their own families, remembered a whole generation of
states men who were dead before Prince Albert was born. The two were of
different ages and different natures. The elaborateness of the German
prince--an elaborateness which has been justly and happily compared
with that of Goethe--was wholly alien to the half-Irish, half-English,
statesman. The somewhat boisterous courage in minor dangers, and the
obtrusive use of an always effectual but not always refined,
commonplace, which are Lord Palmerston's defects, doubtless grated on
Prince Albert, who had a scholar's caution and a scholar's courage. The
facts will be known to our children's children, though not to us.
Prince Albert did much, but he died ere he could have made his
influence felt on a generation of statesmen less experienced than he
was, and anxious to learn from him.
It would be childish to suppose that a conference between a Minister
and his sovereign can ever be a conference of pure argument. "The
divinity which doth hedge a king" may have less sanctity than it had,
but it still has much sanctity. No one, or scarcely any one, can argue
with a Cabinet Minister in his own room as well as he would argue with
another man in another room. He cannot make his own points as well; he
cannot unmake as well the points presented to him. A monarch's room is
worse. The best instance is Lord Chatham, the most dictatorial and
imperious of English statesmen, and almost the first English statesman
who was borne into power against the wishes of the king and against the
wishes of the nobility--the first popular Minister. We might have
expected a proud tribune of the people to be dictatorial to his
sovereign--to be to the king what he was to all others. On the
contrary, he was the slave of his own imagination; there was a kind of
mystic enchantment in vicinity to the monarch which divested him of his
ordinary nature. "The least peep into the king's closet," said Mr.
Burke, "intoxicates him, and will to the end of his life." A wit said
that, even at the levee, he bowed so low that you could see the tip of
his hooked nose between his legs. He was in the habit of kneeling at
the bedside of George III. while transacting business. Now no man can
ARGUE on his knees. The same superstitious feeling which keeps him in
that physical attitude will keep him in a corresponding mental
attitude. He will not refute the bad arguments of the king as he will
refute another man's bad arguments. He will not state his own best
arguments effectively and incisively when he knows that the king would
not like to hear them. In a nearly balanced argument the king must
always have the better, and in politics many most important arguments
are nearly balanced. Whenever there was much to be said for the king's
opinion it would have its full weight; whatever was said for the
Minister's opinion would only have a lessened and enfeebled weight.
The king, too, possesses a power, according to theory, for extreme use
on a critical occasion, but which he can in law use on any occasion. He
can dissolve; he can say to his Minister, in fact, if not in words,
"This Parliament sent you here, but I will see if I cannot get another
Parliament to send some one else here." George III. well understood
that it was best to take his stand at times and on points when it was
perhaps likely, or at any rate not unlikely, the nation would support
him. He always made a Minister that he did not like tremble at the
shadow of a possible successor. He had a cunning in such matters like
the cunning of insanity. He had conflicts with the ablest men of his
time, and he was hardly ever baffled. He understood how to help a
feeble argument by a tacit threat, and how best to address it to an
habitual deference.
Perhaps such powers as these are what a wise man would most seek to
exercise and least fear to possess. To wish to be a despot, "to hunger
after tyranny," as the Greek phrase had it, marks in our day an
uncultivated mind. A person who so wishes cannot have weighed what
Butler calls the "doubtfulness things are involved in". To be sure you
are right to impose your will, or to wish to impose it, with violence
upon others; to see your own ideas vividly and fixedly, and to be
tormented till you can apply them in life and practice, not to like to
hear the opinions of others, to be unable to sit down and weigh the
truth they have, are but crude states of intellect in our present
civilisation. We know, at least, that facts are many; that progress is
complicated; that burning ideas (such as young men have) are mostly
false and always incomplete. The notion of a far-seeing and despotic
statesman, who can lay down plans for ages yet unborn, is a fancy
generated by the pride of the human intellect to which facts give no
support. The plans of Charlemagne died with him; those of Richelieu
were mistaken; those of Napoleon gigantesque and frantic. But a wise
and great constitutional monarch attempts no such vanities. His career
is not in the air; he labours in the world of sober fact; he deals with
schemes which can be effected--schemes which are desirable--schemes
which are worth the cost. He says to the Ministry his people send to
him, to Ministry after Ministry, "I think so and so; do you see if
there is anything in it. I have put down my reasons in a certain
memorandum, which I will give you. Probably it does not exhaust the
subject, but it will suggest materials for your consideration." By
years of discussion with Ministry after Ministry, the best plans of the
wisest king would certainly be adopted, and the inferior plans, the
impracticable plans, rooted out and rejected. He could not be uselessly
beyond his time, for he would have been obliged to convince the
representatives, the characteristic men of his time. He would have the
best means of proving that he was right on all new and strange matters,
for he would have won to his side probably, after years of discussion,
the chosen agents of the commonplace world--men who were where they
were, because they had pleased the men of the existing age, who will
never be much disposed to new conceptions or profound thoughts. A
sagacious and original constitutional monarch might go to his grave in
peace if any man could. He would know that his best laws were in
harmony with his age; that they suited the people who were to work
them, the people who were to be benefited by them. And he would have
passed a happy life. He would have passed a life in which he could
always get his arguments heard, in which he could always make those who
have the responsibility of action think of them before they acted--in
which he could know that the schemes which he had set at work in the
world were not the casual accidents of an individual idiosyncrasy,
which are mostly much wrong, but the likeliest of all things to be
right--the ideas of one very intelligent man at last accepted and acted
on by the ordinary intelligent many.
But can we expect such a king, or, for that is the material point, can
we expect a lineal series of such kings? Every one has heard the reply
of the Emperor Alexander to Madame de Stael, who favoured him with a
declamation in praise of beneficent despotism. "Yes, Madame, but it is
only a happy accident." He well knew that the great abilities and the
good intentions necessary to make an efficient and good despot never
were continuously combined in any line of rulers. He knew that they
were far out of reach of hereditary human nature. Can it be said that
the characteristic qualities of a constitutional monarch are more
within its reach? I am afraid it cannot. We found just now that the
characteristic use of an hereditary constitutional monarch, at the
outset of an administration, greatly surpassed the ordinary competence
of hereditary faculties. I fear that an impartial investigation will
establish the same conclusion as to his uses during the continuance of
an administration.
If we look at history, we shall find that it is only during the period
of the present reign that in England the duties of a constitutional
sovereign have ever been well performed. The first two Georges were
ignorant of English affairs, and wholly unable to guide them, whether
well or ill; for many years in their time the Prime Minister had, over
and above the labour of managing Parliament, to manage the
woman--sometimes the queen, sometimes the mistress--who managed the
sovereign; George III. interfered unceasingly, but he did harm
unceasingly; George IV. and William IV. gave no steady continuing
guidance, and were unfit to give it. On the Continent, in first-class
countries, constitutional royalty has never lasted out of one
generation. Louis Philippe, Victor Emmanuel, and Leopold are the
founders of their dynasties; we must not reckon in constitutional
monarchy any more than in despotic monarchy on the permanence in the
descendants of the peculiar genius which founded the race. As far as
experience goes, there is no reason to expect an hereditary series of
useful limited monarchs.
If we look to theory, there is even less reason to expect it. A monarch
is useful when he gives an effectual and beneficial guidance to his
Ministers. But these Ministers are sure to be among the ablest men of
their time. They will have had to conduct the business of Parliament so
as to satisfy it; they will have to speak so as to satisfy it. The two
together cannot be done save by a man of very great and varied ability.
The exercise of the two gifts is sure to teach a man much of the world;
and if it did not, a Parliamentary leader has to pass through a
magnificent training before he becomes a leader. He has to gain a seat
in Parliament; to gain the ear of Parliament; to gain the confidence of
Parliament; to gain the confidence of his colleagues. No one can
achieve these--no one, still more, can both achieve them and retain
them--without a singular ability, nicely trained in the varied detail
of life. What chance has an hereditary monarch such as nature forces
him to be, such as history shows he is, against men so educated and so
born? He can but be an average man to begin with; sometimes he will be
clever, but sometimes he will be stupid; in the long run he will be
neither clever nor stupid; he will be the simple, common man who plods
the plain routine of life from the cradle to the grave. His education
will be that of one who has never had to struggle; who has always felt
that he has nothing to gain; who has had the first dignity given him;
who has never seen common life as in truth it is. It is idle to expect
an ordinary man born in the purple to have greater genius than an
extraordinary man born out of the purple; to expect a man whose place
has always been fixed to have a better judgment than one who has lived
by his judgment; to expect a man whose career will be the same whether
he is discreet or whether he is indiscreet to have the nice discretion
of one who has risen by his wisdom, who will fall if he ceases to be
wise.
The characteristic advantage of a constitutional king is the permanence
of his place. This gives him the opportunity of acquiring a consecutive
knowledge of complex transactions, but it gives only an opportunity.
The king must use it. There is no royal road to political affairs:
their detail is vast, disagreeable, complicated, and miscellaneous. A
king, to be the equal of his Ministers in discussion, must work as they
work; he must be a man of business as they are men of business. Yet a
constitutional prince is the man who is most tempted to pleasure, and
the least forced to business. A despot must feel that he is the pivot
of the State. The stress of his kingdom is upon him. As he is, so are
his affairs. He may be seduced into pleasure; he may neglect all else;
but the risk is evident. He will hurt himself; he may cause a
revolution. If he becomes unfit to govern, some one else who is fit may
conspire against him. But a constitutional king need fear nothing. He
may neglect his duties, but he will not be injured. His place will be
as fixed, his income as permanent, his opportunities of selfish
enjoyment as full as ever. Why should he work? It is true he will lose
the quiet and secret influence which in the course of years industry
would gain for him; but an eager young man, on whom the world is
squandering its luxuries and its temptations, will not be much
attracted by the distant prospect of a moderate influence over dull
matters. He may form good intentions; he may say, "Next year I WILL
read these papers; I will try and ask more questions; I will not let
these women talk to me so". But they will talk to him. The most
hopeless idleness is that most smoothed with excellent plans. "The Lord
Treasurer," says Swift, "promised he will settle it to-night, and so he
will say a hundred nights." We may depend upon it the ministry whose
power will be lessened by the prince's attention will not be too eager
to get him to attend.
So it is if the prince come young to the throne; but the case is worse
when he comes to it old or middle-aged. He is then unfit to work. He
will then have spent the whole of youth and the first part of manhood
in idleness, and it is unnatural to expect him to labour. A
pleasure-loving lounger in middle life will not begin to work as George
III. worked, or as Prince Albert worked. The only fit material for a
constitutional king is a prince who begins early to reign--who in his
youth is superior to pleasure--who in his youth is willing to
labour--who has by nature a genius for discretion. Such kings are among
God's greatest gifts, but they are also among His rarest.
An ordinary idle king on a constitutional throne will leave no mark on
his time: he will do little good and as little harm; the royal form of
Cabinet government will work in his time pretty much as the unroyal.
The addition of a cypher will not matter though it take precedence of
the significant figures. But corruptio optimi pessima. The most evil
case of the royal form is far worse than the most evil case of the
unroyal. It is easy to imagine, upon a constitutional throne, an active
and meddling fool who always acts when he should not, who never acts
when he should, who warns his Ministers against their judicious
measures, who encourages them in their injudicious measures. It is easy
to imagine that such a king should be the tool of others; that
favourites should guide him; that mistresses should corrupt him; that
the atmosphere of a bad Court should be used to degrade free government.
We have had an awful instance of the dangers of constitutional royalty.
We have had the case of a meddling maniac. During great part of his
life George III.'s reason was half upset by every crisis. Throughout
his life he had an obstinacy akin to that of insanity. He was an
obstinate and an evil influence; he could not be turned from what was
inexpedient; by the aid of his station he turned truer but weaker men
from what was expedient. He gave an excellent moral example to his
contemporaries, but he is an instance of those whose good dies with
them, while their evil lives after them. He prolonged the American War,
perhaps he caused the American War, so we inherit the vestiges of an
American hatred; he forbade Mr. Pitt's wise plans, so we inherit an
Irish difficulty. He would not let us do right in time, so now our
attempts at right are out of time and fruitless. Constitutional royalty
under an active and half-insane king is one of the worst of
Governments. There is in it a secret power which is always eager, which
is generally obstinate, which is often wrong, which rules Ministers
more than they know themselves, which overpowers them much more than
the public believe, which is irresponsible because it is inscrutable,
which cannot be prevented because it cannot be seen. The benefits of a
good monarch are almost invaluable, but the evils of a bad monarch are
almost irreparable.
We shall find these conclusions confirmed if we examine the powers and
duties of an English monarch at the break-up of an administration. But
the power of dissolution and the prerogative of creating peers, the
cardinal powers of that moment are too important and involve too many
complex matters to be sufficiently treated at the very end of a paper
as long as this.
NO. IV.
THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
In my last essay I showed that it was possible for a constitutional
monarch to be, when occasion served, of first-rate use both at the
outset and during the continuance of an administration; but that in
matter of fact it was not likely that he would be useful. The requisite
ideas, habits, and faculties, far surpass the usual competence of an
average man, educated in the common manner of sovereigns. The same
arguments are entirely applicable at the close of an administration.
But at that conjuncture the two most singular prerogatives of an
English king--the power of creating new peers and the power of
dissolving the Commons--come into play; and we cannot duly criticise
the use or misuse of these powers till we know what the peers are and
what the House of Commons is.
The use of the House of Lords or, rather, of the Lords, in its
dignified capacity--is very great. It does not attract so much
reverence as the Queen, but it attracts very much. The office of an
order of nobility is to impose on the common people--not necessarily to
impose on them what is untrue, yet less what is hurtful; but still to
impose on their quiescent imaginations what would not otherwise be
there. The fancy of the mass of men is incredibly weak; it can see
nothing without a visible symbol, and there is much that it can
scarcely make out with a symbol. Nobility is the symbol of mind. It has
the marks from which the mass of men always used to infer mind, and
often still infer it. A common clever man who goes into a country place
will get no reverence; but the "old squire" will get reverence. Even
after he is insolvent, when every one knows that his ruin is but a
question of time, he will get five times as much respect from the
common peasantry as the newly-made rich man who sits beside him. The
common peasantry will listen to his nonsense more submissively than to
the new man's sense. An old lord will get infinite respect. His very
existence is so far useful that it awakens the sensation of obedience
to a sort of mind in the coarse, dull, contracted multitude, who could
neither appreciate nor perceive any other.
The order of nobility is of great use, too, not only in what it
creates, but in what it prevents. It prevents the rule of wealth--the
religion of gold. This is the obvious and natural idol of the
Anglo-Saxon. He is always trying to make money; he reckons everything
in coin; he bows down before a great heap and sneers as he passes a
little heap. He has a "natural instinctive admiration of wealth for its
own sake". And within good limits the feeling is quite right. So long
as we play the game of industry vigorously and eagerly (and I hope we
shall long play it, for we must be very different from what we are if
we do anything better), we shall of necessity respect and admire those
who play successfully, and a little despise those who play
unsuccessfully. Whether this feeling be right or wrong, it is useless
to discuss; to a certain degree, it is involuntary; it is not for
mortals to settle whether we will have it or not; nature settles for us
that, within moderate limits, we must have it. But the admiration of
wealth in many countries goes far beyond this; it ceases to regard in
any degree the skill of acquisition; it respects wealth in the hands of
the inheritor just as much as in the hands of the maker; it is a simple
envy and love of a heap of gold as a heap of gold. From this our
aristocracy preserves us. There is no country where a "poor devil of a
millionaire is so ill off as in England". The experiment is tried every
day, and every day it is proved that money alone--money pur et
simple--will not buy "London Society". Money is kept down, and, so to
say, cowed by the predominant authority of a different power.
But it may be said that this is no gain; that worship for worship, the
worship of money is as good as the worship of rank. Even granting that
it were so, it is a great gain to society to have two idols: in the
competition of idolatries the true worship gets a chance. But it is not
true that the reverence for rank--at least, for hereditary rank--is as
base as the reverence for money. As the world has gone, manner has been
half-hereditary in certain castes, and manner is one of the fine arts.
It is the STYLE of society; it is in the daily-spoken intercourse of
human beings what the art of literary expression is in their occasional
written intercourse. In reverencing wealth we reverence not a man, but
an appendix to a man; in reverencing inherited nobility, we reverence
the probable possession of a great faculty--the faculty of bringing out
what is in one. The unconscious grace of life MAY be in the middle
classes: finely-mannered persons are born everywhere; but it OUGHT to
be in the aristocracy: and a man must be born with a hitch in his
nerves if he has not some of it. It is a physiological possession of
the race, though it is sometimes wanting in the individual.