Produced by Stacy Brown, Juliet Sutherland and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: EDWARD VII, KING OF THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN
AND IRELAND AND OF THE BRITISH DOMINIONS BEYOND THE SEAS, AND EMPEROR OF
INDIA
Born November 9, 1841. Ascended the throne January 22, 1901. Died May 6,
1910]
THE LIFE OF KING EDWARD VII
WITH A SKETCH OF THE CAREER OF KING GEORGE V
By J. CASTELL HOPKINS, F.S.S.
1910
_Author of "Queen Victoria, Her Life and Reign;" "Life and Work of
Mr. Gladstone;" "The Story of the Dominion", &c., &c._
Profusely Illustrated
Copyright 1910, by
W. E. Scull.
PREFACE
During a number of years' study of British institutions in their modern
development and of British public life in its adjustment to new and
changing conditions I have felt an ever-growing appreciation of the
active influence exercised by the late Sovereign of the British Empire
upon the social life and public interests of the United Kingdom and an
ever-increasing admiration for his natural abilities and rare
tactfulness of character. King Edward the Seventh, in a sixty years'
tenure of the difficult position of Heir to the British Throne, built
into the history of his country and Empire a record of which he and his
people had every reason to be proud. He had for many years the
responsibilities of a Royal position without the actual power; the
public functions of a great ruler without the resources usually
available; the knowledge, experience and statecraft of a wise Sovereign
without Regal environment.
The Prince of Wales, however, rose above the apparent difficulties of
his position and for more than a quarter of a century emulated the wise
example of his princely father--Albert the Good--and profited by the
beautiful character and unquestioned statesmanship of his august mother.
As with all those upon whose life beats the glare of ever-present
publicity and upon whose actions the press of friendly and hostile
nations alike have the privilege of ceaseless comment, the Heir to the
British Throne had to suffer from atrocious canards as well as from
fulsome compliments. Unlike many others, however, he afterwards lived
down the falsehoods of an early time; conquered by his clear, open life
the occasional hostility of a later day; and at the period of his
accession to the Throne was, without and beyond question, the best liked
Prince in Europe--the most universally popular man in the United
Kingdom and its external Empire. Upon the verge of His Majesty's
Coronation there occurred that sudden and dramatic illness which proved
so well the bravery and patience of the man, and increased so greatly
the popularity and _prestige_ of the Monarch.
Since then the late King has yearly grown in the regard of his people
abroad, in the respect of other rulers and nations, in the admiration of
all who understood the difficulties of his position, the real force of
his personality and influence, the power with which he drew to the
Throne--even after the remarkable reign of Victoria the Good--an
increased affection and loyalty from Australians and South Africans and
Canadians alike, an added confidence and loyal faith in his judgment
from all his British peoples whether at home or over seas.
In the United States, which King Edward always regarded with an
admiration which the enterprise and energy of its people so well
deserved, he in turn received a degree of respect and regard which did
not at one time seem probable. To him, ever since the visit to the
Republic in 1860, a closer and better relation between the two great
countries had been an ideal toward which as statesman and Prince and
Sovereign he guided the English-speaking race.
The reader of these pages will, I hope, receive a permanent impression
of the career and character of one who has been at once a popular
Prince, a great King, a worthy head of the British Empire and of his own
family, a statesman who has won and worn the proud title of "The Royal
Peacemaker."
J. CASTELL HOPKINS.
_Toronto, Canada, 1910._
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
The Crown and the Empire 17
CHAPTER II.
Early Years and Education of the Prince 31
CHAPTER III.
Royal Tour of British America and the United States 47
CHAPTER IV.
The Royal Marriage 69
CHAPTER V.
Early Home Life and Public Duties 79
CHAPTER VI.
Travels in the East 99
CHAPTER VII.
Serious Illness of the Prince 117
CHAPTER VIII.
The Prince of Wales in India 131
CHAPTER IX.
Thirty Years of Public Work 162
CHAPTER X.
Special Functions and Interests 181
CHAPTER XI.
The Prince and His Family 191
CHAPTER XII.
The Prince as a Social Leader 203
CHAPTER XIII.
The Prince as a Sportsman 211
CHAPTER XIV.
Habits and Character of the Prince 218
CHAPTER XV.
The Prince as an Empire Statesman 234
CHAPTER XVI.
The Prince as Heir Apparent 248
CHAPTER XVII.
Accession to the Throne 268
CHAPTER XVIII.
The First Year of the New Reign 286
CHAPTER XIX.
Empire Tour of the New Heir to the Throne 305
CHAPTER XX.
The King and the South African War 351
CHAPTER XXI.
Preparations for the Coronation 368
CHAPTER XXII.
Serious Illness of the King 380
CHAPTER XXIII.
The Coronation 391
CHAPTER XXIV.
The Reign of King Edward 420
CHAPTER XXV.
The King as a Diplomatist and Peace-maker 432
CHAPTER XXVI.
The Death of King Edward 440
CHAPTER XXVII.
The Solemn Funeral of the King 451
CHAPTER XXVIII.
The New King and His Imperial Responsibilities 461
[Illustration]
[Illustration: THE PRINCESS ALEXANDRA
At the time of her marriage]
[Illustration: KING EDWARD AS PRINCE OF WALES IN 1879]
[Illustration: MARRIAGE OF EDWARD AND ALEXANDRA, THEN PRINCE AND
PRINCESS OF WALES, 1863
From a painting at Windsor by W. P. Firth R.A.]
CHAPTER I.
The Crown and the Empire
The great development of a political nature in the British Empire of the
nineteenth century was the complete harmony which gradually evolved
between the Monarchy and a world-wide democracy. This process was
all-important because it eliminated an element of internal discord which
has destroyed more than one nation in the past; because it permitted the
peaceful progress of scattered states to continue through the passing
years without having questions of allegiance to seriously hamper their
growth; because it trained political thought along lines of stability
and continuity and made loyalty and liberty consistent and almost
synonymous terms; because it made the Crown the central symbol of the
Empire's unity, the visible object of a world-wide allegiance, the
special token of a common aspiration and a common sentiment amongst many
millions of English-speaking people--the subject of untutored reverence
and unquestioned respect amongst hundreds of millions of other races.
THE POSITION OF THE CROWN
The chief factor in this development was the late Queen Victoria, and to
the inheritance of the fabric thus evolved came a son who was educated
amid the constitutional environment in which she lived and was trained
in the Imperial ideas which she so strongly held and so wisely impressed
upon her statesmen, her family and her people. King Edward came into
responsibilities which were greater and more imposing than those ever
before inherited by a reigning sovereign. He had not only the great
example and life of his predecessor as a model and as a comparison; not
only the same vast and ever-changing and expanding Empire to rule over;
not only a similar myriad-eyed press and public to watch his every
expression and movement; but he entered with his people upon a new
century in which one of the first and most prominent features is a decay
in popular respect for Parliament and a revival of the old-time love for
stately display, for ceremonial and for the appropriate trappings of
royalty. With this evident and growing influence of the Crown as a
social and popular factor is the knowledge which all statesmen and
constitutional students now possess of the personal influence in
diplomacy and statecraft which was wielded by the late Queen Victoria
and which the experience and tact of the new Monarch enabled him to also
test and prove. Side by side with these two elements in the situation
was the conviction which has now become fixed throughout the Empire that
the Crown is the pivot upon which its unity and future co-operation
naturally and properly turns; that the Sovereign is the one possible
central figure of allegiance for all its scattered countries and
world-wide races; that without the Crown as the symbol of union and the
King as the living object of allegiance and personal sentiment the
British realms would be a series of separated units.
These facts lend additional importance to the character and history of
the Monarchy; to the influences which have controlled the life and
labours of King Edward; to the abilities which have marked his career
and the elements which have entered into the making of his character. He
may not in succeeding years of his reign have declared war like an
Edward I., or made secret diplomatic arrangements like a Charles II. He
may not have manipulated foreign combinations like a William III., or
dismissed his Ministers at pleasure like a George III., or worked one
faction in his Kingdom against another like a Charles I. None of these
things have been attempted, nor will his successor desire to undertake
them. But none the less there lay in his hand a vast and growing
power--the personal influence wielded by a popular and experienced
Monarch over his Ministry, his Court, his Diplomatic Staff throughout
the world, and his high officers in the Army and Navy. The prestige of
his personal honours or personal wishes and the known Imperialism of his
personal opinions must have had great weight in controlling Colonial
policy in London; while his experience of European and Eastern
statecraft through many years of close intercourse with foreign and home
statesmen undoubtedly had a marvelous effect in the control of British
policy abroad.
To the external Empire, as constituted at the beginning of the twentieth
century, the Crown is a many-sided factor. The personal and diplomatic
influence of the Sovereign is obvious and was illustrated by Queen
Victoria in such historic incidents as the personal relations with King
Louis Philippe which probably averted a war with France in the early
forties; in the later friendship with Louis Napoleon which helped to
make the Crimean War alliance possible; in the refusal by the Queen to
assent to a certain _casus belli_ despatch during the American War which
saved Great Britain from being drawn into the struggle; in her influence
upon the Cabinet in connection with the Schleswig-Holstein question,
which was exerted to such an extent (according to Lord Malmesbury) as to
have averted a possible conflict with Germany.
The political power of the Crown and its wearer is proven to exist in
the dismissal of Lord Palmerston for his rash recognition of the French
_coup d'etat_; in the occasional exercise of the right of excluding
certain individuals from the Government--notably the case of Mr.
Labouchere a decade ago; in such direct exercise of influence as the
Queen's intervention in the matter of the Irish Church Disestablishment
Bill as related by the late Archbishop Tait. The Imperial influence of
the Sovereign has been shown in more than merely indirect ways. The
Queen's refusal to approve the first draft of the Royal Proclamation for
India in 1858 and her changes in the text were declared by Lord Canning
to have averted another insurrection. Her personal determination to send
the Prince of Wales to Canada in 1860 and her own visit to Ireland in
one of the last years of her reign were cases of actual initiative and
active policy. South Africa owed to the late Queen the several visits of
the Duke of Edinburgh and the exhibition of her well-known sympathy with
the views of Sir George Grey--who, had he been allowed a free hand,
would have consolidated and united those regions many years ago and
averted the recent disastrous struggle.
Australia owed to her the compliment of various visits from members of
the Royal family, the kindly personal treatment of its leaders and a
frequently expressed desire for its unity in one great and growing
nationality--British in allegiance and connection and power; Australian
in local authority, patriotism and development. India was indebted to
its Queen-Empress for continued sympathy and wise advice to its
Governors-General; for the phraseology in the Proclamation after the
Mutiny, already referred to, which rendered the new conditions of
allegiance comprehensible and satisfactory to the native mind; for the
important visit of the Prince of Wales to that country in 1877; and for
the support given to Lord Beaconfield's Imperial policy of asserting
England's place in the world, of purchasing the Suez Canal shares in
order to help in keeping the route to the East and of paving the way for
that acquisition of Egypt and the Soudan which has since made Cecil
Rhodes' dream of a great British-African empire a realizable
probability. The Colonies, as a whole, owed to Queen Victoria a
condition of government which made peaceful constitutional development
possible; which extinguished discontent and the elements or embers of
republicanism; which gradually eliminated the separative tendencies of
distance and slowly merged the Manchester school ideas of the past into
the Imperialism of the present; which made evolution rather than
revolution the guiding principle of British countries in the nineteenth
century.
THE MONARCHY IN HISTORY
How has the Crown become such an important factor in the modern
development of British peoples? The answer is not found altogether in
personal considerations nor even in those of loyalty to somewhat vague
and undefined principles of government. These considerations have had
great weight but so also has the traditional and actual power of the
Monarchy in moulding institutions and ideas during a thousand years of
history. To a much greater extent than is generally understood in these
democratic days has this latter influence been a factor. Through nearly
all British history the Sovereign has either represented the popular
instincts of the time or else led in the direction of extended territory
and power under the individual influence of royal valour or statecraft.
The history of England has not, of course, been confined to the
biography of its Kings or Queens, but it would be as absurd to trace
those annals without extended study of the rulers and their characters
as it would be to write the records without reference to the people and
popular progress. And the Monarchy has done much for the British Isles.
Its influence has effected their whole national life in war and in
peace, in religion and in morals, in literature and in art. The
individual achievements and actions of some of these rulers constitute
the very foundation stones in the structure of modern British power.
Others again have helped to build the walls of the national edifice
until the Sovereign at the beginning of the twentieth century has
become the pivot upon which turns the constitutional unity of a great
Empire and which forms the only possible centre for a common allegiance
amongst its varied peoples.
At first this monarchical principle was embodied in the form of military
power, was based upon feudal loyalty, and was associated with the noble
ideals, but somewhat reckless practices, of mediaeval chivalry. The
victories of Egbert and Alfred the Great transformed the Heptarchy into
a substantial English Kingdom. The military skill of William the
Conqueror gave an opportunity to blend the graces of Norman chivalry,
and a somewhat higher form of civilization, with the rougher virtues of
the Saxon character. Henry II. personally illustrated this combination,
with his ruddy English face and strong physical powers, and impressed
himself upon British history by the conquest of Ireland. Richard Coeur
de Lion gave his country many famous pages of crusading in the East, and
embodied in his life and character the adventurous and daring spirit of
the age. Edward I. dominated events by his energy and ability, subdued
Wales, and for a time conquered the Kingdom of Scotland. Edward III., in
his long reign of fifty years, carried the British flag over the fields
of France, and won immortality at the battles of Crecy and Poictiers.
Henry V. gained the victory of Agincourt, and won and wore the title of
King of France. Then came the Wars of the Roses and the turbulent
termination to a period of six centuries during which the English
Monarchs had represented the military spirit of their times, and had led
in the rough process of struggle and conquest out of which was growing
the United Kingdom of to-day.
With the reign of Henry VIII. commenced the period of religious
change--the struggles for religious liberty against ecclesiastical
dominance. Limited as were the achievements of Henry and Elizabeth, in
this respect, by prevailing bigotry and narrowness of view as well as
by diverse personal characteristics, they none the less did great
service to the country and the people. The rule of Cromwell--who, in the
exercise of Royal power and the possession of regal personal ability,
may properly be included in such a connection--gave that liberty of
worship to a portion of the masses with which previous Sovereigns had
more especially endowed the classes. During the reign of the Stuarts
religious dissensions and ecclesiastical controversies and intermittent
persecutions, illustrated the predominant passion of the period; and
forced the weak or indifferent monarch of the moment to be an
unconscious factor in the progress towards that general toleration which
the Revolution of 1688 and the crowning of William and Mary finally
accomplished. But, whether it was Henry persecuting the monks, or
Elizabeth the Roman Catholics, or Mary the Protestants, or Cromwell the
Episcopalians, or Charles II. the Dissenters, each ruler was being led,
to a great degree, by the undercurrent of surrounding bigotry and was,
in the main, representative of a strong, popular sentiment of the time.
Henry voiced the national uprising against Rome, just as the second
Charles embodied popular reaction against the Puritans, and as William
of Orange was enabled to lead a successful opposition to the gloomy and
personal bigotry of the last of the Royal Stuarts.
The third period of British monarchical history in this connection was
that marked by the growth toward constitutional government under the
sway of the House of Hanover. Coupled with this was the equally
important foundation of a great Colonial empire, and the loss of a large
portion of it in the reign of George III. But the development of
constitutional rule under the Georges should not be confounded with the
growth of the popular and Imperial system which exists to-day. The
latter is simply a progressive evolution out of the aristocratic and
oligarchical government of the Hanoverian period, just as that system
had been a step from the kingly power of the Tudors and the Stuarts,
which, in turn, had arisen upon the ruins of feudalism and military
monarchical power. It is this gradual growth, this "gently broadening
down from precedent to precedent," which makes the British constitution
of to-day the more or less perfected result of centuries of experience
and struggle. But that result has only been made possible by a peculiar
series of national adjustments in which the power of the Monarchs has
been modified from time to time to suit the will of the people, while
the ability of individual Sovereigns has been at the same time given
full scope in which to exercise wise kingcraft or pronounced military
skill. It has, in fact, been a most elastic system in its application
and to that elasticity has been due its prolonged stability of form
under a succession of dynastic or personal changes.
THE CONSTITUTION AND THE MONARCHY
It is a common mistake to minimize the importance and value of the
aristocratic rule by which the government of England was graded down
from the high exercise of royal power under the Tudors and Stuarts to
that beneficial exercise of royal influence which marks the opening of
the present century period. To the aristocracy of those two centuries is
mainly due the fact that the growth from paternal government and
personal rule to direct popular administration was a gradual
development, through only occasional scenes of storm and stress, instead
of involving a succession of revolutions alternating with civil war.
Somers and Godolphin, Walpole and Chatham, Pitt and Shelburne, Eldon and
Canning, Grey and Liverpool, Wellington and Durham, Melbourne and
Palmerston, were all of this aristocratic class, though of varying
degrees in rank and title and with varied views of politics. They filled
the chief places in the Government of the country during a period when
the people were being slowly trained in the perception and practice of
constitutional and religious liberty. At the best such processes are
difficult and often prove bitter tests of national endurance; and it was
well for Great Britain that the two centuries under review produced a
class of able and cultured men who--though naturally aristocratic at
heart--were upon the whole honestly bent upon furthering the best
interests of the masses. And this despite the mistakes of a Danby or a
North.
Yet, even towards the close of this period of preparation, popular
government, as now practised, was neither understood by the immediate
predecessors of Queen Victoria, nor by the nobles who presided over the
changing administrations of the day. It was not clearly comprehended by
Liberals like Russell and Grey; it was feared by Wellington and the
Tories as being republican and revolutionary; it was dreaded by many who
could hardly be called Tories and who, in the condition of things then
prevalent, could scarcely even be termed Loyalists. Writing in 1812,
Charles Knight, the historian, described the fierce national struggle of
the previous twenty years with Napoleon and expressed a longing wish for
the prop of a sincere and spontaneous loyalty to the throne in the
critical times that were to follow. But such a sentiment of loyalty was
not then expressed, and could hardly have been publicly evoked by a
ruler of the type of George IV., whether governing as Prince-Regent or
as King.
There is, however, no doubt of its having existed, and there seems to
have been, even through those troubled years, an inborn spirit of
loyalty to the Crown as being the symbol of the State and of public
order. Its wearer might make mistakes and be personally unpopular, but
he represented the nation as a whole and must consequently be respected.
This powerful feeling has often in English history made the bravest and
strongest submit to slights from their Sovereign, and has won the most
disinterested devotion and energetic action from men who have never
even seen the Monarch in whose personal character there was sometimes
little to evoke or deserve such faith and sacrifice. For ages this
loyalty had been the preservative of society in England, and it is still
indispensable to the tranquility and permanence of a state, whether
given in its full degree to the Sovereign of Great Britain, or in a more
divided sense to the elective and partisan head of a modern republic.
In the time of the Georges, as well as in the middle ages and at the
present moment, loyalty was and is a sincere and honest patriotism,
refining the instincts and elevating the actions of those who were
willing to waive self-interest on any given occasion in order to guard
what they believed to be the true basis of national stability and order.
Certainly, a Monarchy which could survive the wars and European
revolutions, the internal discontents and personal deficiencies, of the
period which commenced with the reign of George I. and closed with that
of William IV., must have possessed some inherent strength greater than
may be gathered from many of the superficial works which pass for
history. But, whatever that influence was, it does not appear to have
been personal. With the close of the reign of Queen Anne the brilliant
_prestige_ of personal authority and power wielded by the Sovereign had
passed quietly away and, up to the death of William IV. and the
accession of Victoria, had not been replaced by the personal influence
of a constitutional ruler.
PRESENT POSITION OF THE MONARCHY
Out of all these changing developments has come a military position in
which the Sovereign no longer leads his forces in war but in which he
commands a sentiment of loyalty as hearty, in the breasts of the
Colonial soldiers ten thousand miles away from his home at Windsor, as
ever did the personal presence of an Edward I., or a Richard the
Lion-Hearted. Out of them has come a religious position in which the
Sovereign is head of a particular Church and yet, as such, gives no
serious offence to masses of his subjects who belong to other faiths and
who receive through his Governments around the world absolute freedom of
religious worship--almost as a matter of course. Out of the
constitutional evolution has come the adaptation of the Monarchy to not
only new conditions but to countries separated by oceans and continents
from the mother-state, and the evolution of a system which combines
420,000,000 people under one Crown and one flag. In August, 1884, the
_Times_ spoke of a correspondent amongst the Khirgese of Central Asia
who stated that the people of that region had not the remotest idea of
where or what England was--but they had heard of Queen Victoria; and a
few years later Mr. Henry Labouchere, the inconsistent and bitter
Radical, told the _Forum_ of New York that "were a Parliamentary
candidate to address an electoral meeting on the advantages of a
republic he would be deemed a tilter at a windmill."
Such is a summary of the history and position of the British Monarchy. A
thousand years ago it combined the seven little Kingdoms of England into
one; to-day it combines the Kingdoms and Dominions and Commonwealths and
Islands of a quarter of the earth's surface into one. The power of the
Crown was once chiefly employed in making war and compelling peace by
force of arms and military skill; to-day it is largely utilized in
promoting peace and controlling diplomacy. The position of the Monarch
was once that of the head of a class, or the leader of some distinct
manifestation of public feeling, or the military chief of a great
faction; to-day it is that of embodying the power of a united people,
giving dignified interpretation to the policy of a nation, and serving
as the symbol of unity to the masses of population in an extended
empire.
One of the interesting features in the Crown's popularity and influence
is the absence of serious criticism or controversy over the expense of
its maintenance. Perhaps the only practical expression of disapproval
affecting the Monarchy heard during Queen Victoria's long reign was an
occasional grumbling as to the paucity of Court functions, the absence
of Royal splendour and expenditures from the City of London, the
sombreness and quiet which characterized the ordinary, everyday life of
the Sovereign. The total financial cost of the Monarchy has been placed
at a million pounds sterling per annum, but this total includes various
large sums which could just as properly be charged to the ordinary
governing requirements of the country without reference to the
particular form of its institutions. Against this sum may also be placed
the proceeds of the Crown Lands which were surrendered to Parliament
upon the accession of William and Mary and which had before that been
recognized as a personal estate of the Sovereign over which Parliament
had no control. In addition to these Crown Land revenues other sums were
voted as required. Upon their surrender to the nation (during the life
of each Sovereign) it has become the custom, since 1868, to vote a
permanent Civil List for the ensuing reign and out of this sum the
ordinary Court and personal expenses are supposed to be met. In the case
of Queen Victoria the amount was L385,000 a year, supplemented, however,
by other votes and special allowances to herself and the Royal family
from time to time.
Upon her accession the Queen retained out of the old Crown Lands, or
revenues, those of the Duchy of Lancaster and they have risen in value
from L20,000 to L50,000 per annum. The Royal palaces are maintained
apart from the Civil List and the building of Royal yachts and other
similar expenses are considered as additional items. The revenues of the
Duchy of Cornwall, which have always pertained to the Prince of Wales,
and the incomes or special sums voted to the members of the Royal
family, make up an amount nearly as large as the Civil List. But these
apparently large sums have not in recent years created any feeling of
dissatisfaction; nor has any been expressed save by certain individuals
of the Labouchere type, who possess little influence and less sincerity.
Upon the whole the situation in this connection possesses considerable
interest to the student of history, or of popular sentiment, as showing
how a practical, business-loving, money-making people can become devoted
to an institution which must in the nature of things be expensive and
which, in the ratio of its dignity and effectiveness as an embodiment of
growing national power, must be increasingly so as the years roll on.
The reason for this condition of feeling is the combination which the
Monarchy has during the past century come to present to the minds of the
public. Tradition and history reaching down into the hearts and lives of
the people may be considered the basic influence; a general belief in
the superiority of British institutions over all others may be stated as
a powerful conservative force; while personality and character in the
Sovereign may be described as the chief constructive element in this
process of increasing loyalty to the Crown. Convenience, custom, love of
ceremony, belief in stability and aversion to change, are lesser factors
which may be mentioned. The result is that Mr. George W. Smalley, for so
many years the American correspondent of the New York _Tribune_ in
London, could write recently in the _Century_ the belief of a foreigner
and a republican that "England is a very democratic country, but there
does not exist in England the vestige of a republican party."
King Edward, therefore, came to the throne of Great Britain and its
Empire at a time when the influence of the Sovereign was growing in
proportion as the influence and popularity of Parliament appeared to be
waning. Fifty years before his accession it was a truism to assert that
power in England was being steadily concentrated in the House of
Commons; to-day it may be said with equal truth that the position of the
Crown is growing steadily in a power which is wielded by personal
influence and popularity and which, while it touches no privilege, nor
right, nor liberty of Parliament, increases in proportion as the latter
body is relegated to the back-ground by public opinion and popular
interest. Vast responsibility, therefore, rests to-day in the hands of a
British Sovereign and the results for good or ill, depend largely upon
his character, his training, his previous career and his present sense
of duty. Alarm has even been expressed upon this point by historical
theorists such as Professor Beesly and Dr. Goldwin Smith. Certain it is,
however, that in the hands of King Edward this growing power was safe.
If prolonged experience and acquired statecraft and intimate knowledge
of his people can be considered sufficient guarantees for its exercise,
it is also safe in the hands of King George.