The Reign of King Edward
The history of this reign--not long in years--is yet crowded with
events, rich in national and Imperial developments, conspicuous in the
importance of its discussions and international controversies. The first
brief months, which have been already reviewed, saw the completion of
the memorable Empire tour of the new Prince of Wales and the settling
down of Australia to a life of national unity and progress; the
conclusion of the South African War and the beginning of an
extraordinary process of unification which was in a few years to evolve
the Union of South Africa; the almost spectacular incidents of the
Coronation and the important proceedings of the Colonial Conference of
1902. In July of this latter year the Marquess of Salisbury retired and
was succeeded in the Premiership by his nephew, Arthur J. Balfour. To
the King this meant the removal of a strong arm and powerful intellect
and respected personality from his side and increased the importance of
his own experience and _prestige_ as a statesman.
Something has already been said of the qualities with which King Edward
entered upon his task and with which it was conducted to the moment when
in passing to his rest he said: "It is all over, but I think I have done
my duty." The unique feature of his career in a personal sense was his
amazing popularity, the real affection with which every class in the
great community of the British Isles regarded him. In the days of his
unofficial labours as Prince of Wales, Lord Beaconsfield greatly
esteemed him and Mr. Gladstone was "devotedly attached" to him. At the
latter's funeral the Prince went up to Mrs. Gladstone and in a spirit of
spontaneous courtesy bent over her hand and kissed it with an air of
sympathy so great as to be beyond the expression of words. It was little
acts such as this that won unstinted liking for the man as well as
loyalty to the King. It was this magnetism of the kindly heart, this
instinctive courtesy of character, coupled with a remarkable dignity of
bearing at the right moment and in the right place, and a rare memory
for faces and incidents and peoples and places, that made King Edward so
truly the Sovereign of his people. In this connection a religious orator
of the Radical type in London--Rev. R. J. Campbell--told an audience in
Toronto, Canada, on July 22, 1903, that "Queen Victoria is gone but her
son remains and I would not exchange King Edward, with all the criticism
that has been directed against him, for any Sovereign ruler on the face
of the earth or any President of any Republic on either side of the
water."
Following the visit to Paris of this year, which paved the way for
better relations in the future between Britain and France, the King made
a successful tour of a part of Ireland--July 21st to August 1st--and
impressed himself upon the mercurial temperament of the sons of Erin. In
September came the memorable retirement of Mr. Chamberlain from the
Balfour Government; his declaration of devotion to the new-old ideal of
limited protective tariffs for the United Kingdom _plus_ preferential
duties in favour of the external Empire; the split in the Conservative
party and the presentation of a great issue to the people which,
however, was clouded over by other policies in either party and had not,
up to the time of the King's death, won a clear presentation to the
people as a whole. Mr. Chamberlain's letter to Mr. Balfour dated
September 8th expressed regret that the all-important question of fiscal
reform had been made a party issue by its opponents; recognised the
present political force of the cry against taxing food and the
impossibility of immediately carrying his Preferential policy; suggested
that the Government should limit their immediate advocacy to the
assertion of greater fiscal freedom in foreign negotiations with a power
of tariff retaliation, when necessary, as a weapon; and declared his own
intention to stand aside, with absolute loyalty to the Government in
their general policy but in an independent position, and with the
intention of "devoting myself to the work of explaining and popularizing
those principles of Imperial union which my experience has convinced me
are essential to our future welfare and prosperity." In his reply the
Premier paid high tribute to Mr. Chamberlain's services to the Empire,
sympathized personally with his Imperial ideals and agreed with him that
the time was not ripe for the Government or the country to go to the
extreme length of his Preferential policy.
Mr. Chamberlain's action and policy gave a thrill of pleasant
hopefulness to Imperialists everywhere; it stirred up innumerable
comments in the British, Colonial and Foreign press; it made Germany
pause in a system of fiscal retaliation and tariff war into which she
had intended to enter with Canada--and with Australia and South Africa
if they presumed to grant a tariff preference to Britain. Meanwhile, the
King had suffered the loss, a personal as well as national one, of Lord
Salisbury's retirement from office and his death not long afterwards;
the Balfour-Chamberlain Government had struggled along until the Tariff
Reform movement, as above described, broke in upon and dissipated the
party's unanimity of opinion and uniformity of action; a long series of
Liberal victories at bye-elections reduced the Conservative majority
from 134 as it was in 1900 to 69 in November, 1905; Mr. Balfour, in his
Newcastle speech of November 14th, defined his fiscal policy as (1)
Retaliation with a view to compelling the removal of some of the
restrictions in Foreign markets and (2) the calling of a Conference of
Empire leaders to arrange, if possible, a closer commercial union of the
Empire. As to himself he had never been and was not now "a
protectionist." In December he resigned and the King called on Sir H.
Campbell-Bannerman, the Liberal Leader in the Commons, to form a
Government.
A general election followed in which the Liberals swept the great towns
of the country--excluding London and Birmingham--and came back with the
largest majority in modern English history; the total of the Labour,
Home Rule, Liberal and Radical majority being 376 over the supporters of
Tariff Reform. The result, however, evoked on February 14, 1906, a
declaration from Mr. Balfour in favour of "a moderate general tariff on
manufactured goods and the imposition of a small duty on Foreign corn,"
and this united the Conservative or Unionist party with the exception of
about sixteen Free-trade members who still followed the Duke of
Devonshire. The rise of the Labour Party began at this election; the
serious illness of Mr. Chamberlain followed and hampered Conservative
work and progress; the retirement of the Premier took place early in
1908 and, on April of that year, the King called on Mr. Asquith to form
the Ministry which carried its election in 1910 by so small a Liberal
majority. The reconstruction of 1908 was notable for the rise or
promotion of the fighting, aggressive, youthful elements in the new
Liberalism--men like David Lloyd-George, Winston Churchill and Reginald
McKenna. There followed the establishment of Old-Age Pensions at an
initial expenditure of $40,000,000 a year; the prolonged and ultimately
successful struggle to increase the taxation upon landed interests,
property, and invested income by means of the much-discussed Budget of
1909; the natural resentment of the Lords, the Conservatives, and many
who were neither--as illustrated in the subsequent wiping out of the
Liberal majority in England itself; the constitutional issue which the
Liberals so cleverly forced to the front with the House of Lords as
their chief antagonists and which relegated Tariff Reform temporarily to
the background; the prolonged period in which King Edward took minute
and anxious and personal interest in the question.
There can be no doubt as to this interest or as to the natural and valid
reasons for it. A House of Lords, either abolished or existing without
power in the constitution, would leave no check upon the Commons except
the King and this might be bad for both the Commons and the Sovereign.
Over and over again in English history the people have reversed the
action or vote of the Commons but if this was ever to be done in future
it could only be through the interjection of the King's veto, and the
bringing of the Crown into the hurly-burly of party struggle. This would
be the very thing which all parties had hitherto endeavoured to prevent
and for at least seventy years had been successful in preventing. Then
came the general elections of 1909-10, with their continual query as to
what the King would do if the Liberals did win. Would he accept the
Government's policy and the proposed Commons legislation as to the Lords
and thus take an active part in the destruction of one portion of the
constitution which he was pledged to guard--through and by means of the
creation of hundreds of peers to swamp the Conservative vote in that
House? Or would he take the situation boldly in hand and insist on
another election with this question of practical abolition of the Lords
as the distinct issue before the people? It was little wonder that His
Majesty's physicians should declare after his death that the political
situation had been one of its causes! It must be remembered that in all
countries the Upper House and the aristocracy are natural and
inevitable, if not necessary, adjuncts to and supporters of a Throne.
Where, as in Britain, that House and that aristocracy have upon the
whole much to be proud of in personal achievement, much to be credited
with in social legislation and still more to be approved of in the
individual public work of its Salisburys, Roseberys, Devonshires, and a
multitude of other historic personalities with, also, a close and vital
interest in the country through large landed responsibilities, the
situation can readily be appreciated. Not that the Monarchy was an issue
in itself; but there can be no doubt, despite such speeches as the
following quotation from Mr. Winston Churchill's address at Southport on
December 8, 1909, that King Edward felt the danger of weakening his
immediate, natural and fitting environment of (with certain exceptions)
an energetic and patriotic aristocracy surrounding a popular Throne:
"There is no difficulty in vindicating the principle of a
hereditary monarchy. The experience of every country and of all the
ages show the profound wisdom which places the supreme leadership
of the state beyond the reach of private ambition and above the
shocks and changes of party strife. And, further, let it not be
forgotten that we live under a limited and constitutional monarch.
The Sovereign reigns but does not govern; that is a maxim we were
all taught out of our school-books. The British monarchy has no
interests divergent from those of the British people. It enshrines
only those ideas and causes upon which the whole British people are
united. It is based upon the abiding and prevailing interests of
the nation and thus, through all the swift changes of the last
hundred years, through all the wide developments of a democratic
state, the English monarchy has become the most secure, as it is
the most ancient and the most glorious monarchy in the whole of
Christendom."
While all this political change and controversy was going on the King
was performing a multitude of personal and social and State duties.
There was always the vast amount of detailed study of current
documents--all of which he looked into before signing as had Queen
Victoria before him; there was the strenuous and incessant round of
State functions including the reception of visiting Sovereigns and
ambassadors, and special deputations, visits to cities and towns and the
private houses of his greater subjects, State dinners to men and women
of every school of thought and life in its higher branches, frequent
trips to the Continent and continuous conferences with public men. In
this connection it is interesting to note that just before the General
Elections--towards the close of 1909--he did what no Sovereign had done
for many a long year and did it not only without criticism but with
public approval when he called Lord Lansdowne, Lord Rosebery and Mr.
Balfour into quiet conference regarding the political situation. How
many others of all parties he may have invited to similar discussions in
the privacy of Buckingham or Windsor only such a personage as his
faithful and old-time Secretary, Lord Knollys, really knows. Military
and Naval reviews were amongst the more important general functions of
these years coupled with gracious and conciliatory visits to Ireland in
1904 and 1907. In this latter year he reviewed a magnificent fleet of
warships at Portsmouth eleven miles long, headed by the first of the
Dreadnaughts, and manned by 35,000 officers and men. Upon another
occasion in 1909, the greatest fleet ever gathered together in any
waters in the history of the world was also reviewed by His Majesty as,
perhaps, a comment on the recently revealed crisis caused by German
Naval construction. As to this the King was intensely concerned and we
can safely assume that if one cause of his latter ill-health was
political worry another cause may well have been the Naval rivalry of a
Power which boasted 4,000,000 of a trained Army to Britain's 250,000
men.
With all these varied home duties and his many diplomatic efforts King
Edward never forgot his own external Empire, never overlooked his vast
interests overseas. To India in 1908 had gone a vivid and statesmanlike
Royal Message, on November 2d, which recalled to the minds of its
Princes and peoples their fifty years of progress under the Crown, the
obligations which they were under to the liberty-loving rule of Britain,
and the pride of their Emperor in governing so vast a congeries of races
and interests. To them also in 1906 he had sent the Prince and Princess
of Wales in a tour which repeated his own triumphs of 1876. To South
Africa, upon frequent and appropriate occasions, came expressions of the
King's interest in the people's welfare, in their strivings for unity,
in their efforts to retrieve the misfortunes of war. It was King
Edward's Imperial policy that dictated the sending of the Prince of
Wales to open the first Parliament of the Union of South Africa--a
policy which his own death rendered impossible--as curiously enough, it
had been Queen Victoria's last public duty to send the Duke of
Cornwall--as he then was--to open the first Parliament of the Australian
Commonwealth. It was the King who sent the Duke of Connaught to visit
East Africa in 1906 and Prince Arthur of Connaught to return from Japan
_via_ Canada in the same year. To the people of Australia Lord
Northcote, the new Governor-General, on January 28, 1904, conveyed a
Royal Message of greeting and then proceeded to say that: "Every
constitutional process having for its object the linking together of the
different component parts of this great Empire is sure to be
sympathetically regarded by our Sovereign and I know his hope is that
his people who live outside the narrow seas of Great Britain may believe
that His Majesty regards them primarily, not as inhabitants of colonies
or dependencies of the Mother-country, but as equally valued component
parts of one mighty nation."
As to Canada and King Edward much might be said. On July 22, 1905,
His Majesty was at Bisley and presented the Kolapore Cup to the
proud Canadian team which had won it and to whose Commander,
Lieutenant-Colonel A. G. Hesslein, a few kind and tactful words were
addressed. About the same time it was announced that the London Hospital
Fund in which the King had for many years taken a deep personal
interest, and in the maintenance of which he was really the chief power,
had received a gift of $1,000,000 from Lord Mount Stephen of Canadian
Pacific Railway fame. In 1906 His Majesty showed special interest in
Canadian affairs. A cablegram through Lord Elgin, on January 2d,
expressed the King's regret at the sudden death of the Honorable R.
Prefontaine; he received Canadian delegates to the Empire Commercial
Congress at Windsor on July 13th, when Sir D. H. McMillan, Sir Sandford
Fleming, Messrs. R. Wilson-Smith, G. E. Drummond, F. H. Mathewson, J. F.
Ellis and W. F. Cockshutt were presented; a deputation of Indian chiefs
from British Columbia was received by him on August 13th and submitted
an address and a petition; a number of shire-horses were lent by His
Majesty in the autumn for exhibition at Toronto and as a proof of his
interest in that branch of Canadian development. But the chief event of
the year in this respect was Canada's invitation to the King, and Queen
Alexandra, to pay the country and its people a visit. In the House of
Commons on April 18th, the Hon. N. A. Belcourt, seconded by Mr. W. B.
Northrup, moved a Resolution expressive of Canadian loyalty and devotion
to the King's person and of the hope that His Majesty and the Queen
would be pleased to visit Canada at such time as might be found possible
and convenient.
In his short speech the Prime Minister laid stress upon the King's
personal qualities and his work in the cause of peace. Sir Wilfrid
Laurier then made a reference which was probably of more consequence in
the final decision than was supposed at the time, "I believe it is the
opinion of all who sit in this House that if the King were to visit
Canada--and he could not visit Canada without visiting the United States
also--the effect would be to bring more closely together than they are
at the present time--and they are more so than ever before--the two
great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race on both sides of the Atlantic."
This additional suggestion involved tremendous considerations of travel,
functions, ceremonial, time, and responsibility. After being spoken to
by men of such opposite opinions as Colonel S. Hughes and Mr. H.
Bourassa, as well as warmly endorsed by the Opposition Leader, the
Resolution was passed unanimously, as it was later in the Senate. All
the Provincial Legislatures, then in session, joined in this invitation,
while centres such as Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, Quebec, Three
Rivers, St. Hyacinthe, Valleyfield, Hamilton, London, Guelph, Woodstock,
Halifax, Sydney, St. John, Fredericton, Regina, Calgary, Vancouver,
Victoria and about forty others warmly endorsed the request; as did
every newspaper of standing in Canada. In reply Lord Elgin, Colonial
Secretary, under date of July 7th wrote a long despatch to the
Governor-General in which he expressed the King's appreciation of the
invitation, his pleasant memories of the Royal visit to Canada in 1860,
and his comprehension of the wonderful growth of the country since that
time, and continued:
"I need scarcely remind Your Lordship of two circumstances which
must not be overlooked in the consideration of these proposals. In
the first place the current business of the Empire, which is
continuous and incessant, imposes a heavy tax on the time and
strength of its Sovereign and it is well known that the absence of
His Majesty from this country for any length of time is difficult,
if not impossible except under very definite limitations and
restrictions; even when considerations of health and the need for
comparative rest can render it expedient. In the second place it
must be remembered that there can be practically no limits within
the habitable globe of the distance which must be traveled to reach
all parts of the British Empire and that it would be very difficult
to visit one important part and decline to visit the other. In
spite of the many and strong inducements which prompt him to
gratify the loyal wishes of his Canadian subjects, I am to say that
the King feels unable at present to entertain the idea of a journey
to Canada."
It would be quite impossible to indicate here the great regret expressed
by the Canadian press, and the people generally, at this result of the
invitation. Many reasons were adduced, other than those given in the
despatch, and including diplomatic requirements in Europe, Royal visits
and delicate negotiations then pending, Eastern troubles and
complications, Australian jealousy if omitted from such a tour, as well
as the difficulties involved in any possible visit to the United States.
During the year a full-length portrait of the King was received at
Government House, Ottawa, painted by Luke Fildes, R.A., and the
portraits of the King and Queen, specially painted by J. Colin Forbes,
the Canadian artist, were also received and hung in the Parliament
Houses. In 1907 King Edward visited the Canadian pavilion at the Dublin
Exhibition of that year and inspected its exhibits while Queen Alexandra
accepted from one of the Departments the gift of a rug made by
French-Canadian women. In the next year much practical appreciation was
shown in Canada of His Majesty's special arrangement under which the
"Life and Letters of Queen Victoria" was offered for sale at a low
popular price; a Royal cablegram of sympathy was sent to the sufferers
by the Fernie (B. C.) fire; the Edward Medal, established by the King
for the recognition of courage in saving or trying to save life in
quarries or mines, was extended to Canada and all parts of the Empire.
In the last year of his reign the King's third Derby victory was a
popular one in Canada and throughout the Empire and his establishment of
a Police Medal for the recognition of "exceptional service, heroism or
devotion to duty" was also applied to Canada and all the British
Dominions. During the year His Majesty presented a gift of money to T.
L. Wood, a blacksmith at Port Elgin, N. S., and accepted a horse-shoe of
exquisite workmanship which had been wrought by him while lying on a
sick-bed; visited and praised the exhibition of British Columbia fruit
at Islington on December 6th.
On October 21, 1909, a Tuberculosis Institute, established at Montreal
by Lieutenant-Colonel J. H. Burland, was opened by the King through
special electric communication between the Library of West Dean Park,
Colchester, where he was staying, and the Institute at Montreal, with a
cablegram which read as follows: "I have much pleasure in declaring the
Royal Edward Institute at Montreal now open. The means by which I make
this declaration testifies to the power of modern science and I am
confident that the future history of the Institute will afford equally
striking testimony to the beneficent results of that power when applied
to the conquest of disease and the relief of human suffering. I shall
always take a lively interest in the Institute and I pray that the
blessing of the Almighty may rest upon all those who work in and for it
and also upon those for whom it works. Edward R. & I." On November 20th
His Majesty sent a personal despatch to Sir Wilfrid Laurier in the
following terms: "Let me express my hearty congratulations to you on the
anniversary of your birthday. I hope you will be spared for many years
to come to serve the Crown and Empire, Edward." The Premier replied with
an expression of "humble duty and deep gratitude."