CROWN, COUNTRY AND COMMONS
Comparative youth not the only point of difference between the House
of Commons to-day and formerly. Its reflection of social
characteristics of the time shown in the disappearance of the old
County Member extinct in the country as well as in Parliament.
Modifications in _personnel_ of the Liberal party since the great
fortunes made in trade and since the first Reform Act; also in that of
the Conservatives. Mr Gladstone's opinion and experience on this
subject. The obstacles in the way of oratorical efforts or success in
the House of Commons, have increased under new conditions. Rivals to
House as representative of national feelings. The press, the House of
Lords and local debating societies.
The average age of its members is not the only respect in which, during
the Queen's reign, the House of Commons has been gradually transformed. If
the country squire of the old school of Mr Henley has disappeared from it,
that is because he is now as unknown in his own county as in Pall Mall.
The social composition of the Whig, or Liberal, party was finally and
entirely altered about the period of the first Reform Bill. The change had
indeed been going forward from the earlier epoch when the middle class of
commerce began to be, as from the days of the Edwards it was tending to
become, the greatest power in the country. The replacement of the old
Whig, with his territorial associations, by the new Liberal, like Mr
Cobden, was only the last stage in the development of self-government in
England. In truth, however, the kind of progress now spoken of was not
limited to any single political connection. The Nestorian experience of Mr
Gladstone testifies it to have been not less noticeable among Tories than
among Whigs. There were not, he thinks, in 1835 five members of the
Conservative party owing their seats to commercial or industrial
influences. The change which has come about in the composition of the
party since then is 'simply marvellous.'[55] The specific legislation that
has surrounded the English Crown by a democracy, is the extension of the
lodger franchise to boroughs in 1867, to counties in 1884, and the
cheapening of elections by the Corrupt Practices Bill of Sir Henry James
in 1883. Notwithstanding these advances, the blend between authority and
freedom has never been more fortunately conspicuous nor more wisely active
in this country than since the period of its self-government began. Before
1870 it used to be said that the Pope, shorn of his temporal power, would
exercise a prerogative not weaker, but stronger than when he was sole lord
of Rome. Whether that prediction has, or has not been fulfilled, the
influence that a constitutional Sovereign can exercise in the United
Kingdom has increased rather than diminished since the days of absolute
monarchy were over. Whatever in the way of political initiative the
Sovereign has surrendered has in the department of social ascendancy and
civic influence, been restored with interest to the Crown. The late Sir
Henry Maine, differing in that respect from earlier political theorists,
has in that very suppleness and elasticity which his predecessors praised
discovered a source of weakness to the English constitution. So shrewd an
observer as Mr Goldwin Smith bitterly complains of the fickleness of
popularly elected Parliaments, and their quickness to reflect the external
influences of the moment, as of the chief dangers to our political
stability. Into that controversy it is needless to enter. It may seem
strange to those who have had more than half a century's experience of her
loyalty to constitutional principles; but in 1837 no one certainly knew
whether the young Queen would not insist upon her technical right to
nominate and dismiss her Ministers at will. Less than four years had
passed since her uncle William IV. had practically exercised that
prerogative. In 1834 Lord Althorp was called by his father, Lord
Spencer's, death to the Upper House. Lord Grey had long wished to resign
the Premiership. His unsatisfactory relations with the King made him seize
this opportunity of doing so. The Sovereign accepted the resignation of
the Cabinet with more than alacrity. Substantially therefore, and
morally, there would seem something in the statement that William IV.
dismissed the Whigs to please himself.[56] As Mr Gladstone in one of his
essays has shown, the principle giving cohesion as well as joint and
separate vitality to the members of a Cabinet independently of the
personal pleasure of the Sovereign had been established before then. First
actively applied if not discovered by Sunderland, the son-in-law of the
great Duke of Marlborough, the Cabinet system, as Mr Gladstone has shown,
can scarcely be said definitively to have triumphed till 1828, when George
IV. reluctantly accepted Canning for Prime Minister. William IV., Mr
Gladstone's first Royal master, is, it may be noticed in passing, admitted
by his early servant to have used his prerogative unwisely; but is
defended from the charge of having used it unconstitutionally. So great is
the distance in political thought traversed since 1834 by the statesman as
well as by others.
No thought of reverting to this family precedent has ever probably
occurred to her present Majesty. The comparison of the position
voluntarily occupied by the Sovereign to-day to that of the permanent head
of a great department of the State unchanged by Ministerial or electoral
vicissitudes, roughly but not altogether inaccurately conveys some idea of
the practical influence of the Crown upon the politics of the period.
Continuous experience of public affairs is not however the sole source of
the influence upon them which a constitutional monarch may be enabled or
obliged to exercise. The familiar Bedchamber Plot, presently to be
mentioned more in detail, and the momentary friction between the Sovereign
and her responsible statesmen that followed it, is now known to have
originated in a misapprehension. The Minister only desired that a few
ladies should give up their places in the Household. The Sovereign
resisted the dismissal of her entire suite. If, indeed, a solution of the
difficulty had not been found; if, that is, the Queen had pressed her
personal wishes to the point of the Premier's retirement, it is by no
means certain that she would have lacked constitutional arguments
justifying her course. A sort of plebiscite in 1841 had been given to Sir
Robert Peel. On some national issues of broader import, the popular
feeling at this time notoriously had not been expressed with convincing
clearness. On all sides there seemed balance and consequently confusion of
public opinion. From the altitude of her throne, and by the light of her
ancestral knowledge, the Queen might have argued that she saw the
situation more correctly than her Ministers in Parliament or her people
outside, and so have vindicated the dissolution of the House had she
chosen to adopt that course. This prerogative of sanctioning the recourse
of a Minister to the constituencies is one of which the Crown can never
finally divest itself. In the last resort, however much he may wish to
abdicate his power, the first magistrate of a State must be prepared on
that point for a definite individual responsibility. The latest
indubitable illustration of this truth was given in 1868. In that year Mr
Gladstone's Irish Church resolutions secured the defeat of the Disraeli
Government. The Conservative Premier did not, as precedent for doing even
then existed, resign immediately. He placed before the Queen the
alternative of a dissolution then, or six months later, leaving absolutely
to the Crown the responsibility of the choice. If that situation has not
since exactly repeated itself, obviously from the very nature of things it
is one which may at any moment recur. Thus it will be seen that under
parliamentary government, the self effacement of the Sovereign is an
impossibility. Years have passed since the sense of popular disappointment
at the visible results of the Grey Reform Act found expression in
_Coningsby_, and since the Sidonia of that romance ridiculed to his young
disciple the imperfect vicariate of a House of Commons. However essential
a part of our institutions it may be, its power and popularity are not
to-day without competitors in popular favour. These rivals to the House of
Commons are in their way as much as itself integral parts of the national
life. If, notwithstanding all the gibes against it, the House of Lords,
composed as it is to-day, be not a representative body, nothing which
exists in England can deserve that epithet. Socially the peers of the
later Victorian epoch are as a whole indistinguishable from the Commoners
at St Stephen's of an earlier epoch. They reflect at least as faithfully
the variety, the interests, the pursuits, and the convictions of the
nation. The great difference between election to the Lower and promotion
to the Upper House is that the former generally goes by local interest.
The latter depends usually on political service, on personal merit, or
individual achievement. That distinction was unknown before the present
generation. Macaulay, a great writer and the best informed man of his day,
received a peerage. His personal claims to the honour were admitted by
reason of his place in the party which from 1832 he had continuously
served in Parliament. His pretensions to a peerage were emphasized by his
services as a State official. He had occupied Cabinet rank; he had been
Secretary at War when that office was equivalent to a Secretaryship of
State. No coronet was ever given to literary genius alone before that
conferred upon Lord Tennyson.
The younger Pitt is reported to have said that any man with L40,000 a year
had a right to a seat in the House of Lords. Some of his creations notably
that of Lord Carrington gave effect to that opinion. These peerages,
however, did but foreshadow faintly the elevations of men actually engaged
in commerce as in the case of Lord Armstrong, vicariously through his
widow in that of Mr W. H. Smith, and many more. The press, too, is not
less representative than the House of Commons. Nor in all probability is
Lord Glenesk the last representative of journalism, as he has been the
first to receive a seat in the Hereditary legislature. Under any
circumstances, the well placed English newspaper is likely to be not less
expository of public opinion than any body of gentlemen, by whatever mode
elected, sitting at Westminster. Special tendencies of the time make the
press an exceptionally lifelike measure of the thoughts and wishes in
every department of life of every section of the English people. Newspaper
proprietorship has in fact become not less a fashion of the day than
theatrical lesseeship was a few years since. A number of men agreed on
certain points such as the development or exploitation of particular
enterprises, are seized with the conviction that 'an organ' is essential
to their success. They combine, therefore, to buy or to press into their
service by subsidies some printed sheet which may yet have the ear of the
nation but which happens just now to have fallen upon evil times. If no
such opportunity as this present itself, newspaper starting has become a
recognized industry of commerce. After a time, therefore, a new literary
champion of the Empire enters the lists. Its real object may be narrow and
even personal. Its managers know that if their end is to be accomplished
it must be veiled by a programme of more disinterested generalities, and
that popular sentiment should form the first study of its conductors. In
this way therefore, apart from the great newspaper oracles of the time
which in all but name are national enterprises, the press has increasingly
an inducement, that never fails, to hold up the mirror to the convictions,
prejudices and sentiments into which public opinion can be analysed. The
reptile press of Germany is, upon any considerable scale, not known in
England. The connection between most journals whose support is envied, or
whose opposition is dreaded, and some or more of the leading public men of
the day, has been often very close[57] and is perhaps, still not quite
unknown.
The newspaper, however, is but a single agency for the literary influence
exercised upon the public life of the day. Of late years periodicals,
appearing at less frequent intervals, have among politicians themselves
competed in attractiveness with the national assemblies at Westminster. In
proportion as parliamentary reports have been in the daily press reduced
to a few columns and in the case of all but speakers of the first rank to
a few paragraphs or sentences; parliamentarians themselves have
substituted the monthly Review for the stenographer or for Hansard as the
depository of their views. Technically the presence of reporters in the
gallery is even to-day connived at rather than constitutionally
sanctioned. Yet the leader of the House of Commons, not very long since,
reminded his hearers that those who were not present at his speech might
master his points by referring to the parliamentary reports next day.
Members with a taste for writing, having some carefully thought out
message to deliver on an intricate topic of foreign or domestic policy are
increasingly inclined entirely to pretermit the parliamentary stage of
their exposition. By reserving their remarks for the monthly periodical,
they can be sure of fixing popular attention more conspicuously. Their
signatures are appended to their effusions. The editor incurs no
responsibility either for the substance or the form of the opinions
delivered. The reciprocity of the arrangement is, between him and his
contributor, complete. On the one hand the literary impressario secures
the advertisement of a familiar if not a famous name, good as he knows it
to be for the sale of a certain number of copies, each one of which
represents a clear if a small profit. On the other hand, assuming the
senator to deserve an audience, he is more likely to secure one when his
views are placed before the public for the first time with all the
advantages of good type and paper, when they are read comfortably in
library or club, not listened to with an effort, and even then but
partially heard in the exhausted atmosphere of the House of Commons. Again
if the Popular Chamber still be of the same intellectual calibre as of
old, it has grown also more manifestly fastidious and more demonstratively
intolerant of speakers who do not hit its taste. As Sir James Mackintosh
and Lord Macaulay in different words both said, it was always a Chamber
whose tastes and verdict were incalculable. Since, under a democratic
franchise, it has become an Assembly primarily of business gentlemen, the
chances of failure to satisfy it are so alarmingly numerous as to prevent
all but the most self assured and impassive from making the effort. It
prides itself above all things on its business-like tastes. Therefore, it
abhors any approach to rhetoric. It fails not to remember its traditions
of eloquence, or the ascendancy over itself which to a master of words and
phrases, to a Disraeli, a Gladstone, a Lowe, a Canning, a Peel, it was
proud to accord, like a horse that knows, and that takes a pleasure in,
its rider. Therefore the House expects from those who address it something
more than the bald, business talk of the Board room; an aptitude for
clothing sound original reasons in diction which shall be without
pretentiousness, but that shall not lack felicity and point always, and
epigram sometimes. If these conditions be forthcoming; if the Chamber be
in a good humour; if it be neither too long nor too soon since it lunched
nor too near the hour when it dines; then the elective legislators will
perhaps for a short time give their ear to one who rises at the right
moment and in favour of whom they are predisposed. The conditions are
obviously severe. It is therefore not to be wondered at that candidates
for oratorical honours at St Stephen's tend steadily to diminish.
There is another kind of rivalry to which of late years the House of
Commons has been exposed, which may excite a smile, but which is in its
way a reality to be reckoned with. This is not that of the provincial
platform, of the public meeting room, or of the debating society in its
older development. These latter have always, among the lower middle
classes, fulfilled a function like that of the University Unions among the
classes somewhat better to do. Coger's Hall was the school of discussion
in which the late Charles Bradlaugh acquired great power of direct and
incisive utterance as well as a perfect control over his temper. London
and all the great provincial towns have as many of these places as ancient
Rome possessed of gladiatorial schools. A really new growth of the last
quarter of the nineteenth century is the local Houses of Commons. These
sprung up in and for every quarter or suburb of London, and in many
provincial districts as well. They are still known, and sometimes much in
vogue. They are not of course recognized by the legislature. Nor, as in
the case of the municipal bodies which we have already seen at work, is
their machinery controlled by the Local Government Board. A seat in them
has been known to be as much an object of rivalry among an increasing
class, as a place on the green leather benches of Westminster. The member
for Kennington or Lavender Hill in the south of London, for Westbourne
Grove or Shepherd's Bush in the west, for Haverstock Hill in the north,
may even be as considerable a personage with his immediate friends in the
district as the member for Westminster in the Imperial Parliament. The
leader in the Hampstead House of Commons, or the Chancellor of the
Exchequer in that which meets on Richmond Hill is not certain that he
would change his place with his titular equivalents at St Stephen's. These
are considerations that may explain why the House of Commons, whose
supremacy was unchallenged under a Peel, a Stanley, a Palmerston, a
Disraeli, a Gladstone, is regarded no longer with awe, sometimes with the
familiarity that breeds contempt.
As yet this diminution of parliamentary prestige, if such there really be,
is indicated only by a floating sentiment. It finds expression chiefly in
social chatter or in newspaper flippancies. Nor in the present decade of
the Victorian epoch are there many positive signs of our representative
system being superseded by the controlling will of an individual autocrat
for whom the late Mr Froude thought the time was steadily approaching. The
same remark might with equal truth probably be made of every part in our
national polity. It is certainly true of the House of Lords not less than
of the monarchy. The position practically occupied by the Crown to-day, is
that which the Prince Consort many years ago marked out for it. Some of
these functions he was himself able to assist the Queen in discharging. To
him there seemed to devolve upon the monarchy duties analogous to those
discharged by the permanent officials in the great departments of State.
Amid the vicissitudes of party, the rise and fall of Ministers, the
changes of popular opinion, the Crown was in his judgment the one
guarantee for continuity in policy, domestic not less than foreign. The
occupant of the Throne took, as Ministers of State, those whom
parliamentary majorities and public opinion indicated. The Sovereign
however had other functions than merely to register and sanction the wish
of subjects and the decisions of Commons. Chief among these, as every
other page of Sir Theodore Martin's book during the Peelite and
Palmerstonian periods clearly shows, was to judge of the quarters whence a
stable Administration could be formed; whether, in fact, Lord John
Russell, Lord Palmerston, or Lord Derby, in a balanced state of
parliamentary feeling, had the best chance of carrying on the Queen's
government to the welfare of the realm and the confidence of its
representatives. The most familiar aspects of the political and
parliamentary situation have ceased to be now what in the Prince
Consort's day they habitually were. The doctrine that Ministers are the
free choice of the Sovereign was never propounded absolutely by the
husband of the Queen. The doctrine was rather assumed by him in the
interests of the national convenience than expressed in any terms defining
the Royal prerogative. The slow process of absorption of the Peelites into
the Liberal ranks; the lifelong rivalry of Lord John Russell and Lord
Palmerston produced, during much of the Prince Consort's time, a condition
of unstable equilibrium in party organization, which in these later days
of popular mandates, general elections which are plebiscites and of
overwhelming majorities which amount to commissions of the democracy, it
is not easy to realize.
Some there were who thought that the Liberal disruption of 1886 might
reproduce in English politics the precarious and fluctuating relations of
parties and statesmen that seemed between 1852 and 1865 to have become
permanent. Had that forecast been fulfilled, the Sovereign to-day might be
confronted with personal responsibilities of Ministerial selection which
would have recalled the duty devolved upon her during earlier portions of
her reign. Nothing of the kind has happened. The event of ten years ago
has resulted not in party instability, but in fresh fixity of tenure to
the political conglomerate that the constituencies have as yet shown no
wish to dismiss. Of course in time the same conditions as of old must
recur. The national organization of which Liberals as well as
Conservatives are constituent parts, will at some day or other upon
issues perhaps now unsuspected resolve themselves into their elements.
Ancient lines of demarcation will again declare themselves. A cycle of
government by groups may yet be opened.[58] People and Parliament may
still wait for the Royal choice to close an interval of confusion and of
doubt. In whatever form this reversion to an older order may present
itself, whatever the exact contingencies in store, the occupant of the
Throne as has been shown above cannot divest himself of the right,
therefore of the duty, of giving a casting vote when his officers of State
hesitate, as Mr Disraeli did in 1868, as to the exact moment when the
appeal to the constituences most advantageously can be made.