MONARCHY
“To change back the oligarchy into a generous aristocracy round a _real
throne_,” Disraeli ranks, with his ideal mission towards the Church, as
“the trainer of the nation;” towards Labour, to “the moral and physical
condition of the people;” towards Ireland, by governing it “according
to the policy of Charles I., and not of Oliver Cromwell;” to Reform,
by emancipating “the political constituency of 1832 from its sectarian
bondage and contracted sympathies.”
“Sovereignty,” he says, in the peroration to _Sybil_, “has been the
title of something that has had no dominion, while absolute power
has been wielded by those who profess themselves the servants of the
people. In the selfish strife of factions, two great existences have
been blotted out of the history of England--_the Monarch and the
Multitude_; as the power of the Crown has diminished, the privileges of
the people have disappeared....” Such was Disraeli’s summary in 1870 of
what inspired “Young England” in 1840. The more real is representation,
the greater the chances of royalty. De Tocqueville, too, has shown that
it was just the decay of mediæval, municipal institutions that loosened
the hold of the French Crown on the French nation.
The “real throne,” as against the ornamental, formed a very material
part of it. It chimed with Disraeli’s outlook on English institutions
as “popular, but not democratic.” Since _Sybil_ was written, the
“subject” is no longer “a serf,” but for a long time the “sceptre”
tended to remain “a pageant.” The constitutional possibilities and
opportunities of kingship under our limited monarchy are even now,
perhaps, hardly realised. Before I close this chapter, I intend to say
something of their historical lineage.
There is a satirical passage about George the Fourth among the
brilliant flippancies of _Vivian Grey_, which may amuse us before
coming to close quarters with the serious side of sovereignty: “The
first great duty of a monarch is to know how to bow skilfully. Nothing
is more difficult, ... a royal bow may often quell a rebellion, and
sometimes crush a conspiracy. Our own Sovereign bows to perfection. His
bow is eloquent, and will always render an oration ... unnecessary,
which is a great point, for harangues are not regal. Nothing is
more undignified than to make a speech. It is from the first an
acknowledgment that you are under the necessity of explaining, or
conciliating, or convincing, or confuting; in short, that you are not
omnipotent, but opposed.”
“The Monarchy of the Tories is more democratic than the Republic of
the Whigs!” exclaimed Disraeli, as I have already quoted, in his
early _Spirit of Whiggism_. “I think,” cried Canning in 1812, “that
we have the happiness to live under a limited monarchy, not under a
crowned republic;” while, six years later, Canning again denounced
most forcibly the error of those “who argue as if the constitution of
this country was a broad and level democracy inlaid (for ornament’s
sake) with a peerage and topped (by sufferance) with a crown.” This
belief inspired the same statesman when, towards the agitated close of
his days, he speaks in a letter to Mr. Croker of his reliance on the
“vigour of the Crown” in conjunction with the “body of the people.”
This, too, was the belief that inspired Disraeli. “_The monarch and the
multitude._” Monarchy should be neither a gewgaw nor an abstraction,
but a centre of national enthusiasm. “It is enthusiasm alone that gives
flesh and blood to the skeletons of opinions.” From the beginning of
the first to the close of the fifth decade of last century kingship
had been on its trial in England. “The Tories,” wrote Disraeli in _The
Press_, “already recognised the necessity of employing all the popular
elements of the Constitution in support of its monarchical foundation.”
Just as I have shown with regard to the Church, his predisposition
lay towards pure Theocracy, but his practical bent discerned in a
national Church its aptest and most congenial embodiment; so with
regard to kingship his predisposition lay towards pure monarchy--royal
leadership--which he knew, and indeed hoped, could in England never
prove absolute, still less arbitrary. But a British king retains the
great advantage of being outside the prejudices of every order in
the State of which he is the social chieftain. The tendency, mused
“Sidonia,” of “advanced civilisation was to ‘pure monarchy;’” “Monarchy
is indeed a government which requires a high degree of civilisation
for its fulfilment.” Public opinion, absorbing so many functions
of control, training, and discussion, should find in the king a
disinterested exponent. “In an enlightened age, the monarch on the
throne, free from the vulgar prejudices and the corrupt interests of
the subject, again becomes divine.” But this was said with regard to
France, and in answer to “Coningsby’s” hazard that the republic of that
country might absorb its kingdom, and Paris[109] the provinces. It was
a dream. None felt more deeply than Disraeli that English tradition was
the temper of England. None, more than he, deprecated centralisation.
The very value of her “glorious institutions” is, as he often insists,
that they foster, in a form above the passions of momentary outburst
or fickle reactions, those great elements of loyalty, religion,
industry, liberty, and order which have conjoined to make and keep
her great. Representing classes, they humanise virtues. The problem
since the Revolution has always been how to bring the varying force
of public opinion, the power of Parliament, and the cabinet system,
which has gradually crystallised, into line with the ancient and
beneficial personality of the Crown; in later times, how to reconcile
the King both to Downing and also to Fleet Street; how to harmonise
the dependence of his just limits with the independence of his just
influence; how to render him no mere _roi fainéant_, or marionette
to be danced on the wires of patricians or tribunes, but a real
representative individuality; how he may rule as well as reign; and all
this, in this country and in this century, without assuming any kind
of either fatherly or of stepfatherly meddlesomeness; for the “Patriot
King” must never take even a tinge of the Patriarch. He must be one,
whatever else he may be, who “thinks more of the community and less of
the government.” He must, in a word, bear himself as a chief, and not
as a master.
As Byron sang, bearing Bolingbroke in mind--
“A despot thou, and yet thy people free,
And by the _heart_, not hand, enslaving us.”
The monarch, thought Disraeli, embodies the national elements in a
form of abiding and unarbitrary influence; he is above interest and
beyond party; his position prevents, his functions collide with, any
favouritism of any class. A King at one with public opinion can prove
a real check on individual designs, ministerial mistakes, private
cajoleries, public passions. “The proper leader of the people is the
individual who sits upon the throne.”
“‘And yet,’ said Coningsby, ‘the only way to terminate what is called
class legislation is not to entrust power to classes.... _The only
power that has no class sympathy is the Sovereign._’
“‘But suppose the case of an arbitrary Sovereign, what would be your
check against him?’
“‘The same as against an arbitrary Parliament.’
“‘But a Parliament is responsible ... to its constituent body.’
“‘Suppose it was to vote itself perpetual?’
“‘But public opinion would prevent that.’
“‘And is public opinion of less influence on an individual than on a
body?’
“‘But public opinion may be indifferent. A nation may be misled--may be
corrupt.’
“‘If the nation that elects the Parliament be corrupt, the elected body
will resemble it.... But this only shows that there is something to be
considered beyond forms of government--national character....’
“‘But do you then declare against Parliamentary government?’
“‘Far from it. _I look upon political change as the greatest of
evils, for it comprehends all._ But if we have no faith in the
permanence of the existing settlement--if the very individuals who
established it are year after year proposing their modifications or
their reconstructions--so, also, while we uphold what exists, ought
we to prepare ourselves for the change we deem impending. Now, I
would not that either ourselves or our fellow-citizens should be
taken unawares as in 1832, when the very men who opposed the Reform
Bill offered contrary objections to it which destroyed each other,
so ignorant were they of its real character, historical causes, its
political consequences.... For this purpose I would accustom the public
mind to the contemplation of an existing though torpid power in the
constitution, capable of removing our social grievances.... _The House
of Commons is the house of a few; the Sovereign is the sovereign of
all._’”
Now, undoubtedly the period to which these words refer was one when
certain Whig leaders contemplated an oligarchical republic, and wished
to compass their aim by an undue exaltation of the Lower House, as,
in 1718, Sunderland had wished to attain the same end by that of the
Upper. No student of the Croker Papers can fail to recognise the
fact, and undoubtedly Disraeli thought--and Sir Robert Peel thought
so too--that the times were ripe for reviving those constitutional
prerogatives, those kingly privileges which form the Crown’s sole
direct representative faculty in the constitution, of which the Crown
had long been robbed, first by its own alternate abuse or incapacity
to use them, afterwards by faction itself often imitating the royal
errors. And so the executive power had passed almost wholly into
ministerial hands. After 1830 the prerogatives which, as I shall show,
Mr. Gladstone champions, seemed falling into entire abeyance. In 1836,
before he had entered Parliament, Disraeli had, in the _Runnymede
Letters_, where he spoke of “the people of England sighing once more
to be a nation,” called on Sir Robert Peel to achieve “a great task
in a great spirit”--“_rescue your Sovereign from an unconstitutional
thraldom_; rescue an august Senate which has already fought the battle
of the people; rescue our National Church which our opponents hate,
our venerable constitution at which they scoff; but, above all, rescue
that mighty body of which all these great classes and institutions are
but one of the constituent and essential parts--rescue the _nation_.”
In 1837, “our young Queen and our old Institutions” were no mere
catchwords. And it seems unquestionable, also, that the subsequent
interferences of Baron Stockmar, the late Queen’s early tutelage to
Lord Melbourne, the circumstances attendant on her happy marriage,
the peculiar treatment of Prince Consort by her first ministers, and
the long retirement due to private grief, contributed in successive
combination towards that invisibility, so to speak, of her royal
office, which prevailed, though it did not, however, eventually
preclude her very real and valuable exercise of it. In England the only
true blemish of our party system, which Disraeli vehemently fought to
uphold, is, as he more than once urged, that it tends to “warp the
intelligence.” To this fault the wisdom of a constitutional and popular
monarch, above and beyond party, offers an antidote.
Sir Robert Peel, in the very year of Queen Victoria’s accession, writes
to Croker as follows:--
“... The theory of the constitution is that the King has no will except
in the choice of his ministers.... _But this, like a thousand other
theories, is at variance with the fact._ The personal character of
the sovereign ... has an immense practical effect.... There may not
be violent collisions between the King and his Government, but his
influence, though dormant and unseen, may be very powerful. Respect
for personal character will operate in some cases; in others the King
will have all the authority which greater and more widely extended
experience than that of any single minister will naturally give. A
King, after a reign of ten years, ought to know much more of the
working of the machine of government than any other man in the country.
_He is the centre to which all business gravitates._ The knowledge that
the King holds firmly a certain opinion, and will abide by it, prevents
in many cases an opposite opinion being offered to him.... The personal
character of a really constitutional King, of mature age, of experience
in public affairs, and knowledge, manners, and customs, is practically
so much _ballast_, keeping the vessel of the State steady in her
course, countervailing the levity of popular ministers, of orators
forced by oratory into public councils, the blasts of democratic
passions, the groundswell of discontent, and ‘the ignorant impatience
for the relaxation of taxation.’ ... The genius of the Constitution had
contrived this in times gone by.
“‘Speluncis abdidit atris
Hoc metuens, molemque et montes insuper altos
Imposuit, _Regemque_ dedit, qui fœdere certo
Et premere, et laxas sciret dare jussus habenas.’
“If at other times this _paternal authority_[110] were requisite,
the authority to be exercised _fœdere certo_, by the nice tact of an
experienced hand, how much more is it necessary when every institution
is reeling, when
_‘Excutimur cursu, et cœcis erramus in undis’!_”
Sir Robert’s idea, then, of a constitutional sovereign was that of
an unseen driver who holds the reins from within. The sailor-king
of narrow mind but broad sympathies, just departed when Peel wrote,
had not proved a cipher. He insisted on being for a space Lord High
Admiral, despite Croker’s ungenerous retort that James II. had done
the same. In 1828 he had offered wise advice to his ministers as to
the unripeness of the times for a change in the form then proposed,
which touched his heart. On his accession he emphatically expressed his
pleasure in retaining his ministers. And, though he composed a couplet
so bad that it might have been the jingle of Harley--
“_A dissolution
Means revolution_,”
yet throughout the brief and perplexed span of his reign he honestly
tried to accord with the whole nation as opposed to cliques and
sections of it that assumed the title of “the people.” The fact was
that he acceded during one of those crises when the balance of power
was shifting, and, his intellect being mediocre, he became bewildered.
The new, the legitimate, the organised predominance of public opinion
clashed with Parliament, and was played upon by ambitious ministers.
William the Fourth lived in just fear and blunt defiance of that
“Venetian oligarchy” which ever since 1704 had been the recurrent ideal
of the place-engrossing, great revolution families. What he apprehended
was foiled, principally by the personality of Sir Robert Peel, whom
he summoned to his aid. Henceforward the monarchy became, as it ought
long before to have become, completely, if gradually, popularised. When
monarchy is popular, the invisibility of its office ceases to be an
expedient. “... I think,” said Disraeli, in a speech of 1850, “it one
of the great misfortunes of our time, and one most injurious to public
liberty, that the power of the Crown has diminished.”
With Victoria and our present King--if we except a very transient spasm
of George III., whose first essay to be a “patriot king” had been to
dismiss and thwart the most popular minister that England has ever
had--monarchy has for the first time during nearly two centuries proved
wholly and nationally popular. Before the Stuarts, Elizabeth had ruled
by the sole virtue of her popularity; she had “inflamed the national
spirit,” and the checks introduced by the Revolution were only a
necessity for unpopular sovereigns. The Press has now introduced a far
greater check than any of these. Now that the nation is in full unison
with the Crown, the King is doubly entitled to support the nation
in hours of befitting emergency against the cabals or passions of a
person, a clique, or a class. A modern English King is too cognisant of
the popular feeling eloquent in an unbridled press ever to violate it;
he could not do so with impunity. The last surrender of “independent
kingship,” which Mr. Gladstone has noted, and others after him, was in
1827, when a weak sovereign renewed the “charter of administration of
the day.” There is no pretext now for a King to yield or hide his just
and popular privileges to serve the turn of ministers. The necessity
for a “monarch of Downing Street” has disappeared.
Disraeli adverted to some of these topics at Manchester in 1872, long
after the events of those times had passed, but when “the banner of
republicanism” was once again unfurled.
“... Since the settlement of that constitution, now nearly two
centuries ago, England has never experienced a revolution, though
there is no country in which there has been so continuous and
such considerable change. How is this? Because the wisdom of your
forefathers placed the prize of supreme power without the sphere of
human passions. Whatever the struggle of parties, whatever the strife
of factions, whatever the excitement and exaltation of the public
mind, there has always been something in this country round which all
classes and powers could rally, representing the majesty of the law,
the administration of justice, and involving at the same time the
security for every man’s rights and the fountain of honour.” And then,
after emphasising the non-partisanship of the Crown, the very end which
Bolingbroke forecasted at the time when an unemancipated King was
condemned to be a party man, he led the discussion to the conventional
views of the King being not only outside politics, but outside affairs.
“... I know it will be said that, however beautiful in theory,
the personal influence of the Sovereign is now absorbed in the
responsibility of the minister. I think you will find there is a great
fallacy in this view. The principles of the English Constitution do
not contemplate the absence of personal influence on the part of the
Sovereign; and if they did, the principles of human nature would
prevent the fulfilment of such a theory.” He is here in complete accord
with Peel. “Even,” he says, “with average ability, it is impossible
not to perceive that such a Sovereign must soon attain a great mass
of political information and political experience. Information and
experience, ... whether they are possessed by a Sovereign or by the
humblest of his subjects, are irresistible in life.... The longer the
reign, the influence of that Sovereign must proportionately increase.
All the illustrious statesmen who served his youth disappear. A new
generation of public servants rises up. There is a critical conjuncture
in affairs--a moment of perplexity and peril. Then it is that the
Sovereign can appeal to a similar state of affairs that occurred
perhaps thirty years before. When all are in doubt among his servants,
he can quote the advice that was given by the illustrious men of his
early years, and though he may maintain himself within the strictest
limits of the Constitution, who can suppose, when such information and
such suggestions are made by the most exalted person in the country,
that they can be without effect? No; ... a minister who could venture
to treat such influence with indifference would not be a Constitutional
minister, but an arrogant idiot....” And in another speech of the same
year, after insisting that English attachment to English institutions
was no “political superstition,” but sprang from a resolve that “_the
principles of liberty, of order, of law, and of religion ought not to
be entrusted to individual opinion, or to the caprice and passion of
multitudes, but should be embodied in a form of permanence and power_,”
he also remarked: “... We associate with the Monarchy the ideas which
it represents--the majesty of law, the administration of justice, the
fountain of mercy and honour.” He might, in fitness with his other
pronouncements, have added the ideas of loyalty and of leadership.
Again, in 1871, a moment of republican revival, adverting to the
superintendence of public business by the Sovereign, he insisted that
“... there is not a dispatch received from abroad, or sent from this
country abroad, which is not submitted to the Queen.... Those Cabinet
Councils, ... which are necessarily the scene of anxious and important
deliberations, are reported and communicated, ... and they often call
from her critical remarks requiring considerable attention.... No
person likely to administer the affairs of this country would treat
the suggestions of Her Majesty with indifference, for at this moment
there is probably no person living who has such complete control over
the political conditions.... But, although there never was a Sovereign
who would less arrogate any power or prerogative which the Constitution
does not authorise, so I will say there never was one more wisely
jealous of those which the Constitution has allotted to her, because
she believes they are for the welfare of her people.”
It is by its constitutional prerogatives that, in the first place, the
Crown can assert its lawful influence. They confer on him a deciding
power in many spheres. Of these prerogatives Disraeli was a champion;
and Mr. Gladstone upheld them in at least two interesting discussions
among his “Gleanings.”
To defer the most obvious among these, the King’s consultative faculty,
“the power,” to cite Mr. Gladstone, “which gives the monarch an
undoubted _locus standi_ in all the deliberations of a Government, ...
remains as it was.” In olden days this was effected openly in form. Nor
should it be forgotten that whenever a Ministry is changed, again to
cite Mr. Gladstone, “the whole power of the State periodically returns
into the royal hands.” In 1852, when Lord Derby reluctantly consented
to assume office with a minority, there were forty-eight hours when,
as Disraeli pointed out in a speech of 1873, “the Queen was without
a Government.” Then take the royal prerogative of dissolution. This
right enabled, in 1852, that very administration to perform the work
of the session, and to carry the supplies before appealing to the
constituencies on its right to exist. It is in effect a right of appeal
by the Sovereign through or even against (should he deem it their
duty to take the national voice) his ministers to the country; and in
any crucial instance it forms the best check to faction of which our
Constitution admits.
Further, there exists the admitted prerogative, openly exercised, of
choice of ministers. This was the main arena of party cleavage under
the greater portion of the sway of George III. It was this which,
as Mr. Gladstone also mentions, was unsuccessfully, but neither
unwholesomely nor unfairly, pressed into popular service in 1834.
And, among many others remaining, there is that to appoint bishops--a
stalking-ground of contention during the reign of Anne, and, in the
Victorian era, signalised by Dr. Hampden’s appointment against a
remonstrant primate. There is the prerogative of the Royal Warrant
utilised by Mr. Gladstone himself in the repeal of the Purchase Act.
There is the prerogative of disapproving the choice of Speaker, which
will probably cease. There is that for proposing grants of public
money, and there is the salutary initiative of Royal Commission which
paves the way for social reform. On these personal rights I need not
dwell. But on the prerogative of peace and war a word must be said. Had
it been withheld for hostilities in the Crimea, a needless complication
of Europe need never have occurred.[111] We may conjecture that its
influence was not absent from our recent peace in South Africa. Mr.
Gladstone has instanced the Chinese war, some fifty years ago, as an
example of carrying on a conflict believed to be necessary despite its
condemnation by “the stewards of the public purse.” The Sovereign has
also the undoubted right to consult with his ministers, and to attend
the deliberations of his Cabinet. Queen Anne did this habitually, and
the fatal movement of her fan decided great issues on more than one
occasion. The first two Georges used on occasion, but with indifference
where money was not concerned, to do the same. Since then it has fallen
into disuse, and perhaps the end is better served by the premier’s
audiences with his King. But I may here be permitted to hope that when
the great intercolonial council which is in the air has taken shape,
the Sovereign may deign to be its President. Such a decision would be
in complete accord with the policy of Disraeli, who affirmed in 1876,
“No one regrets more than I do that favourable opportunities have been
lost of identifying the colonies with the royal race of England.”
The prerogatives are the royal faculties for independent expression.
But it is obviously not by prerogative mainly or alone that the Crown
rivets and can mould a nation. The Crown is a many-sided emblem. It is
the centre of English unity, a focus of consolidation and compactness;
while it also represents Great and Greater Britain abroad. As a source
of home sympathy, as the embodiment of the might and mercy of a great
Empire, as the durable impersonation of the individual character that
out of many welded races creates a united Empire, it is manifestly
operative. I may add that it may also set an example of simplicity, for
the Crown is able to bring choice virtues into vulgar fashion.
Nor should sight be lost of the immense services which the Sovereign
may render to British interests abroad. Shifting administrations
encourage various hopes in foreign powers. The Crimean War was an
outcome of such renewed aspirations. Our foreign policy lacks the
strength of continuity, and its changefulness seems ineradicable
from our party system. It is, therefore, of high importance that
European courts should be able to count on certain limits which they
know that a monarch whom they respect is likely to maintain. Such a
consciousness of finality enables foreign Governments to moderate the
popular clamour often worked up by dishonest agitation, and the more
obstinate because purposely misinformed. The Crown can thus become a
great conciliator,[112] and sometimes a preventer of actual war. The
affinities of the blood royal to continental dynasties are not so
cogent, though their material aid as sources of inner information is
manifest. But as guarantees of amity they often prove comparatively
helpless, unless supported by the recognition of character, tact,
and abilities, for which the nurture of every British prince should
fit him, and which entitle him to appeal to every differing headship
of peoples abroad, as well as to the originally alien ingredients of
empire at home. The British Sovereign may well be called the Member for
the Empire.
On these aspects Disraeli often dwelt; and at a period when, for these
objects, the comparatively small expense was affected to be grudged
by a set of extreme politicians, his analysis proved its cheapness in
proportion to the cost of large democracies and republics.
A great outcry was raised when, twenty-seven years ago, Disraeli made
the startling move of appealing alike to the Hindoo and the Mohammedan
sentiment by investing Queen Victoria with a title which has impressed
India with the grandeur of Great Britain. To the Oriental the style
of a white queen meant as little as to the queen of the Ansaries, so
humorously depicted in _Tancred_. It was well said of Disraeli by
Lord Salisbury, in the speech which commemorated his death, that zeal
for the greatness of England had eaten him up; and zeal, as Disraeli
observed in an Irish speech of 1844, is rare enough in these days.
Never was a stroke more justified by its results. Like the purchase of
the Suez Canal shares, equally justified, it was bitterly and blindly
assailed. “Bastard imperialism” was the refrain of the Opposition. No
one knew on what sacred ark the Machiavellian finger might next be laid.
Disraeli proved that “empress” was an old ascription even in England,
and that “emperor” even in the Western mind was not a title bound
up with “bad associations.” Macaulay had singled out the age of the
Antonines as a signal era for the world, and the Antonines had been
emperors. In the early ’sixties a definite and powerful party had
conspired to break the unity of the empire and the dignity of the
kingdom, to sacrifice everything to material considerations, to convert
_a first-class monarchy into a second-class republic_. It was not
enough that the national sentiment should be diverted from appeals to
pocket by appeals to patriotism; that the gush of utilitarian cold
water should be arrested from drowning the rekindled flames of public
spirit. The coloured imagination of the East must also be brought into
line with the soberer background of the West. Nor was the relation of
the measure less weighty to Europe. Europe, too, must realise that
India was a trust which Britain was resolute never to abandon. These
objects Disraeli effected by his “Royal Titles Bill,” a conception
as simple as it was daring. “They know in India,” he urged, after
imploring the House to “remove prejudice from their minds”--“they know
in India what this bill means, and they know that what it means is what
they wish.... Let not our divisions be misconstrued. _Let the people of
India feel that there is a sympathetic chord between us and them, and
do not let Europe suppose for a moment that there are any in this House
who are not deeply conscious of the importance of our Indian Empire._
Unfortunate words have been heard in the debate upon this subject; but
I will not believe that any member of this House seriously contemplates
the loss of our Indian Empire.... If you sanction the passing of this
bill, it will be an act, to my mind, that will add splendour even to
her throne, and security even to her Empire.” In a subsequent chapter
I shall show that these ideas of sympathy with India had animated him
while the great Mutiny was raging.
It was Disraeli who suggested to Queen Victoria the propriety of
learning the language and studying the literature of the vast domain
over which she ruled, and the _munshis_ summoned to instruct her,
brought home to every Indian the conviction that her sway was one, not
only of strength, but of sympathy and intelligence. Doubtless these
policies were born of dreams, and of dreams which to the unreflecting
might seem extravaganzas. But they were not merely an Arabian Nights’
entertainment. The Monarchy, like the Church, in his mind were in one
respect akin. The Clergy and the King were both “English citizens and
English gentlemen,” and yet the undue political influence of either, as
he insisted in 1861, was to be feared, because it might diminish their
best influence. Both make for order, and order makes for liberty. “...
It is said sometimes that the Church of England is hostile to religious
liberty. As well might it be said that the Monarchy of England is
adverse to political freedom.”
Many of Disraeli’s central ideas as to British kingship were partly
decided by him from his boyish conversance with the works of Lord
Bolingbroke, whose constitutional theories (repeated by Burke) solved
the difficulty of accounting for the popularity of exclusiveness in
the theory of government, and for the odiousness of that party which
had once been inclusive and “national.” Prerogative has been nowhere
better defined than by Bolingbroke, who uniformly also declares
that Parliament is the main barrier against “the usurpation of its
illegal, or the abuse of its legal, powers.” He terms prerogative “a
discretionary power in the King to act for the good of his people
where the laws are silent; ... never contrary to law;” and this in
a passage where he protests against its being raised “one step
higher;” and he has further shown elsewhere how some such “barefaced,
extraordinary powers” _were_ welcomed by the nation in Elizabeth’s
reign, because they were called forth by popular emergencies and
used in a popular manner. Elizabeth, at a time before the Sovereign
depended on Parliament, and before the Cabinet system was established,
owed her power to her sympathy with her people. The first two Georges
were unsympathetic, and the second abetted not only partisanship, but
cliqueship. He became dependent on contending heads of greedy factions.
To cure these evils was the purport of the “Patriot King,” which
inspired Disraeli as it had before inspired Chatham.
It has been objected that Bolingbroke’s aim was for the King to “defy
Parliament.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Throughout his
writings he champions the rights of Parliament; indeed, Parliament was
his hobby. In his treatise on the “Patriot King,” the word “Parliament”
is not employed--it is his only essay from which it is absent--but the
phrase “the people,” that is, has been expressly defined by him as the
whole nation in its capacities, representative as well as collective.
It therefore includes “Parliament.” In Bolingbroke’s previous “Spirit
of Patriotism,” he had approached the theme of national regeneration
from the standpoint of the ideal citizen; in the “Patriot King,” from
the standpoint of a throne in accord with national concurrence. Its
whole pith is that the ideal King, governing through ministers and
through party, should rise above and beyond them. He must be neither
a partisan (as all the Georges proved), nor a puppet, nor (as Canning
long afterwards repeated) “the tool of a confederacy,” but in alliance
with and reliance on the whole body of his subjects. The “Patriot King”
is expressly urged “to confine instead of labouring to extend his
prerogative;” and Bolingbroke adds that such an ideal would be derided
by his own generation.
Of Elizabeth herself, whose great example is his perpetual praise, he
has observed elsewhere that, “instead of struggling through trouble and
danger to bend the constitution to any particular views of her own, she
accommodated her notions, her views, and her whole character to it;”
and he proceeds to say, “a free people expects this of their prince. He
is made for their sakes, not they for his;” and again, “the merit of
a wise governor is wisely to superintend the whole.” He expresses his
ideal of an impartial and democratic King in his “Spirit of Patriotism”
as of one who should “_govern all by all_.” He further, in many direct
passages, distinctly looks forward to a transference of power from
caballing cliques led by selfish ambition, to the nation at large, and
he calls on the King to be a truly national ruler. He desires, under
changes, descried in the dim distance, that the “_sense of the Court,
the sense of the Parliament, and the sense of the People should be the
same_;” that the King, as he expresses it, should prove the “centre of
the nation,” and, as Disraeli has expressed it, should be above “class
interests;” should, in a country of classes, respond to every class,
and favouritise none. To this end he harped, as did Disraeli from
first to last, on what he admits to be a seeming solecism--a “National
Party;” and by this he means--as I could prove by countless passages--a
party whose main object is _national and imperial unity_; one that is,
moreover, comprehensive instead of being exclusive.
These ideas, in happier times and altered circumstances, passed
to Disraeli. In 1859, repeating in part what he had affirmed of
“Bolingbroke” in the Letter to Lord Lyndhurst, indited nearly
twenty-five years earlier, he said of the Conservative party: “... In
attempting, however humbly, to regulate its fortunes, I have always
striven to distinguish that which was eternal from that which was but
accidental in its opinions. I have always striven to assist in building
it upon a _broad and national_ basis, because I believed it to be a
party peculiarly and essentially _national_--a party which adhered to
the institutions of the country as embodying the national necessities
and forming the best security for the liberty, the power, and the
prosperity of England.”
In his Runnymede Letter to Peel of 1836, he calls on him to head this
“national party.” In his Crystal Palace oration of 1872, he showed that
the ideal of a “Conservative” party seeking to preserve, adapt, and
expand traditional institutions is to be national. In this striking
speech, after deprecating that, in the days of Eldon, “... instead of
the principles professed by Mr. Pitt and Lord Grenville, and which
those great men inherited ‘from predecessors’ not less illustrious,
the Tory system had degenerated into a policy which formed an adequate
basis on the principles of exclusiveness and restriction,” he urged,
as he had always urged: “... The Tory party, unless it is a national
party, is nothing. It is not a confederacy of nobles, it is not a
democratic multitude; it is a party formed from all the numerous
classes in the realm--classes alike and equal before the law, but whose
different conditions and different aims give vigour and variety to our
national life.”
For the essence of these ideas, the forms which have since appeared or
vanished--the development of the ministerial system, the organisation
of public opinion--are immaterial. Of course Bolingbroke could not
foresee the _routine_ of the far future; it was its _spirit_ which
he foresaw, and to which, through Disraeli, he contributed. In his
own language about another, he “... _had the wisdom to discern, not
only the actual alteration which was already made, but the growing
alteration which would every day increase_.” And this, too, may be
affirmed of Disraeli.
I think that, in the denial of Bolingbroke’s real objects, achieved by
Disraeli, some misconception has arisen from the constant use towards
the close of the eighteenth century of “to govern by party connections.”
George III., a student of Bolingbroke, but a narrow abuser on his first
trial of his doctrine, was accused of meaning to dispense with this
watchword of oligarchs. But the quarrels of his time proved that what
George III. really wanted was to dispense with one party alone, to
escape from the dictation of a few governing families, and to choose
his own ministers. There may be--there have been--great parties based
on principles of disruption and contraction rather than of union
and expansion, or parties based on principles more international or
continental than national and British. A “national” party does not
exclude their existence and criticism, any more than it does that
of another “national” party taking another outlook on “general
principles.” What it ought more and more to exclude, what the monarch
as the centre of union should more and more render impossible, is an
anti-national group, and the remedy that Burke suggests for such an
ailment is that propounded by Bolingbroke and upheld by Disraeli--the
limited and constitutional prerogatives of the Crown--which
should render less possible those gangs of office-mongers who, in
Bolingbroke’s phrase, pay “a private court at the public expense,” and
in Disraeli’s, are “public traders of easy virtue.”
These ideas, shared by Bolingbroke, by Burke, by Canning, and by
Disraeli, are no tiresome theories, but lively and practical issues. We
too must look ahead. How far under modern conditions, and apart from
the spasms and clamours of party, can the sovereign power as a force
consolidating the Empire be strengthened, and the royal prerogatives
wisely displayed in the light of day? Ought a King’s personality to
prove also the means of his power? Time will show.