is a singular and difficult one. There was a school of politicians who
were much more prominent in the last generation than in the present
one, who regarded the Sovereign, in political life at least, as little
more than a figure-head or a cipher, absolved from all responsibility,
but also divested of all power, and fulfilling functions in the
Constitution which are little more than mechanical. This view of the
unimportance of the Monarchy will now be held by few really
intelligent men. Those take but a false and narrow view of human
affairs who fail to realise the part which sentiment and enthusiasm
play in the government of men; and no one who knows England will
question that the throne is the centre of a great strength of personal
attachment which is wholly different from any attachment to a party or
a parliament.
In India and the Colonies this is still more the case. It is not the
British Parliament or the British Cabinet that there forms the centre
of unity or excites genuine attachment. The Crown is the main link
binding the different States to one another, and the pervading
sentiment of a common loyalty unites them in one great and living
whole. In foreign politics it cannot be a matter of indifference that
a Sovereign is closely related to nearly all the greatest rulers in
the world, and in frequent, intimate, unconstrained correspondence
with them. This is a kind of influence which no Minister, however
powerful, can exercise, and it was possessed by Queen Victoria
probably to a greater degree than by any Sovereign on record, for
there has scarcely ever been one who included among her relations so
many of the Sovereigns of the world. Future historians will no doubt
have ample means of judging how frequently and how judiciously it was
employed in assuaging differences and promoting European peace. All
the great offices in Church and State, all the great distributions of
honours were submitted to her; and though in a large number of cases
this patronage is purely Ministerial or professional, there are many
cases in which the Sovereign had a real voice, and a strong objection
on her part was usually attended to. In Church patronage and in the
distribution of honours she is known to have taken a great interest,
and to have exercised a considerable influence.
The one subject on which the Queen was not always in harmony with her
people was that of foreign politics. She and the Prince Consort took a
keen interest in them, and during his lifetime she followed very
implicitly his guidance. The strong German sympathies she imbued from
her own marriage were much intensified by the marriages of her
children, and especially by that of her eldest daughter to the heir of
the Prussian throne. The influence also of Stockmar, who was the
closest adviser of her early married life, was not wholly for good,
and the theory which the Prince held that the direction of foreign
affairs is in a peculiar degree under the care of the Sovereign, and
that the Prince, her husband, should be regarded as 'her permanent
Minister,' created during many years much friction. In a
constitutional country, where the responsibility of affairs rests
wholly on the Minister, who is doubly responsible to the Cabinet and
to the Parliament, such a theory can only be maintained with great
qualifications.
On the other hand, the government of the country was carried on in the
name of the Queen. Foreign despatches were addressed to her and could
only be answered with her sanction. The right of the English
Sovereigns to be present at the Cabinet Councils of their Ministers
was abdicated when George I. came to the throne, but every important
departure in policy was submitted to the Queen and required her
assent. The testimony of Ministers of all shades of policy supports
the belief that this was no idle form. The Queen, though always open
to argument and tolerant of contradiction, had her own decided
opinions; she exercised her undoubted right of expressing and
defending them, and even apart from her royal position, her great
experience and her singular clearness and rectitude of judgment made
her opinion well worth listening to.
The claim put forward by the Queen in her famous memorandum of August
1850, can, I think, hardly be pronounced excessive. She demanded only
that before a line of policy was adopted and brought before her she
should be distinctly informed of the facts of the case and of the
motives that inspired it; that when she had given her sanction to a
measure it should not be arbitrarily altered or modified by the
Minister; that she must be kept acquainted with all important
communications between foreign Ministers and her own Foreign
Secretary, and that the drafts of foreign despatches must be sent to
her for her approval in sufficient time for her to make herself
acquainted with them. She complained that Lord Palmerston was
accustomed to send despatches to the Continent without submitting
them, in their last revise, to the Sovereign; that in one case he
retained without her knowledge a passage which the Prince Consort had
deleted; that he paid little or no attention to the numerous memoranda
which were drawn up by the Prince for his instruction; that he of his
own will and without any consultation committed his Government, in a
conversation with the French Ambassador, to an approbation of the
_coup d'état_ of Napoleon III. If the general line of his policy had
been in accordance with the royal wishes, indiscretions of detail
could probably have been overlooked, but the Queen and Prince were
both undoubtedly on many occasions--and especially in 1848 and
1849--strongly opposed to the policy of Lord Palmerston. In the
interests of peace they objected to the remarkably provocative
character of his despatches, which excited a degree of animosity and
resentment among the Governments of the Continent that has rarely been
paralleled--on two, if not three, occasions it brought England into
grave danger of a war with France--and which aroused a very widespread
indignation among statesmen of his own party at home.
The widely different tone which was adopted by Lord Clarendon and Lord
Granville, the open breach between Palmerston and Lord John Russell on
account of the way in which the former conducted his foreign policy
without consultation with the Cabinet, and the refusal of Lord Grey,
in a most critical moment, to take office in a Government in which
Lord Palmerston held the seals of the Foreign Office, show how fully
in this respect the sentiments of the Queen accorded with those of
many of Lord Palmerston's own colleagues. But in addition to mere
questions of manner and procedure, there was much in the substance of
the policy of Palmerston to which the Queen objected. Her dislike to
the Revolutionary element on the Continent, which Lord Palmerston
either encouraged or viewed with indifference, her sympathy with the
old governments and dynasties, that were so gravely shaken in the year
of the Revolution, were very marked. In the disputes between Germany
and Denmark on the Schleswig-Holstein question her sympathies, unlike
those of her people, were decidedly with Germany, and although she was
fully sensible of the misgovernment of some of the Italian States, she
was not favourable to that cause of Italian unity which Lord John
Russell and Lord Palmerston so strenuously upheld. Her nature, which
was very frank, made it impossible for her, even if she desired it, to
conceal her opinions, and she devoted much time and pains to making
herself acquainted with the details of every question as it arose. She
made it a rule to sign no paper that she had not read. She did not
hesitate fully to apprise her Ministers of her views when they
differed from their own, and she enforced her views by argument and
remonstrance. She more than once drew up memoranda of her dissent from
the opinions of her Foreign Minister, and insisted on their being
brought before the Cabinet for consideration. In the formation of a
new Ministry she more than once exercised her power of deciding to
whom the succession of the first places should be offered. After an
adverse vote of the House of Commons, she considered herself fully
authorised to decide whether she would accept the resignation of a
Minister or submit the issue to the test of a dissolution, and there
were occasions on which she remonstrated with her Ministers on their
too ready determination to resign.
At the same time it is certain that the Queen fulfilled with
perfection that most difficult duty of an able constitutional
Sovereign--the duty of yielding her convictions to those of her
responsible Ministers and acting faithfully with Ministers she
distrusted. To a Sovereign with clear views and a more than common
force of character this must often have been very painful, and to have
fulfilled it faithfully and with no loss of dignity is no small merit.
It is the universal testimony of all who served her, that no Sovereign
ever supported her successive Ministers with a more perfect loyalty or
held the scales between contending parties with a more complete
impartiality. No one understood better to what point a constitutional
Sovereign may press her opinions and at what point she is bound to
give way; and while maintaining her rightful authority she never in
any degree transgressed its bounds. In the very beginning of her reign
she showed this quality in a high degree. She looked up to Lord
Melbourne with an almost filial affection, and there were peculiar
reasons why his great opponent, Sir Robert Peel, should have been
distasteful to her. The dispute about the removal of her Ladies of the
Bedchamber, and still more the conduct of Sir Robert Peel in
supporting the reduction of the income which the Whigs had proposed
for Prince Albert, must have touched her feelings on the most
sensitive points, and the stiff, formal, somewhat awkward manner of
Peel seemed very little fitted to ingratiate him with a young
Sovereign. Yet when the change of Ministry arrived, Peel found no
trace of resentment in the Queen. She gave him her complete
confidence, and she fully estimated his great qualities. Of all the
Ministers who served her there is indeed none of whom she has written
in warmer terms. When Lord Palmerston became Prime Minister in 1855 it
was contrary to her earnest desire, but when the change was made
Palmerston himself acknowledged that he had 'no reason to complain of
the least want of cordiality or confidence on the part of the Court.'
At the time when she was most opposed to her Ministers, she fully
acquiesced in the principle that she must submit all letters on public
affairs to them and frame her replies upon their advice. There were
constant attempts on the part of foreign Sovereigns who were connected
with her to carry on affairs by correspondence with her without the
knowledge and sanction of her Ministers, but the Queen steadily
resisted them. Anything, indeed, that in any way savoured of intrigue
was in the highest degree repugnant to her nature.
She acted in the same way in internal affairs. Few measures that were
carried in her time were more repugnant to her than Gladstone's
disestablishment of the Irish Church. It abolished an institution of
which she was herself the head and which a special clause in the
Coronation Oath required her to uphold, and she foretold, not without
good reason, that it would not pacify Ireland but would be an
encouragement to further agitation. The question, however, had been
submitted at a general election to the decision of the country, and
after that decision had been unequivocally given in favour of the
policy of Gladstone, she frankly accepted it with the assent of the
Prime Minister. When a great danger of a conflict between the two
Houses of Parliament had arisen, she devoted herself actively in
preventing it. She employed for that service the instrumentality of
Archbishop Tait--a great statesman-prelate, whose promotion to the see
of Canterbury was due to her own personal initiative, contrary to the
wish of Lord Beaconsfield, but most fully justified by the result--and
it was largely due to the intervention of the Queen that the Church
Bill was not thrown out in the House of Lords. She acted in a
somewhat similar way with reference to the Franchise Bill of 1884,
though on this occasion she does not seem to have disliked the
measure, which she urged the House of Lords to accept.
On three very memorable occasions the intervention of the Queen had
probably a great effect on English politics. It is well known that at
the time when the issue of peace or war with the United States was
trembling in the balance on account of the seizure of the Southern
envoys on the 'Trent,' the Queen, acting in accordance with the Prince
Consort, by softening and revising the language of an English despatch
to America, did very much to prevent the dispute from leading to a
great war; that in the proclamation which was issued to the Indian
people after the Sepoy Mutiny, she insisted on the excision of some
most unfortunate words that seemed to menace the native creeds, and on
the insertion of an emphatic promise that they should in no wise be
interfered with, and thus probably prevented a new outburst of most
dangerous fanaticism; that at the time of the Schleswig-Holstein
dispute she contributed powerfully and actively to give a turn to the
negotiations that averted a war with Prussia and Austria, which, as is
now almost universally recognised, could only have led to a great
catastrophe.
Whatever opinions may be formed of the merits of the dispute between
Denmark and the German powers about Schleswig-Holstein, few persons
who judge by the event can doubt that an isolated intervention of
England on behalf of Denmark against the combined forces of Austria
and Prussia would have been absolutely impotent to effect the object
that was desired, and that even if France had consented to join in the
struggle it would have led to a military disaster hardly less than
that of the war of Sedan. If, contrary to all probability, the
combined forces of France and England had proved stronger than those
of Austria and Germany, the result could have hardly failed to be that
France would have been established on the left bank of the Rhine, and
that the treaty of Vienna, which it was one of the great objects of
English policy to maintain, would have been torn into shreds.
The dangers, however, of conflict arising from the extreme
irritability of English public opinion against Germany on the Danish
question, were very great, and there can be little doubt that the
personal influence of the Queen with the German Sovereign was an
appreciable influence, and it was her desire that a paragraph in the
Queen's Speech opening Parliament in February 1864 was erased. Words
which contained at least a veiled or attributed threat to Germany were
omitted, and instead of them an inoffensive paragraph was inserted
expressing the Queen's ardent desire for peace and recording the
earnest efforts she had made to maintain it.[51] At the same time
when, by the Convention of Gastein in August 1865, the Duchies were
severed from the Danish throne and placed in the virtual possession of
Prussia and Austria, the protest of Lord Russell against so flagrant a
violation of public right, and especially of the right of the people
to be consulted on their own destiny, was drawn up with her full
assent and indeed in a great measure at her suggestion.[52]
On other occasions her remonstrances were disregarded, and courses
were pursued to which she strongly objected. The surrender after
Majuba was in her opinion a pusillanimous abandonment of the English
flag, and it was with extreme reluctance that she acquiesced in it.
Still more vehement were her feelings about the long abandonment of
General Gordon in the Soudan. She had been indefatigable in urging on
the Ministry of Gladstone the duty of speedy measures for his rescue,
and when, owing to the long delay of the Ministry, the most heroic of
modern Englishmen perished at Khartoum, her indignation knew no
bounds. In a letter to his sisters, burning with mingled pity and
indignation, she pronounced his 'cruel though heroic fate' to be 'a
stain left upon England,' which she keenly felt. This was one of the
few occasions in which she allowed her sentiments in hostility to the
policy of her Ministers to appear publicly before the world. In
general, she had a profound distrust of the policy and judgment of Mr.
Gladstone, and she fully shared the dread with which the great body of
English statesmen looked upon the Home Rule policy. It was no new
sentiment on her part, for she had lived through the Repeal agitation
of O'Connell, and as far back as 1843 Sir Robert Peel had somewhat
unconstitutionally declared in Parliament that he was authorised by
the Queen to state that she, like her predecessor, was resolved to
maintain the Union inviolate by all the means in her power.
There can now be no harm in saying--what when both parties were alive
was naturally kept in the background--that the relations of the Queen
with Mr. Gladstone were usually of a very painful character. She had
personally not much to complain of. The skill and firmness with which
Mr. Gladstone resisted the attempts to diminish the parliamentary
subsidies for her family were fully and gratefully recognised by the
Queen, but the main course of his politics, both foreign and domestic,
filled her with alarm, and she never appears to have experienced the
attraction which his great personal gifts exercised over most of those
with whom he came in immediate contact. The extreme copiousness of his
vocabulary, the extreme subtlety of his mind and reasoning, and the
imperiousness of temper with which he seldom failed to meet
opposition, were all repugnant to her. To those who have experienced
the sustained emphasis of language with which Mr. Gladstone was
accustomed in conversation to enforce his views, there is much truth
as well as humour in the saying which was attributed to the Queen, 'I
wish Mr. Gladstone would not always speak to me as if I was a public
meeting'; and a little episode which is related by Sir Theodore Martin
illustrates the irritation which Mr. Gladstone's methods of business
must have caused to a very busy and overworked lady who always loved
few words and simple and direct arguments.[53] At all times the Queen
had decided political opinions, and the experience of a long reign had
given her a large measure of not unjustifiable self-confidence. Few
persons had studied as she had during all those years the various
political questions that arose, and she had had the advantage of
discussing them at length with a long succession of the leading
statesmen of England. Under such circumstances her opinions had no
small weight, and although in the Liberal Government she gave her full
confidence to Lord Clarendon and Lord Granville, she looked with the
gravest apprehension on the policy of Mr. Gladstone.
It was a painful and irksome position, but it did not lead the Queen
to any unconstitutional course. No public act or word ever disclosed
her feelings. It was indeed in most cases very slowly, and in small
circles and through private channels, that the convictions of the
Queen became known.
At the close of the second Ministry of Mr. Gladstone she at once
offered him an earldom, which he refused, and on his death she fully
acquiesced in the public funeral in Westminster Abbey, and the Prince
of Wales attended it as her representative. In an autograph letter to
Mrs. Gladstone she spoke with the deep and genuine warmth that was
never wanting in her letters of condolence of her sympathy with the
bereavement of that lady. She spoke of his illustrious gifts and of
his personal kindness to herself, but it was noticed that no sentence
in the letter intimated any approbation of his general policy. 'Truth
in the inmost parts' was indeed a prominent characteristic of the
Queen, and she wrote nothing which was not in accordance with her true
convictions.
There were occasions when she took independent steps, and some of these
had a considerable influence on politics. Louis Napoleon was one of the
few great Sovereigns who were not related to her, and to few persons
could the _coup d'état_ which brought him to the throne have been more
repugnant, but the cordial personal relations she established with him
undoubtedly contributed considerably to the good relations which for
many years subsisted between England and France. Bismarck detested
English Court influence and was greatly prejudiced against her, but he
has left a striking testimony to the favourable impression which her
tact and good sense made upon him when he first came into contact with
her. She possessed to a high degree the power of choosing the right
moment and striking the true chord, and she appears to have been an
excellent judge not only of the feelings of large bodies of men, but
also of the individual characters of those with whom she dealt. She had
a style of writing which was eminently characteristic and eminently
feminine, and it is easy to trace the letters which were entirely her
own. Her letters of congratulation, or sympathy, or encouragement on
public occasions scarcely ever failed in their effect and never
contained an injudicious word. The same thing may be said of her many
beautiful letters to those who were suffering from some grievous
calamity. Whether she was writing to a great public character like the
widow of an American President, or expressing her sorrow for obscure
sufferers, there was the same note of true womanly sympathy, so
manifestly spontaneous and so manifestly heartfelt, that it found its
way to the hearts of thousands. The tact for which she was so justly
celebrated, like all true tact, sprang largely from character, from the
quick and lively sympathies of an eminently affectionate nature. No one
could have been less theatrical, or less likely in any unworthy way to
seek for popularity; but she knew admirably the occasions or the methods
by which she could strike the imagination and appeal most favourably to
the feelings of her people. She showed this in the very beginning of her
reign when she insisted, in defiance of the opinion of the Duke of
Wellington, on riding herself through the ranks of her troops at her
first review. She showed it on countless other occasions of her long
reign--pre-eminently in her two Jubilees and in her last visit to
Ireland. It is well known that this visit was entirely her own idea. To
many it seemed rash or even positively dangerous. They dwelt upon the
bitter disaffection of a great portion of the Irish people, upon the
danger of mob outrage or even assassination, upon the extreme difficulty
of preventing a royal visit to Ireland from taking a party character and
being regarded as a party triumph or defeat. But the Queen, as Sir
William Harcourt once truly said, 'never feared her people,' and nothing
could be more happy than the manner in which she availed herself of the
new turn given to Irish feeling by the splendid achievements of Irish
soldiers in South Africa, to come over, as if to thank her Irish people
in person, and at the same time to repair in extreme old age a neglect
for which she had been often, and not altogether unjustly, blamed. There
never indeed was a more brilliant and unqualified success. To those who
witnessed the spontaneous and passionate enthusiasm with which she was
everywhere greeted, it seemed as if all bitter feeling vanished at her
presence; and the Irish visit, which was one of the last, was also one
of the brightest pages of her reign. The credit of its most skilful
arrangements belongs chiefly to the officials in Dublin, but the Irish
people will long remember the patient courage with which the aged Queen
went through its fatigues; the tactful kindness and the gracious dignity
with which she won the hearts of multitudes who had never before seen
her or spoken to her; the evident enjoyment with which she responded to
the cordiality of her reception. One feature of that visit was
especially characteristic. It was the Children's Review in Phoenix Park,
where, by the desire of the Queen, 'some fifty thousand children were
brought together to meet her. No act of kindness could have gone more
directly home to the hearts of the parents, and it left a memory in many
young minds that will never be effaced.