The English Constitution Part 4

Nor would any party like to trust to a weak man the great power which a Cabinet government commits to its Premier. The Premier, though elected by Parliament can dissolve Parliament. Members would be naturally anxious that the power which might destroy their coveted dignity should be lodged in fit hands. They dare not place in unfit hands a power which, besides hurting the nation, might altogether ruin them. We may be sure, therefore, that whenever the predominant party is divided, the UN-royal form of Cabinet government would secure for us a fair and able Parliamentary leader--that it would give us a good Premier, if not the very best. Can it be said that the royal form does more?

In one case I think it may. If the const.i.tutional monarch be a man of singular discernment, of unprejudiced disposition, and great political knowledge, he may pick out from the ranks of the divided party its very best leader, even at a time when the party, if left to itself, would not nominate him. If the sovereign be able to play the part of that thoroughly intelligent but perfectly disinterested spectator who is so prominent in the works of certain moralists, he may be able to choose better for his subjects than they would choose for themselves. But if the monarch be not so exempt from prejudice, and have not this nearly miraculous discernment, it is not likely that he will be able to make a wiser choice than the choice of the party itself. He certainly is not under the same motive to choose wisely. His place is fixed whatever happens, but the failure of an appointing party depends on the capacity of their appointee.

There is great danger, too, that the judgment of the sovereign may be prejudiced. For more than forty years the personal antipathies of George III. materially impaired successive administrations. Almost at the beginning of his career he discarded Lord Chatham: almost at the end he would not permit Mr. Pitt to coalesce with Mr. Fox. He always preferred mediocrity; he generally disliked high ability; he always disliked great ideas. If const.i.tutional monarchs be ordinary men of restricted experience and common capacity (and we have no right to suppose that BY MIRACLE they will be more), the judgment of the sovereign will often be worse than the judgment of the party, and he will be very subject to the chronic danger of preferring a respectful common-place man, such as Addington, to an independent first-rate man, such as Pitt.

We shall arrive at the same sort of mixed conclusion if we examine the choice of a Premier under both systems in the critical case of Cabinet government--the case of three parties. This is the case in which that species of government is most sure to exhibit its defects, and least likely to exhibit its merits. The defining characteristic of that government is the choice of the executive ruler by the legislative a.s.sembly; but when there are three parties a satisfactory choice is impossible. A really good selection is a selection by a large majority which trusts those it chooses, but when there are three parties there is no such trust. The numerically weakest has the casting vote--it can determine which candidate shall be chosen. But it does so under a penalty. It forfeits the right of voting for its own candidate. It settles which of other people's favourites shall be chosen, on condition of abandoning its own favourite. A choice based on such self-denial can never be a firm choice--it is a choice at any moment liable to be revoked. The events of 1858, though not a perfect ill.u.s.tration of what I mean, are a sufficient ill.u.s.tration. The Radical party, acting apart from the moderate Liberal party, kept Lord Derby in power. The ultra-movement party thought it expedient to combine with the non-movement party. As one of them coa.r.s.ely but clearly put it, "WE get more of our way under these men than under the other men"; he meant that, in his judgment, the Tories would be more obedient to the Radicals than the Whigs. But it is obvious that a union of opposites so marked could not be durable. The Radicals bought it by choosing the men whose principles were most adverse to them; the Conservatives bought it by agreeing to measures whose scope was most adverse to them. After a short interval the Radicals returned to their natural alliance and their natural discontent with the moderate Whigs. They used their determining vote first for a Government of one opinion and then for a Government of the contrary opinion.

I am not blaming this policy. I am using it merely as an ill.u.s.tration.

I say that if we imagine this sort of action greatly exaggerated and greatly prolonged Parliamentary government becomes impossible. If there are three parties, no two of which will steadily combine for mutual action, but of which the weakest gives a rapidly oscillating preference to the two others, the primary condition of a Cabinet polity is not satisfied. We have not a Parliament fit to choose; we cannot rely on the selection of a sufficiently permanent executive, because there is no fixity in the thoughts and feelings of the choosers.

Under every species of Cabinet government, whether the royal or the unroyal, this defect can be cured in one way only. The moderate people of every party must combine to support the Government which, on the whole, suits every party best. This is the mode in which Lord Palmerston's administration has been lately maintained; a Ministry in many ways defective, but more beneficially vigorous abroad, and more beneficially active at home, than the vast majority of English Ministries. The moderate Conservatives and the moderate Radicals have maintained a steady Government by a sufficiently coherent union with the moderate Whigs. Whether there is a king or no king, this perservative self-denial is the main force on which we must rely for the satisfactory continuance of a Parliamentary Government at this its period of greatest trial. Will that moderation be aided or impaired by the addition of a sovereign? Will it be more effectual under the royal sort of Ministerial Government, or will it be less effectual?

If the sovereign has a genius for discernment, the aid which he can give at such a crisis will be great. He will select for his Minister, and if possible maintain as his Minister, the statesman upon whom the moderate party will ultimately fix their choice, but for whom at the outset it is blindly searching; being a man of sense, experience, and tact, he will discern which is the combination of equilibrium, which is the section with whom the milder members of the other sections will at last ally themselves. Amid the s.h.i.+fting transitions of confused parties, it is probable that he will have many opportunities of exercising a selection. It will rest with him to call either on A B to form an administration, or upon X Y, and either may have a chance of trial. A disturbed state of parties is inconsistent with fixity, but it abounds in momentary tolerance. Wanting something, but not knowing with precision what, parties will accept for a brief period anything, to see whether it may be that unknown something--to see what it will do.

During the long succession of weak Governments which begins with the resignation of the Duke of Newcastle in 1762 and ends with the accession of Mr. Pitt in 1784, the vigorous will of George III. was an agency of the first magnitude. If at a period of complex and protracted division of parties, such as are sure to occur often and last long in every enduring Parliamentary government, the extrinsic force of royal selection were always exercised discreetly, it would be a political benefit of incalculable value.

But will it be so exercised? A const.i.tutional sovereign must in the common course of government be a man of but common ability. I am afraid, looking to the early acquired feebleness of hereditary dynasties, that we must expect him to be a man of inferior ability.

Theory and experience both teach that the education of a prince can be but a poor education, and that a royal family will generally have less ability than other families. What right have we then to expect the perpetual entail on any family of an exquisite discretion, which if it be not a sort of genius, is at least as rare as genius?

Probably in most cases the greatest wisdom of a const.i.tutional king would show itself in well-considered inaction. In the confused interval between 1857 and 1859 the Queen and Prince Albert were far too wise to obtrude any selection of their own. If they had chosen, perhaps they would not have chosen Lord Palmerston. But they saw, or may be believed to have seen, that the world was settling down without them, and that by interposing an extrinsic agency, they would but delay the beneficial crystallisation of intrinsic forces. There is, indeed, a permanent reason which would make the wisest king, and the king who feels most sure of his wisdom, very slow to use that wisdom. The responsibility of Parliament should be felt by Parliament. So long as Parliament thinks it is the sovereign's business to find a Government it will be sure not to find a Government itself. The royal form of Ministerial government is the worst of all forms if it erect the subsidiary apparatus into the princ.i.p.al force, if it induce the a.s.sembly which ought to perform paramount duties to expect some one else to perform them.

It should be observed, too, in fairness to the unroyal species of Cabinet government, that it is exempt from one of the greatest and most characteristic defects of the royal species. Where there is no Court there can be no evil influence from a Court. What these influences are every one knows; though no one, hardly the best and closest observer, can say with confidence and precision how great their effect is. Sir Robert Walpole, in language too coa.r.s.e for our modern manners, declared after the death of Queen Caroline, that he would pay no attention to the king's daughters ("those girls," as he called them), but would rely exclusively on Madame de Walmoden, the king's mistress. "The king,"

says a writer in George IV.'s time, "is in our favour, and what is more to the purpose, the Marchioness of Conyngham is so too." Everybody knows to what sort of influences several Italian changes of Government since the unity of Italy have been attributed. These sinister agencies are likely to be most effective just when everything else is troubled, and when, therefore, they are particularly dangerous. The wildest and wickedest king's mistress would not plot against an invulnerable administration. But very many will intrigue when Parliament is perplexed, when parties are divided, when alternatives are many, when many evil things are possible, when Cabinet government must be difficult.

It is very important to see that a good administration can be started without a sovereign, because some colonial statesmen have doubted it.

"I can conceive," it has been said, "that a Ministry would go on well enough without a governor when it was launched, but I do not see how to launch it." It has even been suggested that a colony which broke away from England, and had to form its own Government, might not unwisely choose a governor for life, and solely trusted with selecting Ministers, something like the Abbe Sieyes's grand elector. But the introduction of such an officer into such a colony would in fact be the voluntary erection of an artificial enc.u.mbrance to it. He would inevitably be a party man. The most dignified post in the State must be an object of contest to the great sections into which every active political community is divided. These parties mix in everything and meddle in everything; and they neither would nor could permit the most honoured and conspicuous of all stations to be filled, except at their pleasure. They know, too, that the grand elector, the great chooser of Ministries, might be, at a sharp crisis, either a good friend or a bad enemy. The strongest party would select some one who would be on their side when he had to take a side, who would incline to them when he did incline, who should be a constant auxiliary to them and a constant impediment to their adversaries. It is absurd to choose by contested party election an impartial chooser of Ministers.

But it is during the continuance of a Ministry, rather than at its creation, that the functions of the sovereign will mainly interest most persons, and that most people will think them to be of the gravest importance. I own I am myself of that opinion. I think it may be shown that the post of sovereign over an intelligent and political people under a const.i.tutional monarchy is the post which a wise man would choose above any other--where he would find the intellectual impulses best stimulated and the worst intellectual impulses best controlled.

On the duties of the Queen during an administration we have an invaluable fragment from her own hand. In 1851 Louis Napoleon had his coup d'etat: in 1852 Lord John Russell had his--he expelled Lord Palmerston. By a most instructive breach of etiquette he read in the House a royal memorandum on the duties of his rival. It is as follows: "The Queen requires, first, that Lord Palmerston will distinctly state what he proposes in a given case, in order that the Queen may know as distinctly to what she is giving her royal sanction. Secondly, having once given her sanction to such a measure that it be not arbitrarily altered or modified by the Minister. Such an act she must consider as failing in sincerity towards the Crown, and justly to be visited by the exercise of her const.i.tutional right of dismissing that Minister. She expects to be kept informed of what pa.s.ses between him and Foreign Ministers before important decisions are taken based upon that intercourse; to receive the foreign despatches in good time; and to have the drafts for her approval sent to her in sufficient time to make herself acquainted with their contents before they must be sent off."

In addition to the control over particular Ministers, and especially over the Foreign Minister, the Queen has a certain control over the Cabinet. The first Minister, it is understood, transmits to her authentic information of all the most important decisions, together with, what the newspapers would do equally well, the more important votes in Parliament. He is bound to take care that she knows everything which there is to know as to the pa.s.sing politics of the nation. She has by rigid usage a right to complain if she does not know of every great act of her Ministry, not only before it is done, but while there is yet time to consider it--while it is still possible that it may not be done.

To state the matter shortly, the sovereign has, under a const.i.tutional monarchy such as ours, three rights--the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king of great sense and sagacity would want no others. He would find that his having no others would enable him to use these with singular effect. He would say to his Minister: "The responsibility of these measures is upon you. Whatever you think best must be done. Whatever you think best shall have my full and effectual support. BUT you will observe that for this reason and that reason what you propose to do is bad; for this reason and that reason what you do not propose is better. I do not oppose, it is my duty not to oppose; but observe that I WARN." Supposing the king to be right, and to have what kings often have, the gift of effectual expression, he could not help moving his Minister. He might not always turn his course, but he would always trouble his mind.

In the course of a long reign a sagacious king would acquire an experience with which few Ministers could contend. The king could say: "Have you referred to the transactions which happened during such and such an administration, I think about fourteen years ago? They afford an instructive example of the bad results which are sure to attend the policy which you propose. You did not at that time take so prominent a part in public life as you now do, and it is possible you do not fully remember all the events. I should recommend you to recur to them, and to discuss them with your older colleagues who took part in them. It is unwise to recommence a policy which so lately worked so ill." The king would indeed have the advantage which a permanent under-secretary has over his superior the Parliamentary secretary--that of having shared in the proceedings of the previous Parliamentary secretaries. These proceedings were part of his own life; occupied the best of his thoughts, gave him perhaps anxiety, perhaps pleasure, were commenced in spite of his dissuasion, or were sanctioned by his approval. The Parliamentary secretary vaguely remembers that something was done in the time of some of his predecessors, when he very likely did not know the least or care the least about that sort of public business. He has to begin by learning painfully and imperfectly what the permanent secretary knows by clear and instant memory. No doubt a Parliamentary secretary always can, and sometimes does, silence his subordinate by the tacit might of his superior dignity. He says: "I do not think there is much in all that. Many errors were committed at the time you refer to which we need not now discuss." A pompous man easily sweeps away the suggestions of those beneath him. But though a minister may so deal with his subordinate, he cannot so deal with his king. The social force of admitted superiority by which he overturned his under-secretary is now not with him but against him. He has no longer to regard the deferential hints of an acknowledged inferior, but to answer the arguments of a superior to whom he has himself to be respectful. George III. in fact knew the forms of public business as well or better than any statesman of his time. If, in addition to his capacity as a man of business and to his industry, he had possessed the higher faculties of a discerning states man, his influence would have been despotic. The old Const.i.tution of England undoubtedly gave a sort of power to the Crown which our present Const.i.tution does not give. While a majority in Parliament was princ.i.p.ally purchased by royal patronage, the king was a party to the bargain either with his Minister or without his Minister.

But even under our present Const.i.tution a monarch like George III., with high abilities, would possess the greatest influence. It is known to all Europe that in Belgium King Leopold has exercised immense power by the use of such means as I have described.

It is known, too, to every one conversant with the real course of the recent history of England, that Prince Albert really did gain great power in precisely the same way. He had the rare gifts of a const.i.tutional monarch. If his life had been prolonged twenty years, his name would have been known to Europe as that of King Leopold is known. While he lived he was at a disadvantage. The statesmen who had most power in England were men of far greater experience than himself.

He might, and no doubt did, exercise a great, if not a commanding influence over Lord Malmesbury, but he could not rule Lord Palmerston.

The old statesman who governed England, at an age when most men are unfit to govern their own families, remembered a whole generation of states men who were dead before Prince Albert was born. The two were of different ages and different natures. The elaborateness of the German prince--an elaborateness which has been justly and happily compared with that of Goethe--was wholly alien to the half-Irish, half-English, statesman. The somewhat boisterous courage in minor dangers, and the obtrusive use of an always effectual but not always refined, commonplace, which are Lord Palmerston's defects, doubtless grated on Prince Albert, who had a scholar's caution and a scholar's courage. The facts will be known to our children's children, though not to us.

Prince Albert did much, but he died ere he could have made his influence felt on a generation of statesmen less experienced than he was, and anxious to learn from him.

It would be childish to suppose that a conference between a Minister and his sovereign can ever be a conference of pure argument. "The divinity which doth hedge a king" may have less sanct.i.ty than it had, but it still has much sanct.i.ty. No one, or scarcely any one, can argue with a Cabinet Minister in his own room as well as he would argue with another man in another room. He cannot make his own points as well; he cannot unmake as well the points presented to him. A monarch's room is worse. The best instance is Lord Chatham, the most dictatorial and imperious of English statesmen, and almost the first English statesman who was borne into power against the wishes of the king and against the wishes of the n.o.bility--the first popular Minister. We might have expected a proud tribune of the people to be dictatorial to his sovereign--to be to the king what he was to all others. On the contrary, he was the slave of his own imagination; there was a kind of mystic enchantment in vicinity to the monarch which divested him of his ordinary nature. "The least peep into the king's closet," said Mr.

Burke, "intoxicates him, and will to the end of his life." A wit said that, even at the levee, he bowed so low that you could see the tip of his hooked nose between his legs. He was in the habit of kneeling at the bedside of George III. while transacting business. Now no man can ARGUE on his knees. The same superst.i.tious feeling which keeps him in that physical att.i.tude will keep him in a corresponding mental att.i.tude. He will not refute the bad arguments of the king as he will refute another man's bad arguments. He will not state his own best arguments effectively and incisively when he knows that the king would not like to hear them. In a nearly balanced argument the king must always have the better, and in politics many most important arguments are nearly balanced. Whenever there was much to be said for the king's opinion it would have its full weight; whatever was said for the Minister's opinion would only have a lessened and enfeebled weight.

The king, too, possesses a power, according to theory, for extreme use on a critical occasion, but which he can in law use on any occasion. He can dissolve; he can say to his Minister, in fact, if not in words, "This Parliament sent you here, but I will see if I cannot get another Parliament to send some one else here." George III. well understood that it was best to take his stand at times and on points when it was perhaps likely, or at any rate not unlikely, the nation would support him. He always made a Minister that he did not like tremble at the shadow of a possible successor. He had a cunning in such matters like the cunning of insanity. He had conflicts with the ablest men of his time, and he was hardly ever baffled. He understood how to help a feeble argument by a tacit threat, and how best to address it to an habitual deference.

Perhaps such powers as these are what a wise man would most seek to exercise and least fear to possess. To wish to be a despot, "to hunger after tyranny," as the Greek phrase had it, marks in our day an uncultivated mind. A person who so wishes cannot have weighed what Butler calls the "doubtfulness things are involved in". To be sure you are right to impose your will, or to wish to impose it, with violence upon others; to see your own ideas vividly and fixedly, and to be tormented till you can apply them in life and practice, not to like to hear the opinions of others, to be unable to sit down and weigh the truth they have, are but crude states of intellect in our present civilisation. We know, at least, that facts are many; that progress is complicated; that burning ideas (such as young men have) are mostly false and always incomplete. The notion of a far-seeing and despotic statesman, who can lay down plans for ages yet unborn, is a fancy generated by the pride of the human intellect to which facts give no support. The plans of Charlemagne died with him; those of Richelieu were mistaken; those of Napoleon gigantesque and frantic. But a wise and great const.i.tutional monarch attempts no such vanities. His career is not in the air; he labours in the world of sober fact; he deals with schemes which can be effected--schemes which are desirable--schemes which are worth the cost. He says to the Ministry his people send to him, to Ministry after Ministry, "I think so and so; do you see if there is anything in it. I have put down my reasons in a certain memorandum, which I will give you. Probably it does not exhaust the subject, but it will suggest materials for your consideration." By years of discussion with Ministry after Ministry, the best plans of the wisest king would certainly be adopted, and the inferior plans, the impracticable plans, rooted out and rejected. He could not be uselessly beyond his time, for he would have been obliged to convince the representatives, the characteristic men of his time. He would have the best means of proving that he was right on all new and strange matters, for he would have won to his side probably, after years of discussion, the chosen agents of the commonplace world--men who were where they were, because they had pleased the men of the existing age, who will never be much disposed to new conceptions or profound thoughts. A sagacious and original const.i.tutional monarch might go to his grave in peace if any man could. He would know that his best laws were in harmony with his age; that they suited the people who were to work them, the people who were to be benefited by them. And he would have pa.s.sed a happy life. He would have pa.s.sed a life in which he could always get his arguments heard, in which he could always make those who have the responsibility of action think of them before they acted--in which he could know that the schemes which he had set at work in the world were not the casual accidents of an individual idiosyncrasy, which are mostly much wrong, but the likeliest of all things to be right--the ideas of one very intelligent man at last accepted and acted on by the ordinary intelligent many.

But can we expect such a king, or, for that is the material point, can we expect a lineal series of such kings? Every one has heard the reply of the Emperor Alexander to Madame de Stael, who favoured him with a declamation in praise of beneficent despotism. "Yes, Madame, but it is only a happy accident." He well knew that the great abilities and the good intentions necessary to make an efficient and good despot never were continuously combined in any line of rulers. He knew that they were far out of reach of hereditary human nature. Can it be said that the characteristic qualities of a const.i.tutional monarch are more within its reach? I am afraid it cannot. We found just now that the characteristic use of an hereditary const.i.tutional monarch, at the outset of an administration, greatly surpa.s.sed the ordinary competence of hereditary faculties. I fear that an impartial investigation will establish the same conclusion as to his uses during the continuance of an administration.

If we look at history, we shall find that it is only during the period of the present reign that in England the duties of a const.i.tutional sovereign have ever been well performed. The first two Georges were ignorant of English affairs, and wholly unable to guide them, whether well or ill; for many years in their time the Prime Minister had, over and above the labour of managing Parliament, to manage the woman--sometimes the queen, sometimes the mistress--who managed the sovereign; George III. interfered unceasingly, but he did harm unceasingly; George IV. and William IV. gave no steady continuing guidance, and were unfit to give it. On the Continent, in first-cla.s.s countries, const.i.tutional royalty has never lasted out of one generation. Louis Philippe, Victor Emmanuel, and Leopold are the founders of their dynasties; we must not reckon in const.i.tutional monarchy any more than in despotic monarchy on the permanence in the descendants of the peculiar genius which founded the race. As far as experience goes, there is no reason to expect an hereditary series of useful limited monarchs.

If we look to theory, there is even less reason to expect it. A monarch is useful when he gives an effectual and beneficial guidance to his Ministers. But these Ministers are sure to be among the ablest men of their time. They will have had to conduct the business of Parliament so as to satisfy it; they will have to speak so as to satisfy it. The two together cannot be done save by a man of very great and varied ability.

The exercise of the two gifts is sure to teach a man much of the world; and if it did not, a Parliamentary leader has to pa.s.s through a magnificent training before he becomes a leader. He has to gain a seat in Parliament; to gain the ear of Parliament; to gain the confidence of Parliament; to gain the confidence of his colleagues. No one can achieve these--no one, still more, can both achieve them and retain them--without a singular ability, nicely trained in the varied detail of life. What chance has an hereditary monarch such as nature forces him to be, such as history shows he is, against men so educated and so born? He can but be an average man to begin with; sometimes he will be clever, but sometimes he will be stupid; in the long run he will be neither clever nor stupid; he will be the simple, common man who plods the plain routine of life from the cradle to the grave. His education will be that of one who has never had to struggle; who has always felt that he has nothing to gain; who has had the first dignity given him; who has never seen common life as in truth it is. It is idle to expect an ordinary man born in the purple to have greater genius than an extraordinary man born out of the purple; to expect a man whose place has always been fixed to have a better judgment than one who has lived by his judgment; to expect a man whose career will be the same whether he is discreet or whether he is indiscreet to have the nice discretion of one who has risen by his wisdom, who will fall if he ceases to be wise.

The characteristic advantage of a const.i.tutional king is the permanence of his place. This gives him the opportunity of acquiring a consecutive knowledge of complex transactions, but it gives only an opportunity.

The king must use it. There is no royal road to political affairs: their detail is vast, disagreeable, complicated, and miscellaneous. A king, to be the equal of his Ministers in discussion, must work as they work; he must be a man of business as they are men of business. Yet a const.i.tutional prince is the man who is most tempted to pleasure, and the least forced to business. A despot must feel that he is the pivot of the State. The stress of his kingdom is upon him. As he is, so are his affairs. He may be seduced into pleasure; he may neglect all else; but the risk is evident. He will hurt himself; he may cause a revolution. If he becomes unfit to govern, some one else who is fit may conspire against him. But a const.i.tutional king need fear nothing. He may neglect his duties, but he will not be injured. His place will be as fixed, his income as permanent, his opportunities of selfish enjoyment as full as ever. Why should he work? It is true he will lose the quiet and secret influence which in the course of years industry would gain for him; but an eager young man, on whom the world is squandering its luxuries and its temptations, will not be much attracted by the distant prospect of a moderate influence over dull matters. He may form good intentions; he may say, "Next year I WILL read these papers; I will try and ask more questions; I will not let these women talk to me so". But they will talk to him. The most hopeless idleness is that most smoothed with excellent plans. "The Lord Treasurer," says Swift, "promised he will settle it to-night, and so he will say a hundred nights." We may depend upon it the ministry whose power will be lessened by the prince's attention will not be too eager to get him to attend.

So it is if the prince come young to the throne; but the case is worse when he comes to it old or middle-aged. He is then unfit to work. He will then have spent the whole of youth and the first part of manhood in idleness, and it is unnatural to expect him to labour. A pleasure-loving lounger in middle life will not begin to work as George III. worked, or as Prince Albert worked. The only fit material for a const.i.tutional king is a prince who begins early to reign--who in his youth is superior to pleasure--who in his youth is willing to labour--who has by nature a genius for discretion. Such kings are among G.o.d's greatest gifts, but they are also among His rarest.

An ordinary idle king on a const.i.tutional throne will leave no mark on his time: he will do little good and as little harm; the royal form of Cabinet government will work in his time pretty much as the unroyal.

The addition of a cypher will not matter though it take precedence of the significant figures. But corruptio optimi pessima. The most evil case of the royal form is far worse than the most evil case of the unroyal. It is easy to imagine, upon a const.i.tutional throne, an active and meddling fool who always acts when he should not, who never acts when he should, who warns his Ministers against their judicious measures, who encourages them in their injudicious measures. It is easy to imagine that such a king should be the tool of others; that favourites should guide him; that mistresses should corrupt him; that the atmosphere of a bad Court should be used to degrade free government.

We have had an awful instance of the dangers of const.i.tutional royalty.

We have had the case of a meddling maniac. During great part of his life George III.'s reason was half upset by every crisis. Throughout his life he had an obstinacy akin to that of insanity. He was an obstinate and an evil influence; he could not be turned from what was inexpedient; by the aid of his station he turned truer but weaker men from what was expedient. He gave an excellent moral example to his contemporaries, but he is an instance of those whose good dies with them, while their evil lives after them. He prolonged the American War, perhaps he caused the American War, so we inherit the vestiges of an American hatred; he forbade Mr. Pitt's wise plans, so we inherit an Irish difficulty. He would not let us do right in time, so now our attempts at right are out of time and fruitless. Const.i.tutional royalty under an active and half-insane king is one of the worst of Governments. There is in it a secret power which is always eager, which is generally obstinate, which is often wrong, which rules Ministers more than they know themselves, which overpowers them much more than the public believe, which is irresponsible because it is inscrutable, which cannot be prevented because it cannot be seen. The benefits of a good monarch are almost invaluable, but the evils of a bad monarch are almost irreparable.

We shall find these conclusions confirmed if we examine the powers and duties of an English monarch at the break-up of an administration. But the power of dissolution and the prerogative of creating peers, the cardinal powers of that moment are too important and involve too many complex matters to be sufficiently treated at the very end of a paper as long as this.

NO. IV.

THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

In my last essay I showed that it was possible for a const.i.tutional monarch to be, when occasion served, of first-rate use both at the outset and during the continuance of an administration; but that in matter of fact it was not likely that he would be useful. The requisite ideas, habits, and faculties, far surpa.s.s the usual competence of an average man, educated in the common manner of sovereigns. The same arguments are entirely applicable at the close of an administration.

But at that conjuncture the two most singular prerogatives of an English king--the power of creating new peers and the power of dissolving the Commons--come into play; and we cannot duly criticise the use or misuse of these powers till we know what the peers are and what the House of Commons is.

The use of the House of Lords or, rather, of the Lords, in its dignified capacity--is very great. It does not attract so much reverence as the Queen, but it attracts very much. The office of an order of n.o.bility is to impose on the common people--not necessarily to impose on them what is untrue, yet less what is hurtful; but still to impose on their quiescent imaginations what would not otherwise be there. The fancy of the ma.s.s of men is incredibly weak; it can see nothing without a visible symbol, and there is much that it can scarcely make out with a symbol. n.o.bility is the symbol of mind. It has the marks from which the ma.s.s of men always used to infer mind, and often still infer it. A common clever man who goes into a country place will get no reverence; but the "old squire" will get reverence. Even after he is insolvent, when every one knows that his ruin is but a question of time, he will get five times as much respect from the common peasantry as the newly-made rich man who sits beside him. The common peasantry will listen to his nonsense more submissively than to the new man's sense. An old lord will get infinite respect. His very existence is so far useful that it awakens the sensation of obedience to a sort of mind in the coa.r.s.e, dull, contracted mult.i.tude, who could neither appreciate nor perceive any other.

The order of n.o.bility is of great use, too, not only in what it creates, but in what it prevents. It prevents the rule of wealth--the religion of gold. This is the obvious and natural idol of the Anglo-Saxon. He is always trying to make money; he reckons everything in coin; he bows down before a great heap and sneers as he pa.s.ses a little heap. He has a "natural instinctive admiration of wealth for its own sake". And within good limits the feeling is quite right. So long as we play the game of industry vigorously and eagerly (and I hope we shall long play it, for we must be very different from what we are if we do anything better), we shall of necessity respect and admire those who play successfully, and a little despise those who play unsuccessfully. Whether this feeling be right or wrong, it is useless to discuss; to a certain degree, it is involuntary; it is not for mortals to settle whether we will have it or not; nature settles for us that, within moderate limits, we must have it. But the admiration of wealth in many countries goes far beyond this; it ceases to regard in any degree the skill of acquisition; it respects wealth in the hands of the inheritor just as much as in the hands of the maker; it is a simple envy and love of a heap of gold as a heap of gold. From this our aristocracy preserves us. There is no country where a "poor devil of a millionaire is so ill off as in England". The experiment is tried every day, and every day it is proved that money alone--money pur et simple--will not buy "London Society". Money is kept down, and, so to say, cowed by the predominant authority of a different power.

But it may be said that this is no gain; that wors.h.i.+p for wors.h.i.+p, the wors.h.i.+p of money is as good as the wors.h.i.+p of rank. Even granting that it were so, it is a great gain to society to have two idols: in the compet.i.tion of idolatries the true wors.h.i.+p gets a chance. But it is not true that the reverence for rank--at least, for hereditary rank--is as base as the reverence for money. As the world has gone, manner has been half-hereditary in certain castes, and manner is one of the fine arts.

It is the STYLE of society; it is in the daily-spoken intercourse of human beings what the art of literary expression is in their occasional written intercourse. In reverencing wealth we reverence not a man, but an appendix to a man; in reverencing inherited n.o.bility, we reverence the probable possession of a great faculty--the faculty of bringing out what is in one. The unconscious grace of life MAY be in the middle cla.s.ses: finely-mannered persons are born everywhere; but it OUGHT to be in the aristocracy: and a man must be born with a hitch in his nerves if he has not some of it. It is a physiological possession of the race, though it is sometimes wanting in the individual.

There is a third idolatry from which that of rank preserves us, and perhaps it is the worst of any--that of office. The basest deity is a subordinate employee, and yet just now in civilised Governments it is the commonest. In France and all the best of the Continent it rules like a superst.i.tion. It is to no purpose that you prove that the pay of petty officials is smaller than mercantile pay; that their work is more monotonous than mercantile work; that their mind is less useful and their life more tame. They are still thought to be greater and better.

They are decords; they have a little red on the left breast of their coat, and no argument will answer that. In England, by the odd course of our society, what a theorist would desire has in fact turned up. The great offices, whether permanent or Parliamentary, which require mind now give social prestige, and almost only those. An Under-Secretary of State with 2000 pounds a year is a much stronger man than the director of a finance company with 5000 pounds, and the country saves the difference. But except in a few offices like the Treasury, which were once filled with aristocratic people, and have an odour of n.o.bility at second-hand, minor place is of no social use. A big grocer despises the exciseman; and what in many countries would be thought impossible, the exciseman envies the grocer. Solid wealth tells where there is no artificial dignity given to petty public functions. A clerk in the public service is "n.o.body"; and you could not make a common Englishman see why he should be anybody. But it must be owned that this turning of society into a political expedient has half spoiled it. A great part of the "best" English people keep their mind in a state of decorous dulness. They maintain their dignity; they get obeyed; they are good and charitable to their dependants. But they have no notion of PLAY of mind: no conception that the charm of society depends upon it. They think cleverness an antic, and have a constant though needless horror of being thought to have any of it. So much does this stiff dignity give the tone, that the few Englishmen capable of social brilliancy mostly secrete it. They reserve it for persons whom they can trust, and whom they know to be capable of appreciating its nuances. But a good Government is well worth a great deal of social dulness. The dignified torpor of English society is inevitable if we give precedence, not to the cleverest cla.s.ses, but to the oldest cla.s.ses, and we have seen how useful that is.

The social prestige of the aristocracy is, as every one knows, immensely less than it was a hundred years or even fifty years since.

Two great movements--the two greatest of modern society--have been unfavourable to it. The rise of industrial wealth in countless forms has brought in a compet.i.tor which has generally more mind, and which would be supreme were it not for awkwardness and intellectual gene.

Every day our companies, our railways, our debentures, and our shares, tend more and more to multiply these SURROUNDINGS of the aristocracy, and in time they will hide it. And while this undergrowth has come up, the aristocracy have come down. They have less means of standing out than they used to have. Their power is in their theatrical exhibition, in their state. But society is every day becoming less stately. As our great satirist has observed, "The last Duke of St. David's used to cover the north road with his carriages; landladies and waiters bowed before him. The present Duke sneaks away from a railway station, smoking a cigar, in a brougham." The aristocracy cannot lead the old life if they would; they are ruled by a stronger power. They suffer from the tendency of all modern society to raise the average, and to lower--comparatively, and perhaps absolutely, to lower--the summit. As the picturesqueness, the featureliness, of society diminishes, aristocracy loses the single instrument of its peculiar power.

If we remember the great reverence which used to be paid to n.o.bility as such, we shall be surprised that the House of Lords as an a.s.sembly, has always been inferior; that it was always just as now, not the first, but the second of our a.s.semblies. I am not, of course, now speaking of the middle ages: I am not dealing with the embryo or the infant form of our Const.i.tution; I am only speaking of its adult form. Take the times of Sir R. Walpole. He was Prime Minister because he managed the House of Commons; he was turned out because he was beaten on an election pet.i.tion in that House; he ruled England because he ruled that House.

Yet the n.o.bility were then the governing power in England. In many districts the word of some lord was law. The "wicked Lord Lowther," as he was called, left a name of terror in Westmoreland during the memory of men now living. A great part of the borough members and a great part of the county members were their nominees; an obedient, unquestioning deference was paid them. As individuals the peers were the greatest people; as a House the collected peers were but the second House.

Several causes contributed to create this anomaly, but the main cause was a natural one. The House of Peers has never been a House where the most important peers were most important. It could not be so. The qualities which fit a man for marked eminence, in a deliberative a.s.sembly, are not hereditary, and are not coupled with great estates.

In the nation, in the provinces, in his own province, a Duke of Devons.h.i.+re, or a Duke of Bedford, was a much greater man than Lord Thurlow. They had great estates, many boroughs, innumerable retainers, followings like a Court. Lord Thurlow had no boroughs, no retainers; he lived on his salary. Till the House of Lords met, the dukes were not only the greatest, but immeasurably the greatest. But as soon as the House met, Lord Thurlow became the greatest. He could speak, and the others could not speak. He could transact business in half an hour which they could not have transacted in a day, or could not have transacted at all. When some foolish peer, who disliked his domination, sneered at his birth, he had words to meet the case: he said it was better for any one to owe his place to his own exertions than to owe it to descent, to being the "accident of an accident". But such a House as this could not be pleasant to great n.o.blemen. They could not like to be second in their own a.s.sembly (and yet that was their position from age to age) to a lawyer who was of yesterday,--whom everybody could remember without briefs, who had talked for "hire," who had "hungered after six-and-eightpence". Great peers did not gain glory from the House; on the contrary, they lost glory when they were in the House.