r
^v
/-
'jy/
STATE NORMAL SCHOOL,
\ •<: Anieles Cat
STATE NORMAL SCHOOL. ^ ^/
Los Angeles, Cal.
GLEANINGS OF PAST YEARS,
1843-78.
BY THE RIGHT HON.
W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P.
Vol. I.
THE THRONE, AND THE PRINCE CONSORT;
THE CABINET, AND CONSTITUTION.
NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS,
743 AND 745 BUOADWAY.
58 I
GLEANINGS OF PAST YEAKS,
1875-8.
BY THE RIGHT HON.
W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P.
THE THRONE, AND THE PEINCE CONSORT;
THE CABINET, AND CONSTITUTION.
NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS,
713 AND T-J5 Eroauway.
PREFACE.
These occasional productions extend over the long terra
of thirty-six years : years eminently anxious, prolific,
and changeful.
No attempt has heen made to bring compositions, sug-
gested in various degrees by the time as -well as by the
subject, into the precise forms of thought or expression,
which at this date I might have been inclined to choose
for them. Such an effort, in impairing their identity,
would abate the limited interest or value vrhich can alone
belong to them.
Any changes made have been as follows : —
1. Corrections of typographical errors.
2. Verbal amendments, with a view to simplicity and
clearness.
3. Substitutions, in a very few instances, of phrases
which justcr taste might at the time have sug-
gested ; without any alteration of the thought.
4. Cases, also very rare, in which on any special
ground it seemed right to specify a change,
smaller or greater, in opinion.
These last cases alone are of any even the smallest
Tl PREFACE.
importance; and, that the reader may clearly perceive
them, they are dealt with in Notes, and the date of
1878 is attached.
Essays of a controversial kind, whether in politics or
religion, and classical essays, are not included in the
collection.
W. E. G.
Hawauden, Decemher 1878.
CONTENTS.
I.
DEATH OF THE PRINCE CONSORT.
An Address delivered at Manchester on the 23rd of April,
18G2, before the Association of Lancashire and Cheshire
Mechanics' Institutes.
PAOB
1. Gloom in the district 1
2. Sympatliy witli Her Majesty 2
3-5. Peculiar pressm-o of Her bereavement .... 2
6-8. The Prince Consort's full and ordered life ... 4
9-11. His principle applicable to the lives of all ... 7
12-lfi. The Association ; its examinations ..... 10
17. The older tests of training. . . .-^ . . . . 1*
18, 19. Competitive examination 11
20-25. Examination, how related to the present age . . 16
II.
LIFE OF THE PRINCE CONSORT— COURT OF
QUEEN VICTORIA. (Vol. I.)
1. News of the Prince Consort's death 23
2. Memorials 24
3. General Grey's Work 25
4. Mr. Helps's Edition of tlie Speeches .... 26
5. Mr. Martin's Life (Vol. I.) 27
Vlll CONTENTS.
PAOB
6, 7. The early life 27
8, 9. King Leopold, his tutelary friend 28
10. Baron Stockmar 30
11. The Marriage 32
12. Social and political effects 32
13. Peculiar relation of the Koyal Couple v . . . 33
14. Proposal of the Duke of Wellington 34
15, 16. The Prince's conception of his position .... 36
17. Its effect not local only 37
18, 19. British Constitutional King.-hip 37
20, 21. Ministerial crisis of 183'J 39
22-5. Great influence of the Sovereign 41
26, 27. Hierarchical constitution of English society. . . 44
28. The better-known forms of the Prince's activity . 46
29. Older and modern forms of Kingship .... 47
30. The Prince's nationality of type 49
31. His precocity 49
32, 33. His Speeches 50
34-40. His mental attitude in Keligion 52
41,42. His piety 58
44, 45. The national treasure and loss 69
HI.
LIFE OF THE PKINCE CONSORT. (Vol. IL)
1-3. Mr. Martin and his subject 63
4. Growing estimate of the Prince 65
5,6. Tlie Prince and the Exhibition of 1 851 ... 66
7, 8. The change in the political atmospliere 1852-1861 68
9. Comparison with the case of Mr. Pitt .... 70
10. Three forms of his activity 71
11. The attack in January 1854 72
12, 13. The Sovereign's right to personal counsel ... , 72
14. Tiio theory of Baron Stockmar 75
15-17. His historical misconceptions 76
18. His confusion of distinct characters 79
CONSENTS.
IX
PAGE
19, Vigour of the pferogatives generally 80
20, 21. Initintioa in grants of public money 81
22. The Crown Lands ; the Army 82
23. Occasion of the Baron's exposition 83
24, 25. His proposed change in the Kingly office ... 84
26-8. Effect on the position of Minibters 86
29-32. The Prince's plan for the regulation of Public Wor-
ship 88
83. Education of the Eoyal Ciiildren 92
34, 35. Basis prepared by Slockmar . 93
36, 37. The Prince as a whole 95
IV.
LIFE OF THE PRINCE CONSORT. (Vol. III.)
1,2. Martin's Biography
3. Its tendency to widen into History . .
4. Motive unjustly imputed
5. The Prince as an authority on the Crimean Wi
6, 7. Historical policy in regard to Turkey .
8-10. The Prince on the motive of the Crimean War
11. In accordance with official evidence .
12-14. On the European Concert
15. Comparison of 1853-4 with 1875-7 . . .
16. Integrity and independence of Turkey . .
17, 18. The Royal and popular view of the terras of P
19. The Crimean War attained its immediate end
20-2. Failure of reform in Turkey ....
23, 24. Altered tone of the public mind as to war
25, 26. Increase of Blilitary and Naval Estimates
27, 28. Failures not attributable to parsimony .
29. The Prince's Memorandum on the Army
30-2. Tlie Court and the Aberdeen Ministry . ■
33. Abortive issue of the Sebastopol Inquiry
34. Value of party organisation ....
36, 37. Mr. Martin and the Duuubian Principalities
38. Coucluiiiou
ir
caco
97
98
99
100
102
103
105
106
110
110
-112
114
114
116
118
120
122
122
125
126
128
129
CONTENTS.
V.
THE COUNTY FRANCHISE, AND MR, LOWE THEREON.
1-3. Present relation of the question to parties and page
individuals 131
4. Its position above the level of party 133
5-7. Parliament before and after the Reform Act , . 134
8, 9. Presumption established for extension .... 137
10. Supposed distinction of town and county . , . 139
11. Comparative selfishness of classes 139
12. Passion in town and country 140
13. Element of mental training 141
14, 15. Presumption for enfranchisement generally . . 142
16-19. Objection from numerical snperiority .... 144
20. Argument for equality of dealing 145
21-3. Not for equality of men ; English love of inequality 148
24-8. Extension thus far proved safe 150
29,30. Prophecies of evil falsified 154
31. Probable effect on parties 156
32. Argument for going on or back 158
33, 34. Faults admitted do not suffice to condenm exten-
sion 159
35. Danger of gerontocracy and of ploutocracy . . . ] 00
36-8. Power of the individual in the modern State . . 161
39, 40. Expensiveuess of Elections 164
41. Exercise by the towns of their function of choice . 165
42-5. Prevalence of localism 166
46. Dread of redistribution of seats 168
47. Against excessive eiptctution from improvements. 169
CONTENTS.
Zl
VI.
LAST WORDS ON THE COUNTY FRANCHISE.
PAGE
1. Summary of arguments on tl 10 main issue . . . 171
2. Limitation of statements in Mr. Lowe's Reply . . 173
3-6. First presumptive pleas for enfranchisoiueut . . 175
7-9. Judgments of tlie great and the poor on the public
questions of the time . 176
10. And on Christianity in its early days \ . . . 180
11. The enlistment of this maximum of active power
on behalf of the State 180
12. Phantom-objections 182
13-15. Plea that there is now no intolerable evil . . . li?3
16. PJea of the hopeless minority 184
17. Plea of tlie homogeneous class 185
18. Plea of the want of demand 186
19. America 186
20. France 187
21. The claim to every supposition consistint with
possibility 188
22. The two opposite views of the suffrage ■/ . . . 18^
23. Article and demands of Mr. Arch li)l
24. The charge of class-purpose 191
vn.
POSTSCRIPTUM ON THE COUNTY FRANCHISE.
1. Coailjutors in the inquiry ....
2. Government by the leisured classes i^
3. Subserviency and dependence . .
4. Improving effect of tlie suffrage . ,
5. The argument in terrorem
6, 7. Comiiarativo liability or error.
8. Facts of superior judgment in the mass
9-11. Rooted mainly in moral causes .
193
193
194
196
197
197
198
199
VIII.
KIN BEYOND SEA.
FAGB
1. De Tocqueville and De Beaumont ..... 203
2. Keciprocal benefactions of England and America . 203
3. American development unexampled 204
4-6. Eeaemblances of political habit between the two
countries 206
7-9. Necessary and historical limit upon those resem-
blances 208
10. Early management of the American Colonies -^ . 211
11-13. Brief animadversion on America 212
14-16. The peaceful trophies since the Civil War . . . 214
17, 18. Some comparative disadvantages of ours. . . . 216
19-24. Formation of the central power in the two
countries 219
25, 26. The Fourth Power in the United Kingdom . . . 223
27, 28. Seats of Ministers in Parliament 224
29. The Crown, how guarded .' 226
30. Its prerogatives 227
31-3. Constitutional Kingsliip , 228
34. The Sovereign's dismissal of Ministers .... 230
35, 36. Other power and influence of the Sovereign . . . 232
37. The Sovereign and the Crown 234
38. Tlie Sovereign and the Ministers 235
39-41. The first power of the State 236
42, 43. Gradual formation of the Cabimt v . .. . . 238
44-50. Tlio Prime Mini.^tur and his cullcagues .^. . . 240
51. Anomalies of the Constitution 244
52, 53. Its subtle changes by time 246
54. How related to the national chni actor . . . . 247
55, 56. Conclusiou ,»..217
DEATH or THE prince consort.
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT MANCHESTER ON THE 23UD OF APRIL,
1862, BEFORE THE ASSOCIATION OF LANCASHIRE AND CHESHIRE
mechanics' INSTITUTES.*
1. Ladies and Gentlemen, — Although the duty in which
we liave just been engaged is a cheerful one, the season
at which I come among you is, hut too notoriously, a
season of gloom in the district, and even in the city. In
this busy region, all the forms of liuman industry are
grouped around one central stock, which gives them their
vitality ; and they droop and come near to dying when, as
now, the great cotton harvest is no longer wafted over the
Atlantic to employ and feed tlie people. If the positive
signs of distress do not glare in your streets, it is, I appre-
liend, because the manly and independent character of the
Lancashire workman makes him unwilling to parade, or
even to disclose, his sufferings before his fellow-men.
None can doubt the existence of a torpor scarcely ever
equalled in its intensity, and wholly without parallel in
its cause. At points of the horizon in these counties, the
* Published in 1862. This Address was delivered shortly after the
death of the Prince Consort; and during the pressure of the Cotton-
famine.
1. B
2 ADDRESS AT MANCHESTER.
eye suggests regret even for the un^yonted thinness of
the canopy of smoke, which bears witness to the partial
slumber of the giant forces enlisted in your ordinary
service. Earely ^Wthin living memory has so much of
skill lain barren, so much of willing strength been smitten
as Avith palsy ; or has so much of poverty and want forced
its way into homes that had long been wont to smile with
comfoi-t and abundance. Nor is the promise of to-morrow
a compensation for the pressure of to-day. On the con-
trary, if the present be dark, the signs of the immediate
future may seem darker still.
2. In times like these the human mind, and still more
the human heart, searches all around for consolation
and suppoi-t. Of that support one kind is to be found in
observing that trials the most severe and piercing are
the lot not of one station only but of all. And perhaps in
tlie wise counsels of ProAddence it Avas decreed that that
crushing sorrow which came down as sudden as the hur-
ricane, scarcely yet four months ago, upon the august head
of our Sovereign, should serve, among other uses, that of
teaching and helping her subjects to bear up under
the sense of atiliction and desolation, and should exhibit
by conspicuous example the need and the duty both of
mutual sympathy and mutual help. In many a humble
cottage, darkened by the calamity of the past winter, the
mourning inhabitants may have checked their OAvn im])a-
ticnce by relleeting that, in the ancient I'alace of our
Kings, a Woman's heart lay bleeding; and that to the
supreme place in birth, in station, in splendour, and in
po\\'er, Avas noAV added another and sadder title of pre-
eminence in grief.
3. For perhaps no shai-por stroke over cut human Ha-cs
asunder than that which in December last parted, so far
DEATH OF XnK PRIXCE CONSORT. 3
as this world of sense is concerned, the lives of the Queen
of England and of her chosen Consort. It had been obvious
to us all, though necessarily in different degrees, that
tliey were blest with the possession of the secret of recon-
ciling the discharge of incessant and wearing public duty
with the culti\ation of the inner and domestic life. The
attachment that binds together wife and husband was
known to be in their case, and to have been from the first,
of an unusual force. Through more than twenty years,
whith flowed past like one long unclouded summer day,
that attachment was cherished, exercised, and strengthened
by all the forms of family interest, by all the associated
pursuits of highly cxiltivated minds, by all the cares and
responsibilities which suiTound the Throne, and which the
Prince was called, in his own sphere, both to alleviate and
to share. On the one side, such love is rare, even in the
annals of the love of woman ; on the other, such ser^'ice
can hardly find a parallel, for it is hard to know how a
husband could render it to a wife, unless that wife were
also Queen.
4. So, then. She, whom you have seen in your streets a
source of joy to you all, and herself drinking in with
cordial warmth the sights and the sounds of your enthu-
siastic loyalty, is now to be thought of as the fijrst of
English widows, lonely in proportion to her elevation and
her cares. Nor let it be thought that those who are
never called to suffer in respect to bochly wants therefore
do not suffer sharply. Whereas, on the contrary, it is
well established, not only that though the form of sorrow
may be changed with a change in the sphere of life, the
essence and power of it remain, but also that, as that
splieie enlarges, the capacity of suffering deejjens along
^\■ith it, no less than the opportunities of enjoyment ai'o
13 2
4 ADBEESS AT MANCHESTER.
multiplied. Tlierefore all the land, made aware, througli
the transparent manner of it, what was the true character
of her life, has acknowledged in the Queen not only a true,
but a signally afflicted mourner. And rely upon it that,
even in the midst of desolation, she is conscious of our
sympathy, and has thrilled more deeply to the signs of
her people's grief on her behalf than ever, in other days,
to their loudest and most heart-stirring acclamations.
5. And you, my friends, such of you in particular as
have felt by your firesides the touch of this most tiying
time : if perchance many among you, turning in the day of
need and trouble to the Father of all Mercies, have mingled
with your prayers for your own relief another prayer, that
She may be consoled in her sorrow and strengthened for
her work during what we hope will be the long remainder
of her days, that loyal prayer will come back vnth bless-
ing into your OAvn bosom, and in the effort to obtain com-
fort for another you will surely be comforted yourselves.
6. If the mourning of the nation for the Prince Consort's
death was universal, yet within certain precincts it was
also special. One of those precincts surely must have
been the Association to promote Avhose purposes we are
gathered here to-night. You had iu him a Head ; and a
Head standing towards you in no merely titular relation,
but one Avho, as his manner was, gave reality to every
attribute of his station, and, in lending you his name, im-
parted to you freely of his thought and care to boot. His
comprehensive gaze ranged to and fro between the ba.se
and the summit of society, and examined the interior
forces by which it is kept at once in balance and in
motion. In his well-ordered life there seemed to be room
for all things — for every manly exercise, for the study
and practice of art, for the exacting cares of a splendid
DEATH OF THE TRTNCE CONSORT. 5
Court, for minute attention to every domestic and patcmal
duty, for advice and aid towards the discharge of public
business in its innumerable forms, and for meeting the volnn-
taiy calls of an active philanthropy : one day in considering
the best form for the dwellings of the people ; another
day in bringing his just and gentle uifluence to bear on
the relations of master and domestic servant ; another in
suggesting and supplying the means of cultui'c for the
most numerous classes; another in some good work of
almsgi\dng or religion. Nor was it a merely external
activity which he displayed. His mind, it is c^adcnt, was
too deeply earnest to be satisfied in anything, smaller or
greater, with resting on the surface. With a strong grasp
on practical life in all its forms, he united a habit of
thought eminently philosophic; ever referring facts to
their causes, and pursuing action to its consequences.
Gone though he be from among us, he, like other worthies
of mankind who have preceded him, is not altogether
gone ; for, in the woi'ds of the poet —
'* Yonr heads must come
To the coUl tomb ;
Only the actions of tlie jnst
Smell sweet and blossom in their dnst."*
So he has left for all men, in all classes, many a useful
lesson, to be learnt from the record of his life and
character.
7. For example, it would, I believe, be difficult to find
anywhere a model of a life more highly organised, more
thoroughly and compactly ordered. Here in Manchester,
if anywhere in the Avorld, you know what order is, and
what a power it holds. Here we sec at work the vast
* Shirley, ' Ajax and Ulysses,' Sccue ill.
b ADDRESS AT MANCHESTER.
systems of machinery, where ten thousand instruments are
ever laLouring, each in its own proper place, each with its
own proper duty, but all obedient to one law, and all co-
operating for one end. Scarcely in one of those your own
great establishments are the principles of order and its
power more vividly exemplified, than they were in the
mind and life of the Prince Consort. Now this way of
excelling is one that we all may follow. There is not one
among us all here gathered who may not, if he will,
especially if he be still young, by the simple specific of
giving method to his life, greatly increase its power and
efficacy for good.
8. But he would be a sorry imitator of the Prince who
should suppose that this process could be satisfactorily
performed as a mechanical process, in a presumptuous or
in a servile spirit, and with a view to selfish or to worldly
ends. A life that is to be active like his ought to find
refi-eshment even in the midst of labours ; nay, to draw
refreshment from them. But this it cannot do, unless the
man can take up the varied em]iloymcnts of the world
with something of a childlike freshness. Pew are they
who carry on with them that childlike freshness of the
earliest years into after-life. It is that especial light of
Heaven, described by Wordsworth in his immortal ' Ode
on the llecollections of Childhood ' : that light —
'■a'^
" which lies about us in our infancy,"
which attends even the youth upon his way; but at
length —
" the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into tiie light of common day."
Its radiance still plays about a favoured few : they ore
those few who, like the Trince, strive earnestly to keep
DEATH OF THE PRINCE CONSORT. 7
themselves unspotted from the world, and are victors in
the strife.
9. In beseeching, especially, the young to studj^ the ap-
plication to their daily life of that principle of order which
hoth engenders diligence and strength of Avill, and like-
wise so greatly multiplies their power, I am well assnvc^d
that they will find tliis to be not only an intellectual but
a moral exercise. Every real and searching effort at si'lf-
improvemcnt is of itself a lesson of profound humility.
For we cannot move a step without learning and feeling
the waywardness, the weakness, the vacillation of our
movements, or without desiring to be set up upon the
Rock that is higher than ourselves. Nor, again, is it
likely that the self-denial and self-discipline which these
effoi-ts undoubtedly involve will often be cordially under-
gone, except by those who elevate and extend their vision
beyond the narrow scope of the years — be they what wo
admit to be few, or what we think to be many — that are
prescribed for our career on earth. An untiring sense of
duty, an active consciousness of the perpetual presence of
Him Avho is its author and its law, and a lofty aim beyond
the grave — these are the best and most efficient parts, in
every sense, of that apparatus wherewith we should be
anned, when with full pnrpose of heart we address our-
selves to the life-long work of self-impi'ovement. And I
believe that the lesson which I have thus, perhaps at once
too boldly and too feebly, presiimed to convey to you in
words, is the very lesson which was tanght us for twenty
years, and has been bequeathed to us for lasting memoi'y,
by the Prince Consort, in the nobler form of action, in the
silent witness of an earnest, manful, and devoted life.
10. But, although this world embraces no more than a
limited part of our existence, and although it is certain
8 ADDRESS AT MANCHESTER.
that we ought to tread its floor with an upward and not
Avith a downward eye, yet sometimes a strong reaction
from the dominion of things visible and carnal begets the
opposite excess. A strain of language may sometimes be
heard among us which, if taken strictly, would imj)ly that
the Almighty had abandoned the earth and the creatures
He had made ; or, at the least, that if He retained any
care at all for some portion of those creatures while con-
tinuing to be inhabitants of the world, it was only care
how to take them out of it. It is sometimes said that
this world is a world only of shadows and of phantoms.
We may safely reply that, whatever it is, a world of
shadows and of phantoms it can never truly be ; for by
shadows and by phantoms we mean vague existences,
which neither endure nor act : creatures of the moment,
which may touch the fancy, but which the understanding
does not recognise ; passing illusions, without heralds
before them, without results or traces after them. With
such a description as this, I say, our human life, in what-
ever state or station, can never correspond. It may be
something better than this ; it may be something worse,
but this it can never be. Our life may be food to us, or
may, if we will have it so, be poison ; but one or the
other it must be. Whichever and whatever it is, beyond
all doubt it is eminently real. So surely as the day and
the night alternately follow one another, does every day
when it yields to darkness, and every night when it passes
into dawn, bear with it its own tale of the results which
it has silently wrought upon each of lis, for e\dl or for
good. The day of diligence, duty, and devotion leaves us
richer than it found lis ; richer sometimes, and even
commonly, in our circumstances ; richer always in our-
selves. But the day of aimless lethargy, the day of
DEATH OF TUV. PRINCE CONSORT. 9
passionate and rebellious disorder, or of a merely selfish
and perverse activity, as suix'ly leaves us poorer at its
close than avc were .at its beginning. The whole ex-
perience of life, in small things and in groat, what is it ?
It is an aggregate of real forces, which are always acting
upon us, we also reacting upon them. It is in the nature
of things impossible that, in their contact with our plastic
and susceptible natures, they should leave us as we were ;
and to deny the reality of their daily and continual
influence, merely because we cannot register its results, as
we note the clianges of the l)aronieter, from hour to hour,
would be just as rational as to deny that the sea acts upon
the beach because the eye will not tell us to-morrow that
it is altered fi-om what it has been to-day. If we fail
to measure the results that are thus hourly wrought on
shingle and in sand, it is not because those results are
unreal, but because our ■sasion is too limited in its powers
to discern them. "WTien, instead of comparing day with day,
we compare century with century, then we may often find
that land has become sea, and sea has become land. Even
so we can perceive, at least in our neighbours — towards
whom the eye is more impartial and discerning than
towards ourselves — that, under the steady pressure of the
experience of life, human characters are continually being
determined for good or CA-il ; are developed, confirmed,
modified, altered, or undermined. It is tlie ofiice of good
sense, no less than of faith, to realise this gi-eat truth
before we see it, and to live under the conviction, that our
life from day to day is a true, poAverful, and searching
discipline, moulding us and making us, Avhethcr it be for
evil or for good.
11. Nor are these real efPects wrought by unrtnil instru-
ments. Life and the world, their interests, their careers,
10 ADDRESS AT MAN'CHESTER.
the varied gifts of our nature, the traditions of our
forefathers, the treasures of laws, institutions, usages, of
languages, of literature, and of art ; all the beauty, glory,
and delight with which the Almighty Father has clothed
this earth for the use and profit of His children, and
which Evil, though it has defaced, has not been able
utterly to destroy; all these are not merely allowable,
but ordained and appointed instruments for the training
of mankind. They are instruments true and efficient in
themselves, though without doubt auxiliary and subor-
dinate to that highest instrument of all which God has
prepared to be the means of our recovery and final weal,
by the revelation of Himself.
12. Thus, then, we arrive at a point which plainly ex-
hibits the ennobling tendencies and high moral aims of an
institution such as this, when it is worked in the spirit
that alone befits our nature and condition.
Let me now address to you a few words on a marked
feature of the institution— that feature with which in
particular we are to-night concerned — I mean its examina-
tions, to which reference is made in the eighth paragraph
of its printed list of its objects. They evidently form not
only a living and chief portion of its practice, but also a
test of its power over the people ; and it is manifest, from
the results they have produced — from such results as Avith
our own eyes we have witnessed in this hall to-night — •
that they have struck deep root in the mind of the com-
munity around you, and are likely to exercise in future a
material influence upon conduct.
13. The use of examinations in this country, not alone,
but with honours and prizes variously attached to them,
as a main stimulus and sup])ort to mental cultivatioti, is
in a veiy great degree peculiar to the present century.
DEATH OF TnK PRINCE CONSOET. 11
Examination on trial, in one form or another, may he said
to have constituted, nearly from its commencement, the
basis of the practical system of our ancient Universities of
Oxford and Cambridge. Perhaps those Universities have
been the means of commending- to the countiy the example
it lias so largely followed. These examinations have ac-
(juired progressively more and more of "weight in our
famous ])ublic schools. They now supply the only pass-
port to the Civil Service of India, richly endowed as it is
Avith emoluments, and heavily charged with duties and
responsibilities. Admission to the Civil Service at home
had been long the subject only of a political patronage
wliich was, erroneously as 1 think, believed to be an
essential part of the machinciy of the Constitution, and
the sole effectual substitute for the nxder methods of
government formerly in use by prerogative or force. But
it is now in some degree admitted that the privilege of
entering the Ci\al Service of the countiy — and, indeed,
the service of the country generally ought to be thrown
open, as widely as may be, to its yoiith at large. And
some progress has been made, by the method of examina-
tions, both in securing the State against the intrusion of
the unworthy, and in widening the way of access for
those who aspire to prove themselves worthy of the
honours and rewards of civil office. The like engine of
competitive examination has been more freely applied to
the highest — I mean the scientific — department of the
army. At about the same time with the adoption of
these last-mentioned improvements, the University of
Oxford instituted, Avith great wisdom and forethought,
that system of circuits for local examinations throughout
the country whicli nu't at once with public acknowledg-
ment and approval, and Avhich was speedily and happily
12 ADDKESS AT MANCHESTER.
imitated from one or more other quarters. But none of
these efforts touched the great masses of the people.
They too, however, have been at least pai'tially reached by
the widening circles of the movement. A proposal is, aj
yon know, under the consideration of Parliament, which
aims at the establishment of the principle, that the merit
of the pupils proved by elementary examination shall
henceforth be, if not the sole, yet the main condition on
which the money of the State, supplied by the taxes of
the country, shall be dispensed in aid of primary schools.
This, it may be said, is still prospective. But at least we
have, in tlie Association of Lancashire and Cheshire
Mechanics' Institutes, one living proof of the progress
made, without aid either from old endowment or from the
public purse, by the principle of examinations, with the
condition of competition, and with the attraction of honour
or reward. How strictly true is this assertion must be
more familiarly known to many among you than to me.
14. I Avill not attempt to draw here, and now, a full
picture of the association, but will only give in proof
of Avhat I have said a very few facts and figures. First,
as regards the general condition of the district. We
find that the involuntary leisure forced on the popu-
lation by tlie contraction of the cotton trade has been
attended by a decrease of crime. In Blackburn, for
instance, where the crisis is felt with the utmost severity,
the charges heard by the borough magistrates in the
first quarter of the year 1857 were 721 ; in the first
quarter of the year 1862, although the population must
have grown, the charges were only 524. Now, we may
naturally expect a decrease of drunkenness to accompany
popular distress, because the means of indulgence luive
been contracted. But, on tlie other hand, we might not
Drvrn of tiiJ': trtxck consort. 13
be greatly sui-prisod. if there were a positive increase of
those offouces to which men are tempted in a prijicipal
degree by want. Applpug these considerations to the
case of ihvckbum, we find the following results. The
charges other than for drunkenness in the first quarter
of 1857 were 464 ; in 1862 they were 380. There is, my
friends, consolation in tliese facts, which I hope will long
sur^•ive the painful occasion that has brought them into
view.
15. It also appears from the returns, that, speaking
generally, while ciime has decreased, the attendance
upon classes, and the use of the means of mental culture,
have increased. Now, my friends, there are beautiful
and famous passages in ancient writers, where statesmen
and orators describe the refreshment with which literature
had supplied them, amid the cares of life and the pressure
of public affairs. AVithout any disparagement to such
representations, it is a far more touching piclure to behold
the labouring man, shut out by no fault of his own
fi'om the occiipation that gives him bread, yet uncon-
quered in spirit and resource, and turning to account
his vacant hcjurs in pursuits which strengthen and enlarge
the faculties of his niiud.
16. It would, however, be unjust to set down to the
credit of this Association, or of those institutes which it
binds together, more than a modest share in the general
improvement of your social state. But let us observe
more closely their actual progress. The members, formerly
2000, are now from 6000 to 8000. Four years ago, 500
persons passed the preliminary examinations ; this year
there are 1500. Four years ago, 214 passed the public
and final examination ; this year there are 730. What
is more remarkable than all the rest is the fact that,
14 ADDRESS AT MAN-CHESTKR.
of 1 80 persons who have to-night received honours and
certificates, the number who draw their subsistence from
weekly wages is no less than 177. Two of these are
wholly unemployed ; 83, between men and women, are
weavers; fully 150 appear to belong, in the very strictest
sense, to the labouring class. Again I say, here are the
signs, for that class especially, of hope and real progress ;
of hope which will, I trust, bear its fi'uit, and abide
with them when ripened into certainty, long after the
clouds of the present visitation shall, if it please God,
have passed away.
17. I have said to you, my friends, that the extended use
of the instrument of examinations is eminently character-
istic of the age in which we live. I would almost ventui^e
to say that, amid all the material and all the social changes
by which the period has been distinguished, there have
been few that are greater or more peculiar than this.
Tlie older methods of education, which had been in use in
European countries, generally invited from students, with
more or less of strictness, voluntary performances, which
were intended to afford general evidence of competency ;
and which, where they were regularly exacted, were made
conditions of the certificates of proficiency given by Uni-
versities and other learned bodies, and by them called
Degrees. These exercises and exhibitions were the in-
vention of remote ages, and were in all probability well
adapted to the exigencies of those periods. Eut in the
time of your immediate ancestors they had become gener-.
ally and even grossly ineffective ; and the instinct, so to
speak, of the present age has prompted it, instead of
reviving the ancient forms which had died out, to have
recourse to the new method of examinations.
18. These examinations are in a great number of
TKATn OF THE PRIXCK CONSOUT. 15
instances competitive ; that is, tliey offer to the candi-
dates one or more specific prizes, the possession of which,
by particuhir competitors iuvolvcs the exclusion of others.
Tliis form of examination lias great advantages. It raises
to a maximum that stimulus which acts insensibly but
powerfully upon the minds of students, as it were, from
behind ; and becomes an auxiliary force augmenting their
energies, and helping them, almost without their know-
ledge, to surmount their dilliculties. It is not found in
practice, so far as I know, to be open to an objection which
is popularly urged against it ; this, namely, that it may
elicit evil passions among the candidates, because it makes
the gain of one the loss of another. I believe that, on the
contrary, the pursuit of knowledge is found to carry with
it, in this respect, its own preservatives and safeguards.
Even in athletic sports, the loser does not resent or grudge
the fairly won honours of the winner ; and, in the race of
minds, those Avho ai'e behind, having confidence in the
perfect fairness of the award, are not so blindly and basely
selfish as to cherish resentment against others for being
better than themselves. Again, it is a recommendation of
purely competitive examinations that they bring the mat-
ter to the simplest issue ; for, in nice cases, it is a much
easier and safer task for the examiner to compare the per-
formances of a candidate with those of another candidate,
than to compare them "\\ith some more abstract staiidard,
existing only in his own mind. On the other hand, it is a
disadvantage of this system that the honours given at
difi'erent times, purporting to be eqiml, are given to un-
equal merit : for the number and excellence of the com-
petitors varies fi'om one occasion to another ; and tlie
winner of one year may, on this account, be inferior to the
loser of another.
16 ADDRESS AT MANCHESTEK.
19. Miicli may, in truth, be said in praise or in dis-
paragement of one method of examination as compared with
another. Into controversy of this kind I do not propose
to enter, further than to say that I think the highest
value belongs to the competitive species in cases like that
of admission to the Civil Service of the State, where a main
object is to bar the way against the action of corrupt or
inferior motives in those who appoint. In the long-run,
the simple, clear, and self-acting method of an open com-
petition will probably be found more ade(;[uate than any
other agency to contend against the wakeful energies of
human selfishness, ever on the alert, first to prevent the
adoption of improvements, and then to neutralise and mar
their operation.
20. But what I would, on the present occasion, specially
endeavour to biing to yoiu- attention is the general cha-
racter of this instrument of examination, as it is under-
stood and as it is applied in the present century, and in
the institution with which we have now to deal. The
essential character of it I take to be this — that the candi-
date, instead of himseK producing a piece of work, and
asking to be judged by it, offers and opens his mind to the
examining authority to be tested, searched, and, so to speak,
even ransacked, in such manner, and by such questions
and processes, as that examining authority shall choose.
The adoption, or wide extension, of such a method as tlus
marks an epoch in the history of study. It shows that we
have overlived the time when the greater part of those
who engaged in the pursuit of knowledge were enamoured
of its beauty, and loved it for its own sake, with a devout
and tender love. In the childhood of mental culture, it
was the prerogative of a few, and the mere possession of
it constituted a high distinction. So, likewise, us in thoso
DEATH OF THE PRINCE COXSOUT. 17
days legal rights were ill defined and protected, commerce
vs^as circumscribed, nations were sharply severed, and but
few of the careers of active life were open, it naturally
happened that, in the case of many persons, mental culture
had little to compete with for their regard. In circum-
stances like these, it might not be needful constantly to
apply a strong stimulus from without. The very novelty
and freshness of knowledge, in ages just emerging from
darkness and disorder, gave it a powerful charm for the
imagination, over and above its hold upon the intellect ;
it was piu'sued by a spontaneous movement from within,
with passion as well as with con\'iction ; and those who so
pursue it do not need to be goaded in their onward course ;
their service is a service of love, and, like the love of
youth for maiden, it is its own incentive and its own
reward.
21. But when society has passed into what is distinct-
ively, and in many respects truly, termed a progressive state ;
when the personal rights of men are as secure in the outer
world as in the closest retirement ; when a thousand new
careers of external life are opened, and its attractions in
a thousand forms are indefinitely multiplied ; when large
numbers can engage, not merely in labour for subsistence,
but in the pursuit of wealth ; and when a desire to rise
upon the social ladder takes possession of whole classes,
if not on their own behalf, at least on behalf of their
children ; then there arises a compound danger. First,
lest the value of knowledge for its own sake should be
wholly forgotten ; and, secondly, lest even its utility in
innumoralilc respects for the comfort and advancement of
life should pass, in great measure, out of view.
22. Now, my friends, it is in such an age as this that we
are living. That same attraction or necessity of wages,
I.
18 ADDRESS AT MANCHESTER.
which takes the poorer child, either in town or village,
from school at too early a period, is but the exhibition for
one class of a pressiu'e felt by all. With the wealthier it
is pleasure, with the needier it is gain ; but all classes and
all circles are alike in this, that our youth are in danger
of undervaluing solid mental culture, and of either
neglecting or shortening its pm'suit by reason of the
increased alliu'ements, or the more urgent calls, of the
outer sphere of life. Although knowledge is in so many
ways auxiliary to art and to commerce, yet this is a
matter not so palpable to the individual that we can rely
on it to enable him, as it were, to speculate upon a
distant benefit, which concerns others as well as, or it
may be more than, himself; and to forego for its sake
advantages which lie nearer at hand, which appertain
directly to his own career, and wliich are on the level
of every man's understanding. Long, accordingly, after
trade and manufactures had begun, one hundred years ago,
their upward spring, education and art seemed rather to
decline than to advance among us. At length a day of
awakening came. Christian philanthropy, we may do
well to remember, was first in the field on behalf of the
masses of the people ; but after a while,. it found itself in
partnership with an enlightened self-interest on the part
of individuals, and with the political prudence of the
Government. JSlow, for a long course of years, all three
have prosecuted their work in remarkable harmony one
with another. Long may their union continue, and its
golden fruits teem and glow over all the siu'face of the
land !
23. A piincipal form, in which they have well developed
their united activity, has been the form of examinations;
and I must in candour say that, among all the particular
DEATH OF THE PRIXCE CONSORT. 19
applications of tliis principle, I have seen none more re-
markable than that which we have met to-night to com-
memorate and to encourage. For here it is not leisure,
wealth, and ease wliich come to disport themselves as
athletes in intellectual games : it is the hard hand of the
worker, which his yet stronger ^\'ill has taught to wield
the pen ; it is Labour, gathering up with infinite care and
sacrifice the fragments of time, stealing them, many a
one, from rest and sleep, and offering them up, like so
many widows' mites, in the honest devotion of an effoi-t
at self -improvement.
24. There are those, my friends, who tell us that exami-
nations, and especially that competitive examinations, are
of no real value ; that they produce the pretence and not
the reality of knowledge ; that they give us, not solid pro-
gress, but conceit and illusion. I freely admit that this
modem method is likely to rear, as far as we can judge,
no greater prodigies of learning than did the simple and
spontaneous devotion of the olden time ; perhaps, if we
are to look only at individual cases of pre-eminence, none
so great. But I say that the true way to imitate the
wisdom of the olden time is this : to watch the conditions
of the age in which we live ; to accept them thankfully
and freely, as at once the law of ProA-idence for our
guidance, and the gift for our encouragement : and Avhen
we learn by experience that tlio tools with Avhich other
generations wrought are not suited for the work that is
given us to do, then to find, if we can, some other tools
which are.
25. It is not too much to say that the experience of half
a century, as well in the Universities as elsewhere, appears
to have shown that the method of examinations is the
best, and perhaps the only, method by which, in the
c 2
20 ADDRESS AT MAJTCHESTEK.
England of the nineteenth century, any due efficiency can
be imparted to the general business of education. I do
not, indeed, deny that a certain trick or craft may be
practised in them ; that some may think more of the
manner of displaying their knowledge to a momentary
advantage, like goods in a shop-window, than of laying
hold upon the substance. But I say that these abusive
cases will be the exceptions, not the rule. I say that
those who so unjustly plead them against the system
forget that this very faculty, of the ready command and
easy use of our knowledge, is in itself of immense value.
It means clear perception, it means orderly arrangement.
And, above all, they forget what I take to be the specific
and peculiar virtue of the system of examinations, namely
this, that they require us to concentrate all the faculties
of the mind, with all their strength, upon a point. In
and by the efforts necessary for that cencentration, the
mind itself, obtaining at once breadth of grasp and in-
creased pliability and force, becomes more able to grapple
with great occasions in the subsequent experience of life.
26. Therefore, my friends, again I say let us accept
frankly and cheerfully the conditions of the age in which
our lot is cast, and let us write among its titles this — that as
it is the age of humane and liberal laws, the age of extended
franchises, the age of Avarmer loyalty and more firmly
established order, the age of free trade, the age of steam
and railways ; so it is likewise, even if last and least, the
age of examinations. Let me add, it is the age in which
tliis powerful instrument of good, formerly the exclusive
privilege of the more opulent, has been extended, perhaps
most conspicuously of all by this group of institutions, to
the people. And I give you this for my concluding word ;
that, if that rrince of whose bright career and chai'acter
l>EATn: OF THE PKINCE CONSORT. 21
I lately spoke were now among us, none, we may be
sure, would more cordially than he claim honour for a
system which, in such thoroujyh hannony with the whole
spirit of English laws and institutions, aims at enabling
every one, in every rank of the social scale, the lowest
like the highest, to give proof of what mettle he is made,
and to turn to the best account the gifts with which, by
the bounty of his Heavenly Tathcr, his mind has been
endowed.
n.
LIFE OF THE FEINCE COXSOPtT— COrr.T OF
QUEEX VICTORIA *
Vol. I. London, 1875.
1 . The clay which announced throughout the land the death
of the Prince Consort was a day of universal gloom. The
heart of the nation was touched by the suddenness with
which indisposition had assumed the face of danger, and
interest had grown into alarm ; and there was a prescient
observation, at an early stage of the illness, that the con-
stitution of the illustrious patient did not seem to oifer
that stout resistance to the advances of disease which his
favourable age, and his tall, manly, well-proportioned
form would have seemed to insure. The purity of his
life, the integrity of his character, his varied talents and
accomplishments, and the active share in public under-
takings, so often and so judiciously assumed, had gradually
acquired for him a strong and deep liold upon the esteem
of the British people. But the deptli of that sympathy
and sorrow which accompanied the catastrophe was prob-
ably a tribute to the sorrow of tlui Queen, in a yet greater
degree than to the signal merits of her husband. It was
felt, by a just instinct, that love and loss conjointly had
* 'Life and Speeches of the Prince Consort — Court of Queen
Victoria' (by Etononsis). Publishe<l in the Contciiipnrnr;i Eevuw,
June 1875. R(>|uililislieil for ciroulation abroad in one of the volumes
of Baron Tauchnitz, Leipzig, 1876.
24 LIFE OF THE PKINCE CONSOET
perhaps never, amidst all the varieties of life, been raised to
so high a pitch : that no woman had ever leant more fondly,
and no queen had ever had so much cause to lean. The
weight was now doubled ; while the strength was halved,
and the joy and comfort gone. Accordingly, there was a
real and genuine desire of the whole people to be partners
in her great affliction, in no conventional or secondary
sense, but by trnlj bearing a portion of it along with her.
I speak neither wholly nor even peculiarly of the highest
circles. On the contrary, the sentiment deepened, as it
widened, with every step downwards from class to class,
even to the very base of society.
2. To the same mixed feeling, with the same dominant
reference to the Sovereign, may have been partly due
the remarkable multiplication in all quarters of the local
Memorials, which by degrees covered the land. With
respect to the most conspicuous of these, the gorgeous
structure near the western extremity of Hyde Park, it
may perhaps be said that its extraordinary magnitude of
scale and sumptuousness of execution may in future days
be deemed to assert a greater superiority to other mortals,
on behalf of the Prince Consort, than even his pure and
lofty reputation can be expected to sustain. In any case,
we may say of him with truth what the greatest Italian poet
of this century, Giacomo Leopardi, has said of Dante : —
" lo so ben
Che saldi men che cera, e men ch' arena.
Verso la fama che di te laseiasti.
Son bronzi e marmi."*
Happily we have sure memorials of his mind, and faith-
* Rudely and slightly rendered in the following lines: —
"Matched with the fame
Of thy great name, [Bronze
COTJET OF QUEEN "VTCTOEIA. 25
ful chroniclers of his histoiy ; and it may be confidently-
expected, while it must be ardently desired, that not only
our own time, but futiu'e generations also, may continue to
prize the recollection of a life lifted far above the ordi-
nary level of princely existence, and not only meritorious,
but even typical for nations and men at large.
3. Before taking notice of the work of Mr. Martin,*
we must briefly refer to the two other ofPeiings of loyal
commemoration which were already before the world.
In 1867 General Grey compiled, under the direction of
Her Majesty, a memoir of ' The Early Years of the Prince
Consort,' from 1819, the year of his birth, to the birth of
the Piincess Royal in 1840. Originally prepared for
private circulation, it was afterwards given to the public ;
and the intended prosecution of the work was announced
in the closing sentence of the volume. But, no long time
afterwards, the hand of the writer was cold in death. The
work of General Grey was even more communicative,
threw even more light upon the personal histories and the
domestic interior, than the later biography. He had been
chosen to discharge a labour of love, implying on the pai-t
of his Sovereign the liighest confidence. Never was that
confidence better deserved. Besides possessing the other
qualities needed for his important functions, he was a man
loyal with no common loyalty ; and his long standing at
the Court gave liim the power, which younger men cannot
Bronze is but wax,
And Marble sand.
To baiHe Time's attacks,
And stealthy hand."
From G. Leopardi, ' Sopra il monumento di Pante che si preparava
in Kiionze.'
* 'Life of the Prince Consort,' vol. i., 1875.
26 LIFE OF THE PRIJTCE CONSORT
be expected equally to possess, of acting in all points the
part of a faithful friend. The " fierce light that beats
upon a throne " is sometimes, like the heat of that fiimace
in which only Daniel could walk unscathed, too fierce for
those whose place it is to stand in its vicinity. The inci-
dents of a Court retain, down to our day, their fascination,
and we are old-fashioned enough to hope it may not soon
be lost ; yet it can hardly be denied that it is girt about
with a relaxing atmosphere, and that a manful constitu-
tion, or adequate refreshment fi'om other sources, is re-
qtiired in order to secure a robust health, in mind and
character, to its favoured residents. Had the bodily
strength of General Grey been equal to his mental sound-
ness and manly truthfulness of stamp, he would still have
been among us, with many coming years of usefulness to
reckon.
4. A more recent, but not less loyal or judicious, relation
to the throne, was that of Sir Arthur Helps ; whose death
we have been called, within the last few months, to
mourn. So early as in 1862, he had been chosen to edit
the Speeches of the Prince ; and he had prefixed to them
a most able and most discriminating introduction, only
second in interest to the Speeches themselves. These were
eagerly and extensively read by the nation ; and they
unqiiestionably have that in them which ought not to die.
5. It was much that, after the removal by death of these
two admirable servants of the Crown, her Majesty should
be able to select for tlic definite execution of a task
hitherto only attempted in fragments a biographer of such
high qualifications as Mr. Martin. He has brought to
the execution of a task necessarily arduous the saine fine
hand and accurate discernment with which he had previ-
ously rendered the image of some of the best Latin poets,
COURT OF ftUEEX VICTORIA. 27
in tlic guise of liuppy and elegant Euglisli translations.
It is, however, unnecessary for us, writing many months
after the appearance of the work, to repeat in detail the
praises which have been justly, and more promptly,
awarded to Mr. ^klartin already by authontative and
respected organs of the periodical press.*' We have only
to wish that he may continue as he has begun. Perhaps
we should add the expression of a hope that the nature of
his subject-matter may not again impose upon him any
such necessity of entering largely into the detail of
foreign policy as he encountered in the painful case of
the Spanish marriages. Even the valuable documents
and the authentic histoiy he has here furnished want
something of the charm of a biography. Eut the interest
of the Eoyal portrait, which it has been Mr. Martin's
duty to draw, is one not to be exhausted with the run of
a successful work. The study and contemplation of the
MAN will remain permanently fi-uitful of the most improv-
ing lessons to eveiy learner in the school of human nature.
The whole action of the Prince, in its manifold relations
both to English society and to the constitution of the
country, still forms a subject of deep interest to all who
are interested eitbcr in free institutions generally, or in
the peculiar form of them under which we live. And the
amount of calamity we have suffered by his death has,
perhaps, not even yet been fully apprehended.
6. It is not our intention to enter largely into the narra-
tive of a life of which the general features are so well and
widely known ; especially as we cannot doubt that Mr.
Martin's work will in no long pei-iod obtain access to a
wider circle of readers, through republication in a popular
Quarterly Review for January 1857, pp. 108-110,
28 LIFE OF THS PRINCE CONSOET
form, than is permitted by its present size and price.
But we shall carefully select our points of reference. And
there is one anecdote of the Prince's childhood, recorded
by Count Arthur Mensdorff, wliich exhibits in very early
times the base, so to speak, of his character.
" One day, when we children, Albert, Ernest, Ferdinand,
Augustus, Alexander, myself, and a few other boys, were play-
ing at the Rosenau, and some of us were to storm the old ruined
tower on the side of tlie castle, which tiie others were to defend,
one of us suggested that there was a place at the back by which
we could get in without being seen, and thus capture it without
difficulty. Albert declared ' that this would be most unbecoming
in a Saxon kiiiglit, who should always attack the enemy in front.'
And so we fought for the tower, so honestly and vigorously, that
Albert, by mistake, for I was on his side, gave nie a blow upon the
nose, of which 1 still bear the mark. I need not say how sorry he
was for the wound he had given me." *
7. The boy was father of the man ; and from the high
standard which he had thus early, and thus earnestly,
presented to himself, he never deviated. He was also
happy, beyond almost all other men, in the aids which he
received. His education seems to have been conducted
with all the care, the steady direction of means to an end,
the determination to turn all minds and all faculties to
the very best account, which distinguishes the Germans
beyond any people ol Europe. It seems as though there
were no disturbing clement of waste iu their moral and
intellectual world ; and this extraordinary and noble
thrift early became a governing principle, and a great
power, in the life of the Prince Consort.
8. Eut he had higher advantages even than those of a
careful and elaborate training, in the constant and all'ec-
Mr. JIartin, p. 7 ; Oeneral Grey, p. 57.
COTTRT OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 29
tionate attontion of two men, each iu himself remarkable,
and both devoted in an extraordinary measure to his vrol-
fare, as well as to that of the Queen, with whom in a long
vista of anticipation we arc told that his destiny was
almost from the very first conjoined (Martin, p. 14).
They were men not only of p;roat gifts, hut singularly
adapted for their work of wardcnship.
9. One of them was King Leopold, Piince of Saxe-
Cohurg by birth, sovereign of Belgium by a happy
selection and adoption. This sovereign must undo;ibtedly
be reckoned among the great statesmen of the nineteenth
century. As a monarch, he gave a living example of all
the lessons which are to be learned from the free institu-
tions of the world, and some part of which, at least, he
may have originally gained from his association with, and
residence in, England. Called to the throne under circum-
Btances more menacijig than those of his neighbour and
father-in-law, Louis riiilippe, he lived in prosperity and
died in honour, while the heir of the more splendid lot
closed his days in obscurity and in exile. And it may not
be an unreasonable opinion that, had France been governed
from 1880 onwards with the enlightened frankness of
King Leopold, the Orleans dynasty might still be un the
throne, and Alsace and Lorraine still might bear the
insignia of France ;
"Trojaque nunc stares, Priamiquearx alta maneres."
Th(> column of the Place Vendome would not be in ruins,
nor the Hotel de Ville in ashes.
Married in early life to Princess Charlotte of England.
he stood in the Hue of succession to the very same position
which his nephew, Piince Albert, was afterwards to hold.
By the early death of that princess, which was so deeply
30 LIFE OF THE PEINCE CONSORT-^
and, as is now known in the light of hxter disclosures,*
so deservedly lamented, the cup was dashed from his lips.
But, without doubt, the exact reproduction of the same
situation, for others so near and dear to him in the next
generation, must have heightened in his mind that interest
in their well-being which his relationship of itself could
not but inspire, and which the early death of the Duke
of Kent (in 1820) gave him an appropriate opportunity
of bringing into action with reference to the Princess
Victoria.
10. One of his great acts of tutelary friendship was to
bring upon the scene Baron Stockmar, a person who was to
contribute as directly, and perhaps with a yet larger effect,
to the safe and happy direction of the Prince's life. Copious
memoirsf of the Baron were printed three or four years
back by his son, in Gei'man, and were translated into
English. But, notwithstanding their near association with
persons and matters so interesting to the nation, they did
not take any extended hold of the public mind. The
almost idolising ardour of filial affection in the author of
the book failed to redeem a number of errors in point of
taste and propriety. Fortunately the character of the
person commemorated was so high as to sur\ive and sui'-
mount the injudicious and obtrusive commemoration. In
the pages of Mr. Martin, Baron Stockmar appears in his
just place and relation to things and persons ; which of
course is not that of the Olympian Zeus of modern Europe.
Of great and cultivated gifts, he was a man aljsolutely
disinterested, not merely in the sense of superiority to
* See QuaHcrhj Itcvicw for Jan. 1873, Art. 1 : a monioir, uot a
criticism.
t ' Memoirs of Raron Stockmar.' V>y his son. Baron K. von Stock-
mar. Translated from tJie Uermau by G. A. M. Lonijuiuus, 1872.
COURT OP QUKEN VICTORIA. 31
pecuniary inducement, bnt in the power of casting, as it
were, himself out of himself, so as to attain a complete
identification with those on whose behalf he a|lvised or
acted, for all the purposes .to \\liifh the advice or action
might belong. To a fearless independence he added, as
Mr. Martin truly says, a penetrating judgment of men and
things (p. 15), and an inexhaustible fund of devotion.
Eminently cosmopolitan in the framework of his mind, he
was free from national limitations ; and was able both to
appreciate for liimself,* and to instil into anothcu- in a
remarkable degree, the true character of the British Con-
stitution, a product of our insular soil which is not only
without a parallel, but in its subtler parts almost without
analogy elsewhere. It is commonly seen, by even the
most intelligent of foreigners, as pictux'cs are seen in gas-
light, Avith a strong projection of their more glaring
colours, and a total, or at best very serious, loss of their
more delicate, cool, transparent shadows and graduating
touches. From 1816 to 18c} 1 the Baron had been resi-
dent in England as the private secretary of Prince
Leopold, and the comptroller of his household. He had
also acted as the organ and represcMitativc of the Prince
in the difficult negotiations A\liiuli followed his acceptance
of the Belgian crown ; and which were well qualified, as
may be seen by the readers of the recent * Life, of Lord
Palmcrston,' to exercise and develop the capacity of any
man for statesmanship. Ketiring to Coburg in 18;31, lie
obeyed in 1836 a new call of King Leopold for his aid,
and became a main agent in the happy and wise conspiracy,
of which the King was probably the first author, for dis-
* See, for examples, Martin, vol. i. pp. 110, 111. But llie subject
recurs inf. Ko. III., j>p. 75 sqq.
32 LIFE OF THE PRINCE CONSORT
posing all circumstances towards the marriage of the
young Prince Albert with the future Queen of England,
and for fitting him to adorn the exalted station. The
succession of Princess Victoria had now no contingent
impediment in its way ; and it was time to make prepai-a-
tion for smoothing her arduous upward path with the best
of all appliances.
11. The plan in view was bold, but not more bold than
wise. It evidently was to make a preparation ideally
perfect, but yet to leave choice as entire and free as if
there had been no preparation whatever. A golden halo
of romance thus invested the early life of these young
and illustrious persons. The whole narrative really re-
calls the most graceful fictions of Avise genii and gentle
fairies, besetting mortals with blessings, and biassing
their fates to bliss. It was as where the highest skill
combines with bounteous soil and beneficent climate to
secure the golden harvest. There never can have been
an instance in which public and domestic aims were more
thoroughly harmonised ; though there have been so many
where the human hearts and lives of Royal persons have
been as lightly sacrificed as if they had been creatures
doomed to vivisection in tlie interests of science or of
curiosity.
12. This comprehensive forethought did not fail to
secure even a political reward. The palaces of England
became shrines of domestic happiness ; and the Court exhi-
bited to the nation and tlie world a pattern of personal con-
duct, in all the points most slippery and dangerous for a
wealthy country, with a large leisured class, in a luxurious
age. Idleness was rebuked by the unwearied labours of
the highest persons in the land ; vulgar ostentation grew
pale in the face of a splendour everywhere associated with
COtTRT OF QUEEN VICTOKIA. 33
duty, and measured by its ends ; impurity could not live
in so clear an atmosphere ; even thrift had its tribute of
encouragement, where hospitalities truly regal and un-
■wearied Avere so organised as not to put disdain upon the
homely unatti-active duty of living within an appointed
income. All these personal excellences were seen and
appreciated by the public ; and they conti'ibuted, perhaps
no less than wise legislation, and conduct inflexibly con-
stitiitional, to draAv close the ties between the people and
the throne.
13. The ciilminating point of the- interest with which
the life of the Prince Consort should be regarded is one at
Avhich it is really inseparable from the associated life of
the Queen. They are ideally the obverse and reverse of
the same medal ; nay, actually, the several moieties of
the same whole. And, thus considered, they supply the
one normal exhibition of a case in which the AVoman-
ruler of a great empire, herself highly endowed with both
character and intelligence, has rested as it were on the
background of another consummately accomplished exist-
ence, and has enjoyed the benefit of all its qualities, and
all its energies, as amply as if they had belonged to her
own original store. Happy marriages, it may be thank-
fully acknowledged, are rather the rule among us, than
the exception ; but even among happy marriages this
marriage Avas exceptional, so nearly did the union of
thought, heart, and action both fulfil the ideal, and bring
duality near to the borders of identity. Not uncommonly,
the Avif'e is to the husband as the adjective is to tlie
substantive. And beyond doubt the great faculties aiid
com])rehensivc accomplishments of Prince Albert fully
cntilled him to claim a hus])and's place. But the hus-
band's place was in this case modified l)y the position.
I. D
34 LIFE OF THE PEINCE COIfSOET
The Prince exactly appreciated the demands of the throne
upon its occupant, and the consequential demands of his
wife upon himself. He saw that it was his duty to live
in, for, and through her, and he accepted with a marvel-
lous accuracy of intellectual apprehension, and with an
imswerving devotion of his heart, this peculiarly relative
element in a splendid existence.
14. On one occasion, at least, he was led to describe in
words'^' his own life-long function. In the year 1850,
nearly at the point of bisection of his married life, the
Duke of AVellington strongly urged upon him that he
should assume the office of Commander-in-Chief. In this
recommendation we see at once one of the many instances
of the Duke's enthusiastic attachment to the Sovereign,
and an undoubted indication of faculties tending to decline
with the lapse of years. The characters of the Queen
and of the Prince stood so high, that the first announcement
of his acceptance of such an office might have given
pleasure. But every man acquainted with the spirit of
Parliamentary government must at once have seen it to be
indefensible, and in a high degree inconvenient. It is,
indeed, to be desired that a very close relation of senti-
ment between the Sovereign and the Army should be
permanently maintained. But the Army is, after all, a
great department of the State ; and departments of the
State can only be administered in this country by persons
responsible to Parliament. There are, indeed, some
features in the office which recommend that its contact
with Parliament should be mediate, and not direct. Tlie
discipline of the Army is a subject so grave, so delicate,
and associated at such a miiltitude of points with the
♦ Speeches, j>. 76.
COUKT OF QTJEEN VICTORIA. 35
interests and feelings of the governing class, that it should
be as little as possible exposed to the influence of Parlia-
mentary pressure ; a pressure nowadays much more apt
to be exercised in the interest of class than in that of
the public. The responsibility, therefore, of the Com-
mamler-in-Chief is covered by that of the Secretary of
State. Eut this protection is not exemption ; and the
authority of Parliament is entire with respect to the mili-
tary as well as the official head. Now, the responsibility
of public ofiii'crs in these days does not usually clothe
itself in the hard material forms of impeachments and
attainders, as it did in other times. It is sufficiently sus-
tained and enforced, for the most part, through the
immensely quickened action of opinion, and through an
increased susceptibility to its influence. Tlie ultima ratio
with us is no longer fraught with peril to life, liberty, or
estate, b\it simply means removal from office. This
power, however, is indispensable ; and the case of the
Duke of York may serve to show that it is no mere
phantom. Ikit it is quite plain that no such power could
have been exercised, or even discussed, in reference to
the husband of the Queen, without affecting the Throne ;
to which he was so closely related, that whatever injured
the one must have brought the other more or less into
question. Now, in such a matter, there should be no
more and less. It follows that, whatever might have
been the guarantees afforded by his character for wise and
unimpeachable conduct, there was a radical and incurable
fault in the Duke's suggestion. The Prince could not
fulfil the very first among the conditions of fitness for the
office : he could not be removable.
• 15. Yet, how great was the teni])tation to an active
mind, conscious of the capacity, and filled with the desii'e
D 2
36 LIFE OF THE PKINCE CONSORT
to render service to tlie nation, for once at least to seize
the opportunity of claiming to give that service in a form
in which it would bring the valuable reward of a daily
and palpable appreciation. The recommendation, thus
attractive in itself, proceeded from a Statesman of four-
score, and from the man who, of all the land could boast,
stood fii'st in the public estimation. It might well have
been mistaken for a safe proposal. We cloiibt whether a
merely intellectual superiority would have saved the
Prince from this serious danger ; this trap, laid in inno-
cence by most friendly hands. But his intellectual
superiority was backed by a noble power of moral self-
denial. And so he found his way to the heart and root of
the matter. In a letter to the Duke, he describes the
position of the " female sovereign," and proceeds as
follows : —
" This reqifires that the husbaticl should entirely sink his own
imlividnal existence in that of his wife ; tliat he should aim at no
power by himself or for himself ; sliould s-lura all ostentation ;
assume no separate responsibility before the public; but make his
position entirely a part of hers, fill up every gap which, as a
■woman, she would naturally leave in the exercise of her regal
functions, continually and anxiously watch every j'art of the
public business, in order to be able to advise and assi.st her at
any moment, in any of tlie multifarious and difficult questions or
duties brought before her, sometimes international, sometimes
political, or social, or persomil. As the natural head of her family,
su])eriutendeut of her household, manager of her private afl'airs ,
sole confidential adviser in politics, and only assistant hi tlie com-
munications with the I fficers of the Government; hi; is, Ijcsides,
the hu.sband of the (Jueen, the tutur of the roval children, llio
private tccrctary of the Sovere'gn, and her pcinianent IMinister."
10. In this admirably large description we seem to find
but one venial error of a word. It is not in the epitliet
COUBT OF QVKKN VICTOUIA. 37
confi(lcnti<il; for though this very phrase, by the ni=iagc of
the Constitution, belongs to the successive bodies of her ad-
visers, it is numifestly applicable witli perfect propriety to
the Prince, in a distinct, and in a much higher than the
official sense. It is in the word Minister. Minister to
tlie Queen he could not be, because his conduct "was not
"W'itlun the reach aud control of Parliament. But, in fact,
the word is too weak to convey the character of the
relation between his mind and the mind of the Queen. He
was to her, in deed and tnith, a second self.
17. Much more, then, than a personal interest (high as
in such a case the personal interest is) attaches to this great
example. On the Queen, as a woman, was laid a maxi-
mum of burden. The problem was to find for her a cor-
res])onding maximum of relie\'ing aid. Tlie relation of the
Prince to the Queen was really an experiment in the
science and art of politics for the civilised Avorld. Its
success was complete : if it had failed, not England, but
the civilised world would have been the loser. For the
part sustained by the Monarch in the system of this
extended Empire still remains a great matter, and not a
small one.
18. The weighty business of kingship has in modem
times been undergoing a subtle and silent, yet an almost
entire transformation ; and, in this country at least, the
process has reached its maturity. Neither the nature nor
the extent of this change appear as yet to have become
familiar to the ordinary run of observers. The name of
the Queen was still the symbol, and her office the foun-
tain, of all lawful powers ; Royalty was seen and felt
among us, until the darkening shadow of widowhood fell
upon the august head, by the people of every rank aiul
class, with unusual frequency, and in a spleudom- never
38 LIFE OF THE PEINCE CONSOET
surpassed by the habit of preceding Sovereigns. Many,
then, did not advert to the fact that the character of the
regal office had been altered, wliile those who believed
in the change for the most part believed also that this
great function was now emptied of its force, and reduced
to an illusion. Both were alike in error ; in an error
which it is not easy to correct by a summary description.
The nearest approach to an account combining truth and
brevity would perhaps be found in the statement, that
while in extent the change has been, at least inwardly,
nothing less than a transformation, its substance may
chiefly be perceived in a beneficial substitution of influence
for power.
19. JSTot that even power is entirely gone. The whole
power of the State periodically returns into the Eoyal
hands whenever a Ministry is changed. This resumption
is usually brought about by forces distinct from the
personal action of the Sovereign. The day when George
IV., in 1829, after a struggle, renewed the Charter of
the Administration of the day, and thereby submitted to
the Roman Catholic Eelief Act, may be held to denote the
death of British Kingship in its older sense, which had in
a measure survived the Bevolution of 1688, and had even
gained in strength during the reign of George III. The
endeavour of King William IV., in 1834, to assert liis
personal choice in the appointment of a Ministry without
reference to the will of Parliament, gave to the Conser-
vative party a momentary tenure of office without power.
But, in truth, that indiscreet proceeding of an honest and
well-meaning man produced a strong reaction in favour of
the Liberals, and greatly prolonged the predominance
which they were on the point of losing through the play
of natural causes. Laying too great a stress on tho
COUET 01' QL1:KX VICTORIA. 39
instrument of Royal will, it tended not to strengthen the
Throne, but to enfeeble it.*' Such was the upshot of an in-
judicious, though undoubtedly conscientious, use of power.
20. The case was very ditfercut when the pressure,
not of Itoyal will, but of Parliamentary difiiculties,
brought about the first resignation of the Melbourne
Government in 1839, and what was called the Bed-
chamber qTK'stion arose. It was a question whether the
ladies of the Court, who had been politically appointed,
should or should not retire from office. The Queen, not
yet twenty years old, but capable of contracting attach-
ments at once quick and durable, resisted the demand.
There can be no doubt that if Sir Robert Peel had been
allowed at that time to proceed with liis task, the Ministry
he would then have foiined would have been possessed
of reasonable stability. Put the power of the young
Sovereign, applied with the skilful use of opportunity,
Bvifficed to prolong the duration of the Liberal Govern-
ment until the summer of 1841, a period of nearly two
and a half years. Its exercise produced, at the time, no
revulsion in the public mind. The final judgment upon
the conduct of the parties to the crisis has been more
favourable to the Minister than to the Monarch. Baron
Stockmar himself has expressed this opinion. But the
question specially involved was the claim of the woman in
her early youth. It was a claim of which, confined within
certain limits, equity would surely have recommended the
allowance. Possibly it was suspicion, the most obstinate
among the besetting sins of politicians, even in men of
upright nature, which interfered on the side of rigour.
The j ustice of the case has, we think, been expressed in the
* But see inf. No. III., p. 78, on this rather complex matter.
40 LIFE OF THE PRINCE CONSOUT
arrangement which has now long prevailed. The Mistress
of the Robes, who is not periodically resident at the
Court, but only an attendant on great occasions, changes
with the Ministry: the Ladies in Waiting, who enjoy
much more of personal contact by virtue of their office
with the Sovereign, are appointed, and continue in tlieir
appointments, without regard to the political connections
of their husbands.
21. The record of the transaction, given in Hansard,*
rests mainly upon two letters, one from the Queen, and the
other from Sir Robert Peel ; and these two letters do not
fully harmonise in their representation of the facts. The
Queen, in her letter, mentions, and refuses, the proposal
of Sir Robert Peel "to remove the ladies of her Bed-
chamber." Sir Robert Peel, in his answer, speaks only
of his desire to remove a portion of them ; and in the
same letter declines to prosecute the task of forming a
Ministry. Hence it appears that he abandoned that
undertaking to construct a Government upon a decision of
the Queen's, which is not the decision announced by her.
She declined to remove them as a body ; he resig-ns his
charge, because he is not allowed to remove a few among
them. It is very difficult to understand why he did not
dispel, if only for his own sake, the misapprehension
under which the Queen's letter may have been written.
At present the documentary evidence only shows that
Her Majesty refused an unreasonable demand; and that
he retired from his high position because he adhered to
a demand which, whetliiir necessary or not, was not un-
reasonable. If in truth the matter turned upon Her
Majesty's resistance to this narrower request, it is quite
• Vol. xlvii, pp. 984 sqq.
COURT OF aVKEX VICTORIA. 41
possible that it Avas an error on tlio one side to press
the request to extremity, and on the other to refuse it.
Had it been upon the w'uIvy stipuhition, all -would surely
have admitted that there was full warrant for the refusal.
22. We have dwelt upon the case, because it allords tlio
most recent illustration of the successful exercise of Royal
power, and, on this account, bears a character of historical
importance. The thirty-six years which have since
elapsed have been undisturbed even by a single shock in
the relations between the Sovereign and her Government,
which has changed its head no less than twelve times
without the slightest jolt or friction in the play of the
machinery. But although the adrairal)le arrangements
of the Constitution have now completely shielded the
Sovereign from personal responsibility, they have left
ample scope for the exercise of a direct and personal
influence in the whole work of governmeiit. The amount
of that influence must vary greatly, according to character,
to capacity, to experience in affairs, to tact in the appli-
cation of a pressure which never is to be carried to
extremes, to patience in keeping up the continuity of
a multitudinous supeiwision, and, lastly, to close presence
at the seat of government ; for, in many of its necessary
operations, time is the most essential of all elements, and
the most scarce. Subject to the range of these variations,
the Sovereign, as compared with her Ministers, has,
because she is the Sovereig-n, the advantages of long
experience, wide survey, elevated position, and entire
disconnection from the bias of party. Further, personal
and domestic relations with the ruling families abroad
give openings, in deliiate cases, for saying more, and
saying it at once more gently and more efRcaciously, than
could be ventured in the more formal correspondence, and
42 LIFE OF THE PEINCE CONSORT
ruder contacts, of Governments. "We learn from the
volume of Mr. Martin with how much truthfulness and
decision, and with how much tact and delicacy, the
Queen, aided by the Prince, took a principal part, on
behalf of the nation, in tlie painful question of the
Spanish marriages. Instances so very conspicuous as
this may be rare ; but there is not a doubt that the
aggregate of direct influence normally exercised by the
Sovereign upon the counsels and proceedings of her
Ministers is considerable in amount, tends to permanence
and solidity of action, and confers much benefit on the
country, without in the smallest degree relieving the ad-
visers of the Crown from their undivided responsibility.
23. But we doubt whether even this very important
function of the Sovereign in watching, following, and can-
vassing policy, be not less important than the use which
may be made of the vast moral and social influence
attaching personally to the occupant of the throne. This
is a power exercised upon the ordinary relations of life,
and greatly through the ceremonial and hospitalities of a
Court.
Little are they who gaze from without upon long trains
of splendid equipages rolling towards a palace conscious
of the meaning and the force that live in the forms of a
Monarchy, probably the most ancient, and certainly the
most solid and the most revered, in all Europe. The acts,
the wishes, the example, of the Sovereign in this country
are a real power. An immence reverence and a tender
affection await upon the person of the one penuanent
and ever faitliful guardian of the fundamental conditions
of the Constitution. She is the symbol of law ; she is by
law, and setting apart the mctapliysics, and the abnormal
incidents, of revolution, the source of power. Parlia-
COURT OV QUKKX VICTORIA, 43
ments and ^Ministries pass, but she abides in life-long
duty ; and she is to them as the oak in tlie forest is to
the annual harvest in the field. AVlien the august func-
tions of the Crown are irradiated by intelligence and
virtue they are transformed into a higher dignity than
words can fully convey, or Acts of Parliament can confer;
and traditional loyalty, with a generous people, acquires
the force (as ^Ir. Burke says) of a passion, and the warmth
of personal attachment. But by those to whom we are
attached, we are ready and prone to be, nay, we are
already, influenced.
24. This power, inherited Avith the place, will ever prove
to have been husbanded and enlai'ged in strict proportion
to the discharge of duty : and is independent of all personal
contact, strictly so called, between Sovereign and subject.
But the personal contact of the Sovereign with the subject,
under favourable circumstances, such as those which the
Prince so greatly contiiliuted to form, is of very consider-
able extent. We do not now speak of local visits or special
relations to a class such as the Army ; or of participation
in the amusements of the people, as at theatres, or balls,
or concerts. And yet these are not to be despised ; nay,
it may be taken for granted, that tlie presence and interest
of the Sovereign in these recreations tend to expel from them
vidgarity, to reduce in many points the capricious excess
of fashion, and generally to make their quality better than
it would tend to become under other auspices, by gi"ving a
distinct and high sanction to the effoi-ts of those who are
ever striving to raise the level (for example) of the miisical
and dramatic arts. But we must likc^wise take more par-
ticularly into view what is more strictly in the nature of
personal contact. To come under the roof of the Sove-
reign, to partake the hospitalities of the SovereigTi, to be
44 LIFE OF THE PEINCE COXSOET
admitted, even for momeuts only, to the converse of the
Sovereign, all these are things of meaning. The converse,
the hospitalities, the very place, all in their dilfercnt
degrees constitute powers, and give scope for influence :
for influence, which all that is good, as well as something
of what is Lad, in English society tends to enhance. These
things make their mark ; and the mark is usually durable.
25. With us, society is passing under many subtle yet
vital changes. It must never be forgotten that wealth is
now in England no longer the possession of a few, but rather
what is termed " a drug." That is to say, it is diffused
through a circle so much extended, and so fast extending,
that to be wealthy does not of itself satisfy ; and the
keenness of the unsatisfied desire, aspiring selfishly not to
superiority, but rather to the marks of superiority, seeks
them pre-eminently in the shape of what we term social
distinction. But the true test of the highest social dis-
tinction, in this country, is nearness to the Monarch ; and
all this avidity for access, for notice, for favour, expresses
an amount of readiness to conform, to follow, to come
under influence, which may often be indifferent enough
in quality, but is very largo in quantity.
26. Eut, quite apart from these more questionable
elements, it must be borne in mind that the society of this
country is hierarchically constituted. It is not here as it
was in the Court of Louis N^apoleon, where there was as
much, or more, of splendour and display, but where the in-
fluence exercised by personal contact terminated in those
who were its immediate objects, because they were often
the mere meuibers of a clique, and Avire-pullers of political
intrigue, never the natural, traditional, accepted heads,
or teachers, of society. At the Court of Queen Victoria
it was otherwise. Those who came within the magio
COURT OF QUEEX VICTOETA. 45
circle ■\\'ovc persons every one of ■whom was more or
less himself a power : the chiefs of the professions, the
leaders of Parliament, the Patriarchs of letters, the Pri-
mates of art, and, as was natural and right, in larger
measure than any other class, the aiistocracy of the land,
tlicmselvcs having, in so many instances, the double title
of iiiheiited station and high personal distinction. Even in
dealing with these distinguished orders of men, apnnci])le
of selection was not forgotten ; and it became evident that,
witlioiit invidious severances, the Court preferred in every
class those Avho were the best in that class, and leant to
passing by those less eligible. Thus the whole force of
Eoyal example and authority was given to good ; and gi\'cn
in the most eflicacious manner. The preferences of the
Court silently exhorted to right conduct all who were
■within their reach, and strongly discountenanced its oppo-
site. This was thcur operation within the necessary limited
class, to which alone close personal intercourse could by
possibility extend.
27. But it was a very small part of their whole opera-
tion. Of the planets which wheel round the sun some are
themselves wheeled round by other and secondary stars.
Tlie Couit touched, in the strictest sense, only the select
men of the country ; but of these every one was himself a
centre of influence by example, by exertion, by nu'iital
activity, it might be by all combined ; and each ti'ans-
mitted what he had derived, as one billiard ball carries
on the stroke to another, or as the circles widen on the
water. Many readers may find something of paradox in
what we are now saying ; but we venture to believe that
it is because they have not taken occasion to make the
subject a matter of careful study and observation. Among
the things least understood, and most sadly under-esti-
46 LIFE OF THE PEIXCE COXSORT
mated, in the world, are the force of example, and the
silent influences of leadership. In our social system, so
marked by the dovetailing of classes, the quality of recep-
tivity for these influences is raised to its ynaximum., and
they pass from the summit even to the base. We do not
hesitate to express a firm con-vdction that the Court of
Queen Victoria was a sensible and important element in
the group of forces which, for two or three decades of
years, raised in so beneficial a manner the social and
moral tone of the u}iper classes of this country, although
the upward movement they received has of late years not
been sustained, if, imlecd, the tide has not for some time
been ebbing. Supposing this to be true, then that Court
was a great fact in history ; if at least history is to be a
picture, and not only a signboard. We may also say
that its imposing exterior, its regular and many-sided
action, and its accurate and refined adjustments, made it
a work of art. Of all this the Prince was, and could
not but be, the organising and directing mind. Am])ly
charged with political labour and its moral responsibili-
ties, the Queen was thus provided with an appropriate
relief; and in one im}>oi'tant sphere of action all things
moA-ed, for her, automatically. The quantity of what is
expected from a Sovereign, in a state of society like ours,
is double and quadruple of what the working force of a
single mind and will can readily supply. By the Prince's
close union with the Queen, and by his energy, his
method, and his judgnu'ut, the motive power was at
once doubled, while from the close harmony of the two,
singleness of impulse and operation Avas fully maintained.
28. We have, in these pages, rather endeavoured to bring
into view what we think to have been the less observed
parts of the Prince's action, than dwelt upon such forms
COrRT OF QUr.KX VICTORIA. 47
of his useful activity as arc better known. Inptinctivcly
remote from ideology, he had an energetic tendency to-
wards social improvement in every form, and herein
especially towards those reformatory schemes which were
calculated to bring into view new modes of coping with
social mischief; as well as those which tended to raise
the level of culture and to refine common life by the
habits and appliances of art. When the subjects of his
care and attention are brought together, they form a
whole so formidable in amount, that tlic mind is struck
and almost shocked at the lavish expenditure of brain-
power which they must have required, amidst all that
splendour ^^ hich is readily mistaken for ease by the care-
less beholder ; and Avonder becomes less, as pain becomes
more, at that sapping and exhaustion of vital forces, Avhieh
probably made openings for disease, and prepared him to
succumb to it in the early maturity of his manhood.
29. But in truth the form of self-saci-ifice practised by
the Prince seems to be the prime, and perhaps the only,
way in which, under the circumstances of modem times, the
nobleness of the Eoyal character can be sustained. The
changes which have affected the position of Sovereigns
and their families among us are in many respects fraught
with moral danger, and with temptation in peculiar forms,
not easily detected. Of old, the King had all his splen-
dours and all his enjoyments weighted by the heavy cares,
and verv real and rude responsibilities, of government ;
and "uneasy lay the head that wore a crown." It was a
truth as old as the time of Troy, when other gods and
warriors slept, but Zeus alone was Avakeful.* Thus it
was that power, and luxuiy, and, what is far more insi-
Uiatl, ii. 1. Comp. x. 1-4,
48 LIFE OF THE ruiiyCE COS^SORT
dious, flattery, were then compensated and kept in check.
In the British Monarchy, the lodgment of the various
parts of this great wliole, making up a King's condi-
tion, is changed, and their moral equilibrium put in
jeopardy. There are still gathered the splendours, the
enjoyments, all the notes of homage, all the eager obe-
dience, the anticipation of wishes, the surrender of adverse
opinions, the true and loyal deference, and the deference
wliieli is factitious and conventional. To be served by
all is dangerous ; to be contradicted by none is worse.
Taking into view the immense increase in the appliances
of material ease and luxury, the general result is, that in
the private" and domestic sphere a Eoyal will enjoys at
this epoch, more nearly than in any past generation, the
piivileges of a kind of omnipotence. At the same time,
the principal burden of care, and all responsibility for
acts of adniinistration, and for the state of the country, is
transferred to the heads of otliers, and even the voice of
the lightest criticism is rarely heard. In these circum-
stances it remains singularly true, tliat the duties of a
Court entail in their full scope a serious and irksome task,
and that there must be much self-denial, and much merit,
in their due discharge. Eut it is also in other duties,
principally remote from the public eye, that the largest
scope is afforded for the patient and watchful labour in
l)ublic affairs which, balancing effectually mere splendour
and enjoyment, secui'cs the true nobleness of kingship
against the subtle inroads of scliishness, and raises to
their maximum at once the toil, tlic usefulness, and tlie
influence of the British Throne. Never, jtrobably, under
any circumstances, be they favourable as they may, can
th(!se rencli a higher point of elevation than they had
attained by the joint efforts, and during the married life,
COTTKT OF QIEEX VICTORIA. 49
of tlic Qucon and the Prince. Nor can we well over-
value that addition of masculine energy to female tact
and truth which brought the working of British lloyalty
so near the standard of ideal excellence.
30. We proceed to some matters more exclusively
personal to the Prince. A German by birth, he never lost
the stamp of Germany ; no true man can wholly lose the
stamp of his own country. A mildly foreign mark upon
his exterior and manner, together with the perpetual pre-
sence of a manifest endeavour to turn every man's con-
versation, every man's particular gift and knowledge, to
account for his own mental improvement, most laudable
as it was, yet may have prevented his attaining that
charm of absolute ease in his intercourse with the world
which he is known to have possessed in the circle of his
family. They certainly retarded the growth of his popu-
larity among the wealthy and the great, who are, and may,
w^e fear, always remain, not the least censorious among
the several classes of society.
31. The precocity of the Prince seems to have been not
less remarkable than were his solidity and his many-sided-
ness. In this respect, indeed, all lloyal persons enjoy such
advantages, through the elaboi'ateness of tlieir training,
the devotion of those who surround them, and their large
opportunities of contact with tlie choicest minds, that
almost in all cases they seem to exhibit a number of the
signs of maturity much earlier than do those in a less ex-
alted station. What was specially noteworthy about the
Prince was, that in his precocity there was nothing showy,
or superficial, or transitoiy. Though he had hardly crossed
the threshold of manhood wlien he arrived among us, he
gave no signs of crudity, never affected knowledge he did
not possess, never slackened in, and never concealed, that
I. £
50 LIFE OF THE PEINCE CONSOET
anxiety to learn which seemed to accompany as much his
social leisure as his working hours. There seemed, again,
to be no branch of human knowledge, no subject of human
interest, on which he did not lay his hand.
32. This early and multitudinous development, which
received a share of assistance from the incidents of Koyalty,
and which in him nature had supremely favoured, however
dazzling and however real in the advantages it supplies, has
likewise at least one great drawback. It is not favourable
to the energetic concentration without which the human
mind can hardly reach to greatness, and of which it is
plain that he was eminently capable. It is impossible to
say what growth may have been reserved for the Prince
during his later years ; but some of the most remarkable
and complete among the Speeches — which constitute, after
all, his very best memorial — belong to the earlier portion
of the series ; and it might be difncult to assign to the
later moiety of it any marked superiority over the first.
The circumstances of his life may have thwai'ted the bias
of nature ; but undoul)tcdly these Speeches seem to show
the exercise, in a very remarkable degree, of the three
combined faculties of terseness in expression, of concen-
trated attention, and of completeness in thought.
33. At the age of thirty, in 1850, he delivered a speech
Avhich contains one of the very best descriptions of the
mind and character of Sir Robert Peel. This description
is, among its other features, highly sj'mpat]u;tie. It be-
tokens a real intimacy; and there is no other of the same
stamp. In truth, the character of Peel, in some intellec-
tual and many moral qualities, was not without pointed
resemblance to his own.* His short speech at the meeting
* Speeches, pp. 121-4.
COUKT OF QUEEX VICTOKIA. 51
of the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy, in 1S54,
affords a remarkable example of handling at once succinct
and exhaustive.* The speech at Birmingham, for the
Midland Institute, in 1855,f and the speech at Aberdeen,
for the meeting of the British Association, are excellent.
But to our mind the Prince never surpassed in compre-
hensiveness, in his fearless truthfulness, and in delicacy of
touch and handling, his address at the festival of the
Koyal Academy, in 1850, when he was still but thirty.
After treating of the character of Sir Charles Eastlake,
he proceeds to the general subject : —
~ " Gentlemen, the production of all works in art or poetry requires
in their conception and execution, not only an cxerci.>e of tlie in-
tellect, bkill, and patience, but particularly a concurrent warmth
of feeling and a I'ree How of imagination. This renders them most
tender plants, which will thrive only in an iitmo.s| here calculated
t" maiiitiiin tlmt warmth; aiul that atmosphere is one of kindness
— kindness towards the artist persiin;illy, as well as towards his
produ'tion. An unkind word of criticism passes like a cold blast
over tlieir [(jy. the.-e] tender shoots, and slirivels lliem up, checking
tlie lli)\v of the sap, which was rising to produce, perhaps, multi-
tudes of flowers and fruit.
" But still, criticism is absolutely necessary to the develij)ment
of art, and the injudicious prai&e of an inferior worJc becomes un
insult to superior genius.
"In this nspeet our times are peculiarly unfavourable, when
compared with those when JMadonnas were painted in the scclu-
siou of convents. For we liave now, on the one hand, tlie eager
competition of a vast ariay of arti.-ts of every degree of talent and
skill, and on the other, as judge, a great public, for the great cr
part wholly inieducated in art, and thus led by professional wiiters,
who often t-trive to impress the public with a great idea of their
own artistic knowledge by the merciless manner in which they
trt at works which have cost those who produced them the highest
ellorts of uiiud or feeling.
* Speeches, pp. 146-8. f -^^f'^- P- ^62.
E 2
52 LIFE OF THE PRINCE CONSORT
"The works of art, by being publicly exliibited and offered for
sale, are becoming articks of trade, follawing, as such, the unrea-
soning laws of markets and fasliion ; and public and even private
patronage is swayed by their tyrannical influence." *
In these evils he finds the ground for the existence of
the Academy, which has done much to deserve the public
confidence, but yet to which he does not hesitate fi'ankly
to point out its own besetting danger.
34. We pass on to a still higher matter. "Where so warm
and so wide an interest is felt in one departed, there
cannot but be much desire to know what, in this agitated
and expectant age, was his mental attitude with respect
to religion. On this great subject there has been some
degree of reserve, which we should be the last to blame ;
for at a time of sharp division, and of much fashionable
scepticism as well as bigotry, loving hands, such as those
which tend the Prince's memory, are little likely to expose
a cherished reputation to the harshest and most penetrating
forms of criticism. For the public, however, the matter
has now become one of history. The nation knew,
during the lifetime of the Prince, all, perhaps, that it had
a right to know. They knew that he was a religious
man. In his earliest youth, f at the period of his con-
firmation, to which, in Germany, a peculiar cliaracter
attaches, he declared with energy his resolved adoption
of the Christian profession. To its public duties he paid
a regular homage. His life was known to be of a pure
and severe morality, of an incessant activity in duty, of
an exemplary tone in the various domestic relations. The
confidence of the country, won upon these grounds, was
Bcalcd by the obvious presence of a determined and even
Siiccches, p. 123. f JIartin, p. 10.
COURT OF QUEKN VTCTOEIA. 53
far-i'pacliing Protestantism.* Tlie Prince was friendly to
an cqu'-ility of civil riglits independent of religious pro-
fession ; but with such a frame of opinion for himself,
and with his marked earnestness of character, a certain
degree of thecjlogical narrowness, inherited rather than
personal, may have formed an ingredient in his views
of the religious system of the Latin Church, even when
considered apai't from its latest and most extravagant
developments, of which ho lived to witness some bold
beginnings.
35. So far as can be gathered incidentally from those
who find admittance to the inner circles, not much is to be
added to the outline which met the public eye. Nothing
has been learned to show that his mind was deeply im-
pressed with the value or the particulars of dogmatic
orthodoxy. "With his refined culture, he could not but
repel the crude vulgarities which sometimes discharge
themselves from the pulpit, and lurk in forms of popular
religion ; and it is extensively believed that the Church
owes to the Prince's influence and suggestion the appoint-
ment of the able Prelate who fills the see of Worcester, in
substitution for a person of more popular and showy type,
but of far less learning, capacity, and governing force.
"What was more than this was the conviction, which all
intercourse with the Prince conveyed, as to his own
ruling notions of daily conduct. His life was, in truth,
one sustained and perpetual effort to realise the great law
of duty to God, and to discharge the heavy debt which he
seemed to feel was laid upon him by his high station, and
by the command of the means and sources not less of
usefulness than of enjoyment. As a watch wound up
* Speeches, p. 10.
54 LIFE OF THE PRINCE CONSORT
obeys its mainspring till it has all run out, so he, at
all moments, seemed to be answering the call of an
inward voice, summoning him to learn, to think, to do,
to hear. In all ranks and forms of life this is a noble, au
edifying spectacle ; and it is more noble and edifying in
proportion as the elevation is greater, and the object
visible from a wider range.
36. Some religionists will be tempted hereupon to say
how sad it was that one who came so near to the kingdom
of God should not have entered in. Some will simply hold
the description we have given to be that of a dry self-
righteousness, which cannot stand in the day of account.
A third class, whose doubts and scruples would command
more of our sympathy, would ask themselves how it was
that a man who thus earnestly and faithfully set himself to
do the di^-ine will did not accordingly appreciate at their
fullest value those specific revelations of truth, in the
form of doctrines and institutions, which Christians in
general have accepted as the most effectual sources of
regenerative power, both for the individual, as established
by personal experience, and for society, as written on the
long scroll of history during eighteen centuries. But this
opens a question alike broad and deep, and we can only
glance for a momfcnt along the vi^ta.
37. Let us endeavour to sketch a frame of religious sense
and conviction different from that of the Prince. We
take a hnman soul profoundly conscious of the taint and
power of sin ; one given to the contemplation of the
character of Christ, and shocked at its own immeasurable
distance from the glorious image of the Master; one
pained, not only with the positive forms of corruption,
but with the pervading grief of general imperfection and
unworthiness, and with the sense how the choicest por-
COURT OF QVKEX VICTORIA. 55
tions of the life strangely run to waste, how the best
desig-us are spoiled by faulty actuation, how there are
tears (in the touching language of Bishop Beveridge) that
want washing, and repentance that needs to be repented
of. Such an one feels himself engaged in a double warfare,
against evil witliout, and against evil within ; and finds
the last even fiercer than the first. To deprive one so
minded of any fraction of what are termed the doctrines
of grace, of such lights as shone upon the souls of Saint
Paul, Saint Augustine, and Saint Bernard, is to di'ain
away the life's blood of the spirit, and lay him helpless at
the feet of inexorable foes. For a nature such as this,
religion is not only a portion or department of conduct,
but, by a stringent necessity, the great, standing, solemn
drama or action of life ; that in which all mental powers,
and all emotions of the heart, are most constantly and
intensely exercised ; and the yearnings, efforts, and con-
flicts which belong to the external order are as nothing
compared with those which are to God-wards.
^,,38. But, as in the Father's house there are many man-
sions, so there are vast diversities in the forms of character
He is preparing to inhabit them. However true it maybe
that all alike have sinned, it is far from true that, all have
sinned alike. There are persons, though they may be
rare and highly exceptional, in whom the atmosphere of
purity has not been dimmed, the forces of temptation are
coin])aratively weak, and at the same time the sense of
duly is vigorous and lively. Hence the temper which
trusts God and loves Him as a Father is not thwarted in
its exercise by habitual perversity, nor associated with so
crushing a sense of the sinfulness that debars us from
ap]troach to Him, or of the need of a Saviour, and a
Sacrifice, and of the gift and guidance of the Holy Spirit
56 LIFE OF THK PRIXCE CONSORT
working in us that we may have a good will, and with us
when we have that good will. Persons such as these,
ever active in human duty, need not be indifferent about
religion ; on the contrary, they may be strongly religious.
They may, as the Prince did, condemn coldness, and com-
mend fervour.* They may " give their heart to the
Purifier, their will to the Will that governs the universe;"
and yet they may but feebly and partially appreciate
parts of Christian doctrine ; nay, they may even, like
Charles Lamb, the writer of these beautiful and powerful
words, hold themselves apart from its central propositions.
So it may come about that the comparative purity of a
man's nature, the milder form of the deterioration he
inherits, the fearless cheerfulness with which he seems to
stand and walk in the light of God's presence, may impair
his estimate of the warmer, more inward, and more deeply
s]nritual parts of Christianity. Further, they may alto-
gether prevent him from appreciating the Gospel on its
severer side. He may generously give credit to others for
dispositions corresponding with his own : and may not
fully perceive the -necessity, on their behalf, of that law
which is made, not for the righteous, but for the ungodly
and the profane, of those threatenings and prohibitions
wherewith the Gospel seeks to arrest reckless or depraved
spirits in their headlong course, to constrain them to come
in, and to rescue them as brands from the burning. In a
word, ho may unduly generalise the facts of his own
mental and moral constitution.
39. We do not admit that the dissent, or only faint or
partial adhesion, of these exceptional human beings to
the ancient creed of the Christian Church detracts from
♦ Speeches, pp. 132, 134.
COCEX OF aiKKN vrCTOBIA. 57
its just authority ; but we should bo slow to charge the
iiiaik"|uacy of their doctrinal concci)tions upon moral
defect, or to deny the truth, force, and value of the heart-
service which they may and do render, and render with
affectionate humility, to their Father and their God. The
Christian dogma is the ordained means of generating and
sustaining the religious life ; but the Almighty is not tied
to the paths He marks out for His servants, and we are
nowhere authorised to say there can be no religious life
except as the direct product of the Christian dogma in its
entirety.
40. We might, if space permitted, exhibit largely
another class of cases, where the receptiou of the Gospel
seems to be determined to a particular and by no means
normal form of conditions of personal character. There is a
highly popular kind of Christian teaching, which dwells
more or less congenially within the precincts of various
communions, and of which it is the distinguishing charac-
teristic, that while it retains and presents, with some
crudity, the doctrine of the Fall, an Atonement by sub-
stitution, the intensity of sin, and the final condemnation
of the wicked, it reduces the method of deliverance to a
formula of extreme simplicity. A ccu'tain reception of
Christ, not easy to describe psychologically, is held to bo
the only door to spiritual life. It conveys a salvation in
itself immediate and complete ; and not only entails the
obligation, but supplies the unfailing motive for walking
in the way of Christian obedience towards moral perfection.
Parity of mind and natural balance of character supplied
lis, in the case formerly presented, with the key to the
problem ; whereas the doctrinal scheme now before us
rather commends itself to those who are suddenly awakened
to a sense of gross neglect or transgression, and who ai*e
58 LIFE OF THE PEINCE CONSORT
in this sense at least ehikllike, that the elements of theii
characters are few and simple, and their minds unused to
what is profound,, or delicate, or complex. A summary
presentation and settlement, so to speak, of the religious
account between God and the soul, is that which most
accords with the general form of their mental habits.
These two distinct modes of apprehending religion, so
much contrasted, seem to have in common the important
points that each may be sincere, and for the individual
efficient, but that neither have the solidity necessary for
continuous transmission : and the likelihood is, that a
great share of the efficacy they possess is derived from
that general atmosphere of Christianity in which we live,
and much of which we may unconsciously and without
moral choice (Trpoat'peo-ts) inhale.
41. We proceed to quote from the Speeches a passage
addressed to a conference on education in 1857, which
distinctly testifies not only to the earnest piety of the
speaker, but to his clear and advised convictions : —
" Our Heavenly Fatlier, in His boundless goodness, has made
his creatures tiiiit they shnuld be hap])y, and His wisdom lias fitted
His means to His ends, giving to all of them dilferent faculties and
qualities, in using and developing which they fuUil their destiny,
and, running their uniform course according to the prescription,
they find that iiappiness which He lias intended for them. Man
alone is born into tliia world with faculties far nobler than the
other creatures, reflecting the image of Him who has willed that
there sl;ould be beings on earth to know and worship Him, but
endowed with the power of self-determination. Having reason
given him for his guide, he can develop his faculties, place himself
in harmony with his Divine prototype, and attain that haiii)ines3
which is ofTcretl to him on earth, to be compktrd hercalter in
entire union with Him through the mercy of Chiist. But he can
also have tlie.se faculties unimproved, nnd mi>s his mission on
earth. He will then aink to tlie level of the lower animals, foifeit
COUItT OF QTTEENVICTORIA. 59
hafipiiK ss, and scpnrate from his God, wlioin he did not know liow
to lind." *
There are men who are religious hy temperament,
though sceptical in their intellect. Such was not the
case of the Prince. He had been trained in Germany
under influences rather of the rationalising than the
orthodox party, but his religion had a firm ground, as
must be manifest from this passage, in his mind not less
than in his heart.
42. It will, moreover, as we think, be observed with
pleasure that as years rolled on, though the flower of life
was still in full blow, an increasing warmth of tone
pervaded the Prince's sentiments in this great matter.
On an occasion secular enough for such as are disposed so
to take it, namely, that of presenting colours in 1859 to a
battalion of his regiment, he breaks forth copiously into
terms of truly Christian and paternal affection : —
"May God's best blessing attend you, shield you from danger,
support you under difficultie.s, cheer you under privations, grant
you nioiieration in success, contentment under discipline, liumdity
and gratitude towards Him in prosperity." *
43. More than thirteen years have now passed since the
Prince was gathered to his fathers : and his character
belongs to history. To such a man it is no compliment
to treat of him in a strain merely courtly and eulogistic.
He will shine most in the colours which the truth
supplies : he would have been the first to reject adula-
tion, and to disapprove excess. It is Init the naked and
cold truth, that we possessed in hiin a treasure; that he
rais(>d the inlluence and usefulness of our highest institu-
tion to its highest point ; and that society has suffered
* Speeches, p. 191.
60 LIFE OF TEE PRINCE CONSOUT
heavily from the slackening of the beneficial action to
which he so powerfully contributed.
At Windsor, the noblest and most complete of all the
abodes of European Eoyalty, in the beautiful chapel built
by Henry VII. eastward from St. George's, and after-
wards given to AVolsey, lies the effigy of the Prince,
which Avill probably stand with the public and with
posterity as, in a proper and especial sense, his monument.
The outlay by her Majesty upon the interior of the
building in the endeavour to bring it up to the standard
of her love, must have been very large ; and the result is
that, without losing its solemnity, it has attained exceed-
ing splendour. Roof and floor, walls and windows, altar
and sedilia, ancestral, royal, sacred effigies, marbles sculp-
tured and inlaid in colour, all bear the stamp of a more
than queenly magnificence; and the criticism which a
very few points might invite with reference to the details
of execution may be omitted, lest it should jar with the
conspicuous and noble harmony of the work as a whole.
The pure white marble figure of the Prince reposing on
his altar-tomb, amidst all these glories, vividly presents
the image of his stainless character and life, persistently
exhi])itcd through all the sumptuous fascination and array
of brilliancy which lay along his earthly path.
44. Over the tomb of such a man many tears might
fall, but not one could be a tear of bitterness. These
examples of rare intel]i.";cnces, yet more rarely cultivated,
witli tlieir great duties greatly done, are not lights
kindled for a moment, in order then to be quenched in
the blackness of darkness. While they pass elsewhere to
attain their consummation, they live on here in their
good deeds, in their v(>iierated memories, in their fruitful
example. As even u fine figure may be eclipsed by a
COURT OF QUEEX VICTORIA. 61
gorgeous costume, so during life tlie splendid accompani-
ments of a Prince Consort's position may for the common
eye thro-'V the qualities of his mind and character, his
true humanity, into shade. These hindrances to effectual
perception are now removed ; and Ave can see, like the
forms of a Greek statue, sovei'ely pure in their hath of
southern light, all his extraordinary gifts and virtues;
his manly force tempered with gentleness, playfulness,
and love ; his intense devotion to duty ; his pursuit of the
practical, Avith an unfailing thought of the ideal ; his
combined allegiance to beauty and to truth ; the elevation
of his aims, with his painstaking care and thrift of time,
and methodising of life, so as to waste no particle of his
appliances and powers. His exact place in the hierarchy
of bygone excellence it is not for us to determine ; but
none can doubt that it is a privilege which, in the revolu-
tions of the years, but rarely returns, to find such graces
and such gifts of mind, heart, character, and person
united in one and the same individual, and set so steadily
and firmly, upon a pedestal of such giddy height, for the
instx' action and admiration of mankind.
m.
LIFE OF THE PRIXCE CONSORT.
Vol. II. London, 1876.*
1. The production of a Biography in a scries of single
Volumes Avould not commonly be a safe experiment on
the appetite or patience of the public. But, in the pre-
sent instance, reliance may be placed upon an interest
sustained and stimulated by the reason of the case. The
whole career of the Prince Consort, and the free exhibi-
tion of the life of the Sovereign and the surroundings of
the Throne, which the work has involved, form a picture
which must bo interesting, so long as Britons conceive
their Monarchy to be a valuable possession ; and must be
edifying, so long as they are capable of deriving benefit
from the contemplation of virtue thorouglily " breathed "
with activity, guided by intelligence, and uplifted into
el(;vated station as a mark for every eye. Mr. Martin's
handiwork is well known to the world. It neither culls
for criticism, nor stands in need of commendation by way
of advertisement. In producing all that can give interest
to his subject, free scope seems to have been judiciously
allowed him. In one respect only, so far as we can
judge, he has been rather heavily weighted in running
* Pulilishoil in tlie Church of England QuaHerlij Eetiev: for January
1877. Republished at Leijizig, 1877.
64 LIFE OF THE PRINCE CONSORT.
his race. Perliaps with a view to gratifying the taste of
J{oyal and ex-Royal readers from Germany, he has found
it needful to carry his readers somewhat freely into the
labyrinthe details of German politics during the years
1848-50, when the empire was in embryo, and when
the attitudes of the various powers and influences at work
were imperfectly developed, and for the most part neither
dignified nor becoming. The Prince took an active,
almost an officious, but a thoroughly patriotic, interest
in them ; and if he did not find a clew to guide him
through the windings, or disclose any signal gift of
political prophecy in what he wrote, he, at least, set a
good example in his disposition to cast aside the incum-
brances of dynastic prejudice, and to hold language which
had justice and liberality for its rule. It may seem singular,
but we take it to be the fact, that he applies a stronger
and sharper insight to the Eastern question, as it emerged
in 1853, than to the problems offered to his notice by
the land of his birth.
2. The main interest, however, of this Biography, which
is, we believe, to secure for it a place in our permanent
literature, will not, perhaps be found to He so much in
the treatment of this or that current question of its time,
as in the figure and character of the man, as a man, who
is its subject; in the light it throws upon the difficult
question of his position as a Prince Consort, and in the
conti-iljution it supplies towards defining tluit important
position for the future as well as for the past.
3. The excellence of the Prince's character has become
a commonplace, almost a by- word, among us. It is easy
to run round the circle of his virtues ; diffitult to find a
point at which the line is not continuous. He was with-
out doubt eminently happy in the persons who principally
LIFE OF THE PEINCE CONSOET, C5
contributed from without to develop his capacities, and
determine his mental and moral, as well as his exterior,
life ; namely, in his uncle, his tutor, and his Wife. 13ut
how completely did the material answer to every touch
that it received ; how full, round, and complete it was,
as a sculpture ; how perseveringly and accurately did the
Prince apply a standing genial conception of duty and
action to the rapid stream, it might be said, the torrent,*
of the daily details of life ; how much of interest — amidst
incessant action, and without the tranquillity necessary
for systematic thought — he presents to the class who have
no taste for mere action, to the philosophic student ; how
nearly the life approximates to an ideal ; how it seems to
l;iy the foundations for a class and succession of men, if
only men could be found good enough, and large enough,
to l)uild themselves upon it. Mr. Martin has been im-
pugned by an acute writer* for the uniformity of hia
laudatory tones. Now, doubtless, it would be too much
to expect a drastic criticism of the Prince's intellect in a
work produced under the auspices of an adoring affection ;
l)ut an honest impartiality prompts us to ask whether in
the ethical pictxu'e here presented to us there really is a
single trait that calls for censure. If there is anything
in the picture of the Prince that directly ii-ritates the
ci'itical faculty, is it not
"That fine air;
That pure severity of perfect light,"t
I
which was insipid to Queen Guinevere in the heyday of
her blood, but to which she did homage when the equili-
brium of her nature was restored ?
4. There can be little doubt that the Prince will be
• Nonconformiit, Dec, 9, 1876. f Tennj-son's ' Guinevere.'
I. F
66 LIFE OF THE rilllSrCE COKSORT.
remembered in future generations with something quite
different from that formal and titular remembrance, -which
belongs to his rank in its relation to the Throne, and which
is accorded (for example) to Prince George of Denmark.
There has not yet been time to determine his exact place
among the " inheritors of renown," fulfilled or unfulfilled.*
The silly importunity which has urged Pope Pius IX. to
dub himself "The Great" was doubly wrong: wrong, as
we think, in urging him to clutch at what he will never
get: wrong, beyond all question, in requiring him to
fabricate at a stroke a title which has not, and, from its
nature, cannot have, yet inured : inasmuch as it can only
be conferred by the general sense of an impartial, that is,
a succeeding age.* For it is thus alone that the phrase
acquires its dignity : securus judicat orhis terrarnm. Ma-
nufactured by a contemporary clique, it is entitled to no
more respect than the forged antiquities which are daily
passed otf upon the ravenous appetite of collectors. All
that we can venture in this case to propound is, that, with
every fresh gush of light upon the Prince's personal his-
tory, there is a corresponding growth in his claims to
admiration and celebrity, and an intimation of his finally
taking a higher rather than a lower place among the
departed sons of fame.
5. At the same time, it would probably be too much to
hope that tbe third Volume of Mr. Martin will raise the
Prince above the second, as the second has, we think,
raised him above the first. The period of the Great
Exbibition of 1851, which entailed upon him arduous and
constant labour, was ].robably the climax of his career.
This narrative appears to establish his title to the honours
* Sliellpy's'AJonais.'
LIFE OF THE riUNCE CONSORT. 67
of its real origination.* Its nearest analognc in past
history would appear to have been the Fi-auktbrt fair of
the sixteenth century. The mischievous system of nar-
rowing the usefulness of commerce for mankind by what
was called Trotcction had not then been methodised, and
the productions of diffei'ent coun4;ries, where adequate
channels were open, flowed by a natural process to a com-
mon centre. But great discoveries are commonly to be
found in germ, either unobserved or imperfectly deve-
loped, long before their publication, which marks the
stage of maturity in their idea, and makes them part of
the general property of mankind. So came the printing-
press, so came the steam-engine ; and, in this sense, when
on July 30, 1849, twenty-one months before the opening,
tiie Prince propounded at Buckingham Palace his concep-
tion of the Great Exhibition, as it might be, to four mem-
bers of the Society of Arts, he established his title to
the practical authorship of no small design. In it were
comprised powerful agencies tending to promote the great
fourfold benefit, of progress in the industrial arts, of
increased abundance or diminished stint of the means of
living among men, of pacific relations between countries
founded on common pursuits, and of what may be termed
fi'ee trade in general culture.
6. It was a great work of peace on earth : not of that
merely diplomatic peace which is honeycombed with sus-
picion, which bristles with the apparatus and establishments
of war on a scale tar beyond what was formerly required
for actual belligerence, and which is potentially war,
though still only on the tiptoe of expectation for an
actual outbreak. It was a more stable peace, found-jd on
* Chap. XXXV. vol. ii. 223-5.
V 2
68 LIFE OF THE PKINCE CONSOET.
social and mental unison, which the Exhibition of 1851
truly, if circuitously, tended to consolidate. And if,
in the quarter of a century which has since elapsed,
counter influences have proved too strong for the more
beneficial agencies, let us recollect that many of the
wars which have since occurred have been in truth
constructive wars, and have given to Europe the hope
of a more firmly knit political organisation ; further
that, even if this had not been so, the influences of
theory and practice associated with the Great Exhibition
would still have earned their title to stand along with
most other good influences in the world, among things
valuable but not sufiicient.
7. During the last decade, however, of his years, from
1852 to 1861, wars, as well as rumours of wars, became
the engrossing topic of life and thought to many a mind,
which, if governed by its own promptings, by the true
direction and demand of its nature, would have battened
only on the pastures of national union and concord.
The Crimean "War, taken with its fore- and after-shadows,
began early in 1853, and closed in 1856; it was followed
by the Indian Mutiny, and this by the French war panic
of 1858-60, which, more than any other cause, encouraged
as it was by no small authorities, altered the disposition
of the British people in a sense favourable to, and even
exigent of, enlarged military and naval establishments.
This, Ave think, was a great misfortune to the Prince, in
regard both to the mental movement which required a
congenial atmosphere and exercise, and to the eventual
greatness which would have been its natural result. He
was properly, and essentially, a man of peace. The
natural attitude of his mind was not that of poh^mical
action, but of tranquil, patient, and deliberate tliought.
IIFE OF THE PRIXCE CONSORT. 69
It was as a social philosoplier and hero that he was
qualified to excel, rather than as a political or military
atlilete. It is true, indeed, that the searching fire of
continual struggle educated those Royal persoiiages, whose
destiny in other days or other lands has lain heyond the
precincts of the Constitutional system. But it is the
very pith ami essence of that system to remove from
Sovereigns, and to lay upon their recog-niscd and official
s(irvants, the heavier portions of that responsibility and
strain, under wliich a governing will, lodged in a few
human brains, or in one only, takes up into itself, and
directs, while controlling, the collected force of an entire
community. Doubtless even now Hoyalty — we speak of
Constitutional Hoyalty — acts out in idea, with a certain
reality, the contentions which it observes and superin-
tends, and with which at particular points it may
actually intermix ; but, as a rule, its share in them is
an indirect and mediate share. Princes are rather moons
than suns in the political firmament ; and the traufjiul
atmosphere in which they dwell, while more favourable
in some of its aspects to a reflective and impartial
habit of mind, is not calculated to foster the strongest
tissue, or develop the hardiest forms, of character.
"NVliile the Peers of England are more remote than the
Parliamentaiy Commoners from living contact with the
great seething mass of a highly vitalised community,
and while the popular House must, with all its faults,
remain, so long as the Constitution keeps its balance,
our highest school of statesmanship, so the Throne,
though vexed more than enough with labours and
with worries of its own, yet, in relation to the sea of
political stiifes, remains sheltered within an inner and
landlocked haven, and the mental habits which it tends
70 LIFE OP THE PRINCE CONSORT.
to generate will be less masculine thougli more amiablo
accordingly.
S. If there is force in these remarks, they will apply
scarcely more to a Constitutional Sovereign than to one
who attained to such a degree of moral and mental identi-
fication with the greatest of all Constitutional Soyereigiis
as did the Prince Consort. They have also a peculiar and
individual application to a mind the rich gifts of which
were not wayward and unruly, but fitted themselves at
every point into the mould sxipplied for them l)y his
position, and became in consc(j^ucnce an admirable and
typical example of what that position, genially appre-
hended and employed, is calculated to produce.
In this view, those who most highly estimate the
Prince's work may well regret that the line of mental
movement represented by the Great Exhibition came soou
to be deflected towards a different region of human activity.
In that region mankind at large is at once excited and
morally enfeebled by rivalries and conflicts liardly ever in
their outset generous, and marred from the beginning of
the world by their tendency to degenerate, from their first
intentions, in the direction of more violent and wide-
sweeping passions, more greedy selfishness, and deadlier
feuds.
9. A parallel maybe di-awn between the Prince Consort
and Mr. Pitt, in regard to one striking characteristic of
their respective careers. They were both men loving
peace. Each of them began, very early in life, to hold a
position of liigh command, and of profound importance to
the public welfare, in the midst of pacific ideas, plans, and
expectations. Each of them achieved a reputation of the
highest order in connection with this line of thought and
action. Upon each of them, and singularly enough upou
LIFK OF THE rrjXCE CONSOET. 71
each of tlicm at the age of tliirty-threc, there fell what,
but for the knowledge that in all mysteries of our life
there lies hid hut a deeper and larger Providence, we
might call an ugly trick of fortune ; an imperious change,
not in the man, hut in external circumstances, -wliicli
overrule the man, and which carry him, perforce, out of a
work Avell beloved, and more than well begun, into a
plac(! and function of opposite couditiuns, less congenial,
and less adapted to favour the development of his chaiactcr
by leading him up to the highest point of its capacity.
Before 1853 England had only to look with sympathy
upon the sufferings and disorders of the Continent, wliile
she watched and made provision for her own internal
condition. But from that day until the sad day of the
Prince's death, slie was ever in actual struggle, or in
anticipation of struggles deemed probable ; and this great
change in the nature of the cares and occupations offered
to the Prince, in the normal bill of fare, so to speak, made
ready for him, was to him very much what the Revolu-
tionary War was to Mr. Pitt. With a diiference indeed
of degree, for the Prince was not over-weighted and
absorbed as Mr. Pitt was from 1793 onwnrds, but with an
identity of general outline, each of these changes broke up
the perfect harmony that subsisted between the man and
his occupation, and probably abstracted something from
the ultimate claims of each to pre-eminent renown.
10. The Prince's life from day to day was, however, not
a life fashioned by haphazard, but one determined by con-
scientious premeditation. Wliat he said, he had usually
written, what he did, he had projected. When an impor-
tant subject presented itself, his tendency and practice
was to throw his thoughts on it into shape, and to har-
monise its practical bearings with some abstract principle.
72 LITE OF THE ritlNCE CONSORT.
Though a short, it was a very full and systematic life.
So regarding it, we may say that his marital relation to
the Sovereign found a development outwards in three
principal respects. First, that of assistance to the Queen
in her public or political duties. Secondly, in the govern-
ment of the Court and household. Thirdly, in a social
activity addressed to the discovery of the wants of the
community, and reaching far beyond the scope of Parlia-
mentary interferences, as well as to making provision for
those wants, by the force of lofty and intelligent example,
and of moral authority.
11. The public mind had for the moment lost its balance
at the particular juncture when, for the first time, the inter-
vention of the Prince in public affairs became a subject of
animadversion. It was at the beginning of 1854, during
the crisis of expectation before the Crimean War, the
calm that precedes the hurricane. A very short time, and
a single day of explanations from Lord Aberdeen and Lord
Russell, then the leaders of the two Houses of Parliament,
sufficed to set right a matter which we now wonder that
any should have had either the will or the power to set
Avrong. It was a matter of course that the Queen's hus-
band should be more or less her political adviser. It
would have been nothing less than a violence done to
nature if, with his great powers and congenial will, any
limits had been placed upon the relations of confidence
between the two, with respect to any public affairs what-
soever. Had he been an inferior person, his interference
would doubtless have been limited by his want of capacity.
Eut he being, as he was, qualified to examine, cora])re-
hend, and give counsel, the two minds were thrown into
common stock, and worked as one.
12. We must go one step further. It does not seem
LIFE OF THE PiaxCE CONSOET. 73
easy to limit the Sovereign's right of taking friendly
counsel, by any absolute rule, to the case of a husband. If
it is the Queen's duty to form a judgment upon important
proposals submitted to lier by her Ministers, she has an
indisputable right to the use of all instruments which -will
enable her to discharge that duty Avith effect; subject
always, and subject only, to the one vital condition that
they do not disturb the relation, on which the whole
niachineiy of the Constitution hinges, between those
]\linisters and the Queen. She cannot, thcTcfore, as a
rule, legitimately consult in private on political matters
Avith the party in ojiposition to the Government of the
day ; but she will have copious public means, in common
with the rest of the nation, for knowing their general
views through Parliament and the Press ! She cannot
consult at all, except in the strictest secrecy : for the
doubts, the misgivings, the inquiries, which accompany
all impartial delil)eration in the mind of a Sovereign as
well as of a subject, and which would transpire in the
course of promiscuous conversation, are not matters fit for
exhibition to the world. The dignity of the Ci'own requires
that it should never come into contact with the public, or
with the Cal)inet, in mental dishabille ; and that the words
of its wearer sliould be ripe, well considered, few. For like
reasons, it is plain that the Sovereign cannot legitimately
be in confidential communication with many minds. Xor,
again, with the representatives of classes or professions as
such, for their views are commonly narrow and self-
centred, not freely swayed, as they ought to be, by the
paramount interests of the wliole body politic.
13. We have before us, in these pages, a truly nonnal
example of a personal councillor of the Queen, for ])ul)lio
aif airs, in her Husband ; and another, hardly less normiJ, in
74 LIFE OF THE PHINCE GONSOKX.
Stockmar. Botli of them observed all along the essential
condition, without which their action would have been
not only most perilous, but most mischievous. That is to
say, they never affected or set up any separate province
or authority of their own ; never aimed at standing as an
opaque medium between the Sovereign and her Constitu-
tional advisers. In their legitimate place, they took up
their position behind the Queen ; but not, so to speak,
behind the Throne. They assisted her in arriving at her
conclusions ; but those conclusions, once adopted, were
hers and hers alone. She, and she only, could be recog-
nised by a Minister as speaking for the Monarch's office.
The Prince, lofty as was his position, and excellent as
was his capacity, vanished as it were from \'icw, and did
not, and could not, carry, as towards them, a single ounce
of substantive authority. If he conferred with Lord
Palmerston on matters of delicacy, belonging to the rela-
tion between the Sovereign and the Secretary of State, it
could only be as the Queen's messenger, and no word
spoken by him could be a final word. Let us revert to
an illustration already used.* As the adjective gives
colour to the substantive, so he might influence the
mind of the Queen. But only through that mind, only by
informing that supreme free-agency, could his influence
legitimately act ; and this doctrine, we apprehend, is not
only a doctrine wholesome in itself, but also indisputable,
nay, wliat is more, vital to the true balance of the English
Monarchy. On the other hand, as the Queen deals with
the Caoiuet, just so the Cabinet deals with the Queen.
The Sovereign is to know no more of any dift'ering views
of dilfcreiit Ministers than they are to know of any col-
* Sup. p. 33.
LIFE OF TIIK riilKCE CONSOUT. l o
lateral rc])ix'st']itativcs of the Munarcliicul oflice ; tliey are
an unity belbre the Sovereign, and the Sovereign is an
unity before them. All this, it will be observed, is not a
description of matters of fact, but a setting forth of wliut
the ])riucii)les of our Monarchy presui)pose ; it is a study
from the closet, not the forum or the court; and it would
ha\e been more convenient to use the masculine gender in
speaking of an abstract occupant of the Tlirone, but for
the fact that we have become so thoroughly disused to it
under tlie experience of forty happy years.
14. Steady and sound, however, as would appear to luive
been the application of these principles to practice, on
the part of Baron Stockmar, and, in his higlier and more
difficult position, of the Prince, we take leave to (lucstioii
the theoretic representation* set forward by the one and
accepted by the other ; as well as countersigned by the
biographer, at a period of calm, very different from the
political weatlier which prevailed at the moment of its
production. This representatiun is conveyed in a long
letter, dated January 5, 1854, and consisting of two
parts. In the second and much the shorter of the two, it
is held that the Prince " acts as the Queen's private
secretary, and that all else is simply calumnious"; and
the right of Her Majesty to the assistance implied under
this modest name is justly vindicated (pp. 554-7). Put
the first portion of the letter contains a Constitutional
dissertation, Avhicli was in no manner required for tlio
support of these rational propositions, and which is based,
as we think, mainly upon misconception and confusion,
such as we should not have expected from a man of tho
Paron's long Pritish experience and acute perceptions.
Vol. ii. pp. 5(5-7.
76 LIFE OP THE PKINCE OONSOET.
His main propositions appear to be these : that again and
again, since the Ecforni Act, Ministers have failed to
sustain the prerogatives of the Crown; that the old Tories,
who supported these prerogatives, Avere extinct, and that
the existing Tories were (p. 546) " degenerate bastards";
that the Whigs and " politicians of the Aberdeen School"
were conscious or unconscious republicans ; that the most
jealous Liberalism could not object to " a right on the
part of the King to be the permanent President of his
Ministerial Council" (p. 547) ; that Premiers were apt to
be swayed by party interests ; that no penalty for Minis-
terial obliquities now remained but that of resignation :
that this was insufficient to secure good conduct from the
bad or the incapable ; that the Sovereign should take part
at the deliberations of his Council ; that the centre of
gravity had been shifted by the Act of 1832 from the
House of Lords to the House of Commons ; that a well-
merited popularity of the Sovereign was to support the
House of Lords against the dangers of democracy, and his
direct action in tlie Government to be a vis medicatrix
natures (p. 551) for maintaining prerogative, and for
supplying all defects by a judgment raised above party
passions. Yet the right of the Crown is to be merely
moral (p. 549) ; and in the face of it, Ministers would
act, as to their [legislative ?] measures, with entire free-
dom and independence ; but, as to policy and administra-
tion, tlio Sovereign is primarily chai'ged witli a couti'ol
over them, which he should exercise through the Premier
(p. 549).
15. Thus the Earon. A congeries of propositions stranger
in general result never, in our judgment, was amassed in
ordiT to exjdain to the unlearned the more mysterious
lessons embraced in the study of the British Monarchy.
LIFE OF Til]': rillNCE CONSOKT. tl
Taken singly, some of them are truisms ; some are qualifi-
cations, -vrhich usefully restrain or neutralise the com-
panion statements. Some also are misstatements of
history ; others of fact. Eor example. The Parliamen-
tary Constitution had its centre of graA'ity in the Ilouso
of Commons, not in the House of Lords, before, as well as
after, the Reform Act. The House of Lords, in fact, has
resisted the will of the House of Commons since the
Reform Act, more than it did before the passing of that
great statute. The gravest change, then, effected in re-
gard to the House of Lords, was this : that, under the
old system, the Peers had in their own hands the virtual
appointment of a large section of the House of Commons ;
whereas now, although their influence in elections is still
great, it is exercised through and by what is supposed to
be, and in general is, a popular and voluntary vote. The
Reform controversy was admirably argued on both sides ;
not perhaps worse on the side of the op]ioncnts of Refoz'm;
some of whom, following up a subtle disquisition of
philosophical polities, set out in a previous number of the
Edinburgh Review, pointed out unanswerably that singular
economy, by which the old close boroughs had cusliioncd
off, as it were, the conflicts between the two Houses ; and
then predicted with truth, though likewise with exagger-
ation, that when once the House of Lords ceased to
assert and express itself by this peculiar method within
the House of Commons, it would be driven upon the
alternative of more frequently pronouncing an adverse
judgment.
16. Again, Baron Stockmar teaches that the prerogatives
of the Crown had been abandoned by successive Ministries,
and had no longer any party ready to defend them. It
"\\ oiild be much nearer the truth to say that there was no
; 8 LIFE OF THE PHINCE CONSOET.
longer any party disposed to assail them. But what
means the Earon hy "the prerogatives of the Crown"?
Are they prerogatives as against the Ministers? or pre-
rogatives as against the Parliament, or the popiilar hranch
of it ? As against the Ministers, the Sovereign's pre-
rogatives hefore the Reform Act were : firstly, that of
appointing and dismissing them ; secondly, that of ex-
ercising an influence over their deliberations, which was,
as the Baron says, in one of his qualifying passages, in the
nature of a moral right or influence. The first of these
is virtually a right of appeal from the Cabinet to the
Parliament, or the nation, or both : and no such con-
spiciious instance of its exercise can be cited from our
pre-lleform history as was supplied by William IV. after
the lleform Act, in the month of November 1834, Avitli
no sort of reason and (it is true) without success, but also
without any strain to the Constitution, or any penalty
other than the disagreeable sensation of being defeated,
and of having greatly strengthened and reinvigorated by
recoil the fortunes of the party * on whom it had been
meant to inflict an overthrow. As regards the prerogative
or power, which gives the Monarch an undoul)ted locus
standi in all the deliberations of a Government, it remains
as it was ; and it is important or otherwise, exactly in
proportion to the ability, the character, the experience,
and, above all, the attention, which the Sovereign of the
day brings to bear upon it.
17. If there be differences, they are not at all the
differences which Baron Stockmar indicates. It is, indeed,
certain that the Monardi has to deal Avith the popular
power in a proximate instead of a remote position : but sc;
Sup. p. 38, inf. p. 325.
LIFE OF THE rrjNCE COXSOET. 79
have the Ministers. It is likewise true, that there was
once a party of King's friends (as well as a large number
of tlie nominees of Peers) within the House of Commons,
by means of whom he could operate to a certain extent,
in an unavowed manner, upon or against his Ministers.
But of this party we lose all trace after the reign of
George III. ; so that it supplies no standing ground for
the Earon. It is, perhaps, also true that the subordination
in the last resort of the lloyal to the national will, when
expressed through the Constitutional organs, whicli was
fact before the Reform Eill, has been more patent and
admitted fact since that measure became law. The dying
throes of independent Kingship gave for a moment a real
l)ang to the self-centred mind of George lY., and even
impaited a certain interest to his personality, when after
many struggles he consented or gave way to the Bill for
lloinan Catholic Emancipation in 1829,
18. Baron Stoekmar, however, appears to confuse the
prerogatives of the Crown, which are really represented by
Ministerial action in the face of the Legislature, with the
personal rights of the Sovereign in the face of and as
towards his or her Ministers. And here the (piostion
must be cleared by another distinction, of which, in this
rather confused and very disappointed letter, he takes no
notice : the distinction between the statutory powers of
the Crown and those immemorial and inhc^rent powers,
•which have no written warrant, which form the real
and genuine prerogative, and which also form a great
oral tradition of the Constitution : resembling in their
unwritten character what is called the privilege of Parlia-
ment, but differing from it in that tbey are perfectly well
defined. In the mouth of Baron Stockmar, tlie plural
word Prerogatives appears to include both classes of
80 LIFE or THE PraNCE CONSOET.
these powers, which only ignorance can confuse, though
sometimes, even in high official places, ignorance does
effectually confuse them. Accepting the phi'ase for the
moment, we ask which of these statutory prerogatives
have, since the E,eform Act, been forfeited or impaired
through the timidity of the Governments down to 1854,
or, we might perhaps add, of succeeding Governments ?
The question is most important, for, by dint of the
prerogative proper, and of these statutory powers, the
Ministers, sustained as they are by the Sovereign behind
them, form a great part, not only of the executive or
deputed, but of the ultimate and supreme governing foi'ce
in tliis country.
19. In order to test the doctrine of Baron Stockmar,
lot us enumerate some examples of the vigour of the
powers of the Crown. We have already spoken of the
great prerogative of dismissal of Ministers as it was illus-
trated in 1834. Surely the prerogative of appointment
of Bishops sufficiently proved its animation, against the
remonstrance of the Primates and a body of their
Suffragans, in the case of Dr. Hampden. The prero-
gative of peace and war did the same in 1857, when Lord
Palmcrston carried on, at the charge of the country, a
war in China, which the representatives o£ the people,
the stewards of the public purse, had condemned. It
was only upon the general election to which he had
recourse that he received the sanction of the country for
what he had done. And tlic prerogative of dissolution
must have been in a healthy state in 1852 to enable a
Government, supported only by a minority, to perform
tlie work of the session, and to carry the Supplies, before
asking the judgment of the constituencies on its title to
exist.
LIFE OF THE PIUNCE CONSORT. 81
20. There is, indeed, but one preroj^ativc of the Crown,
so far as we are able to read the Constitutional history of
tlie country, or rather but one of any groat sif^nificance,
which has suffered of late years. It is the initiative iu
proposing grants of public money. This prerogative, if
such it is to be called, has been seriously and increasingly
infringed, to the great detnraent of the nation. And tliis
by a double process. The House of Commons was very
rarely disposed, before the Reform Act, to press upon the
Administration of the day new plans or proposals involv-
ing public outlay. After the lleform Act, there was
manifested a vicious tendency to multiply these instances,
-which, however, produced no very serious consequences
for the first twenty or twenty-five years, but which has
become a great public mischief, since the increasing
wealth of the most active and influential classes of the
country has brought about a greater and wider indifl'er-
ence to economy in the public expenditure. Local claims,
and the interests of classes and individuals, are now
relentlessly and constantly pressed from private and irre-
sponsible quarters ; and though the House of Commons
still maintains the rule that money shall not be voted
except on the proposal of the Crown, yet it permits itself
to be pledged by Addresses, Resolutions, and even the
language of Eills and Acts, to outlay in many forms, and
these pledges it becomes morally compulsory on Govern-
ments in their turn to redeem.
21. But, in addition to the activity of private, pro-
fessional, and local greed, and the possible cowardice of
Ministers in resistance, it must be noted that the House
of Lords has done very great mischief in this respect, by
voting into Bills the establishment of officers and appoint-
ment of salaries, and sending these Bills to the Commona
I. o
82 LITE OF THE TEIXCE CONSORT.
•with all such portions printed in italics, a conventional
expedient adopted in order to show that they are not pre-
sented as parts of the Bill, but only as indications of the
view or wish of the House of Lords ; in matters, however,
in which they have as a body no more right or title to any
view or wish at all, than the House of Commons has or
had to send in italics, or by any subterfuge, to the Lords
a direction as to the judgments to be given in appeals.
Here, then, we have a real case in which a power of the
Crown has been greatly and mischievously weakened.
But this is a power which probably forms no part of
prerogative properly so called. "VVe apprehend that it
rests upon no statute, but only on a wise and self-denying
rule of the House of Commons itself. The Crown, as
such, has no immediate intez'est in it whatever ; and there
is not the smallest reason to suppose that Baron Stockmar
knew to what solid truth in this one respect he was
giving utterance, or that he in any way cared about the
matter.
22. There is, indeed, one genuine Crown right which
has been somewhat disparaged of late years ; and that is
its title to the Crown Lands. By degrees, it became the
custom for the Sovereign, on accession, to surrender the
life-interest in those properties to the State, in return for
a life-income called the Civil List. But this transaction in
no way affected the legal right of the next heir to resume
the lands on the expiry of the aiTangemcnt. It is
undeniable that members of Oppositions, and the blamable
connivances of party, have of late years, in vaiious
instances, obtained by pressure from the Governments of
the day ari'angemcnts Avhich touch the reversionary
iuterost. The qu(>stion is too oom])lex and m;my-sidcd
for exposition here : but it may be said with truth, first,
LIFE OF TnF> PRINCK CONSORT. 83
that the state has dealt liberally as a tenant inulcr a life-
Iciise with the estates given to its control ; and, secondly,
that the suhjcct is in a Constitutional -view a small one.
Neither shall we here investigate the curious doctrine —
in one sense novel, and in another obsolete — of those who
contend that the Sovereign has a peculiar relation to the
AjTuy, involving some undefined power apart or different
from its general relation to the executive portion of the
business of government. We shall only observe that, in
this country, the standing Army is itself extra-Constitu-
tional, and that its entire dependence upon Parliament
has been secured, not as in the case of the Civil Services
by a single provision, that of requiring annual votes for
its support ; but also by the further precaution of
granting only by annual Mutiny Acts those powers for
enforcing discipline which are necessary for its manage-
ment. Not even a colourable plea can be set up for an
exceptional power or prerogative in respect to the Anuy.
23. As to the occasion of Baron Stockmar's letter to
the Prince, the truth seems to have been this : A most
unreasonable and superficial clamour had been raised
against the intervention of the Prince as a counsellor, an
adviser, in the performance of the Queen's public duties :
a clamour due to the peculiar susce})tibilities of his time,
the aberration of a portion of the press, and the very
undue disposition of what is questionably called "good
society " to canvass in an ill-natured manner the character
and position of one who did not stoop to flatter its many
vulgar fancies, and whose strictly ordered life was a
continual though silent rebuke to the luxurious licence
that large portions of it love and habitually indulge in.
Instead of dealing with this practical matter in a practical
manner, Bai'on Stockmar was unhappily tempted to stray
Q 2
84 LIFE OF THE TEIKCE CONSOET.
iuto the flowery fields of theory. S^avib sui floridi
sentier.'^ His Constitutional knowledge, apart from liis
working common-sense, which he did not think good
enough for so high an occasion, was, after all, only an
English top-dressing on a German soil : and hence he has
given a perfectly honest hut a most misleading exposition
of a great subject, highly needful to be rightly appre-
hended everywhere, and of course most of all in Courts.
24. One of his propositions is that the King, if a clever
man — for so (p. 549) it seems to be limited, and we do
not envy those who would have to pronounce the decision
"Ay" or "No" upon the point, nor indeed do we
know who they are — shall " make use of these qualities
at the deliberations of his Council." Now this, to speak
with a rustic plainness, is simply preposterous. We take
first the ground, which would be called the lowest. If
the Sovereign is to attend the Cabinet, he must, like
other Cabinet Ministers, adapt his life to its arrangements,
spend most of the year in London, and when in the country
be always ready to return to it at a moment's notice.
Perhaps it may be thought that, as would be only seemly,
Cabinets could, as a rule, be postponed to suit the con-
venience of so august a personage. It would be almost
as easy to postpone the rising of the sun. But let us
suppose him there, not on his throne, but in his arm-
chair. He must surely preside ; and in that case wliat
becomes of the First Minister ? It is a curious, but little
observed, fact of our history, that the ofiice of First
Minister only seems to have obtained regular recognition
as the idea of personal government by the action of the
King faded and became invisible. So late as in the final
• Manzoni, ' CiiKjue JIaggio.'
LIFE OF THE PHINCE CONSORT. 85
attacks upon Sir Robert Walpole, it was one of tlie
charges against him that he had assumed the functions of
First Minister. The presence of the King at the Cabinet
either means personal government — that is to say, the
reservation to hira of all final decisions which he may
think fit to appropriate — or else the forfeiture of dignity
by his entering upon equal terms into the arena of
general, searching, and sometimes warm discussion ; nay,
and even of voting, too, and of being outvoted, for in
Cabinets, and even in the Cabinets reputed best, impoi-t-
ant questions have sometimes been found to admit of no
other form of decision.
25. Now such is the mass, detail, and technical diffi-
culty of public affairs in this great Empire, that it would
be an absolute cruelty to the Sovereign to put him through
these agonies; for it is no trifiing work and pain to
hammer into form the measures and decisions which are,
when promulgated, to endure the myriad-minded, myriad-
pointed criticism of the Parliament, the press, and the
country. At present, the Sovereign is brought into
contact only with the net results of previous inquiry and
deliberation, conducted by other and, as the Constitution
presumes, by select men. The Baron's proposal is to
immerse him in the crude mass of preliminary pleas and
statements, to bring him face to face with every half-
formed Anew, to compel him to deal with each plus and
minus known and unknown, quantity in and by itself,
instead of submitting to him only the ascertained sum of
the equations. The few remarks now offered are far indeed
from exhibiting exhaustively the huge demerits of this
unwise proposal ; but they may serve to prove or indicate
that either, while intolerably cumulating labour, it must
Borely impair dignity and authority ; or, if it aims at
86 LIFE OF THE FEINCE COIS'SOET.
preserving these, the end can only be gained by making
the King the umpire and final arbiter of deliberations, to
"which he listens only for the assistance of his own judg-
ment. That is, they not simply alter, but overturn, the
Constitution, by making a personal will supreme over the
ascertained representative will of the nation.
26. If, however, the ofiice of the First Minister would
have suffered by the last-named proposal, it seems that
compensation was to be given him at the expense of his col-
leagues. We shall not record any dissent from the general
view of the remarkable controversy between the Crown,
or Court, and Lord Palmerston ; which is to the eifect
that, in the main, the Sovereign was right in demanding
time and opportimity, of course with a due reserve for the
exigencies of urgent business, for a real, and not merely a
perfunctory, consideration of draft despatches. But with
this there seems to have been combined a demand that
the drafts of the Foreign Minister should be submitted to
the SovcreigTi only through the head of the Government.
It is laid down (p. 300) tliat the First jMinistcr, as well as
the Foreign Secretary, is bound to advise the Crown on
questions of Foreign policy; and, we are told, it was
accordingly demanded (p. 302) —
" Thfit the despatches submitted for her approval must therefore
pass Ihrough tlie hands of Tjord Jnhn RusscH, who, if he slumlil
think tliey required material change, should accompany tliem with
a statLment of his reasons."
27. It is unquestionable that the Prime Minister, who is
entitled to interfere with, and in a well-organised Cabinet
is constantly invoked by, every Department, has a special
concern in Foreign affairs. lie will, therefore, have some-
thing to say upon the drafts prepared b}' his colleague*
IIFE OF TEE PEmCE CONSOET. 87
But tliis, according to the soimd law of established prac-
tice, he will say to his colleague ; and the draft, as it goes
to the Sovereign, will express their united view. Instead
of this, the proposal seems to have been that the di'afts
prepared by the Foreign Minister should be discussed and
settled between the Prime Minister and the Sovereign.
Now almost any system nlay be made workable by con-
siderate and tender handling ; but the method now before
us, issuing as a hard abstraction, would justly be said to
degrade an office of a dignity and weight second to none
after that of the Head of the Government. The transmis-
sion through the First Minister seems indeed to have been
agreed to, wrongly as we think, by Lord Palmcrston
(p. 309) ; and Stockmar in his ^[cmurandum apparently
extends this system to all the Ministers, for he says that
the control of the Sovereign would be "exercised most
safely for the rest of them through the Premier." Tims
tlie Premier would stand between them and the Sovereign.
The Baron failed to perceive that this involves a funda-
mental change in their position : their relations to the
Crown become mediate instead of immediate ; they are no
longer the confidential servants of Her Majesty ; he is the
sole confidential servant, they are the head clerks : he is
in the closet, they stand in the hall without.
28. To some readers these may appear to be mere subtle-
ties. They certainly escaped eyes of great acuteness when
those of the Prince Consort, and of Bai'on Stockmar, passed
over them. But eveiy trade has its secrets. The baker and
the brewer, the carpenter and the mason, all the fraternity
of handicraft and production, have, where they understand
tlieir business, certain nice minutioi of action, neither in-
telligible to nor seen by the observer from without, but
upon which niceties the whole efficiency of their work,
88 LIPE OF THE PEIXCE COJfSOKT.
and the just balances of its parts, depend. There is no-
where a more subtle machinery than that of the British
Cabinet. It has no laws. It has no records. Of the few
who pass witliin the magic circle, and belong to it, many
never examine the mechanism which thoy help to work.
Only the most vague conceptions respecting its structure
and operations are afloat in the public mind. These
things may be pretty safely asserted : that it is not a
thing made to order, but a growth ; and that no subject of
equal importance has been so little studied. We need not
wonder if even to the most intelligent foreigner, who gets
it up as a lesson from a school-book, it is an unsolved
riddle. "VVe may be thankful that the mistaken reasouiugs
of Baron Stockmar never baffled his good sense in practical
advice, and that his balloon, even after careering wildly
in the fields of air, always managed, when about alighting
on the earth, to find its way home.
29. We will now turn to another chapter, where Mr,
Martin deals with the Papal Aggression, and with the
thoughts which the controversy at that time stirred
in the mind of the Prince. He went to work, as his
manner was, to "analyse" (p. 341) the crisis, in its
Anglican rather than in its Eomeward aspect, with
philosophical assiduity ; and he laid down the principles
which he conceived to indicate the true path towards a
remedy.
The evil he conceived to be the introduction of Eomish
doctrines and practices by the Clergy against the will of
their congregations, under the assumption of a sole autlio-
rity. And the cure he found in three propositions, thus
expressed (p. 343) : —
" Tliat the Lnity have an equal share of authority in the Church
with the Clergy,
LIFE OF TnE PRINCE COXSOKT, 89
" That no altoration in the form of Divine Service shall there-
fore be made without the formal consent of the Laity.
" For any interpretation given of Articles of Faith without
their concurrence."
From these, he thought, ■woulcl spring a " whole living
Church constitution," in government and doctrine.
30. Of these propositions we put aside the first, not only
because it is expressed without historical or theological
precision, but also and mainly because it is an abstraction.
Nor need we dwell upon the third, because, after another
quarter of a century's experience, it has not been thoi;ght
necessary, either by Laity or Clergy, to call for any new
interpretation of xVrticles of Faith. But the second touches
a matter Avhicli has invited legislative handling — namely,
" the form of Divine Service." And the readers of Mr.
Mai'tin will at once be struck with the glaring fact, that
the basis for legislation Avhich was suggested by the
Prince is totally diifercnt from that which was accepted
by Parliament on the recommendation of the Archbishops
and the Earl of Peaconsfield. Nor is the difference of a
speculative character ; the lines on which the two work
out their results are lines which cut across one another.
In making good this proposition, we shall assume, of
course — but it is a very large and generous assumption —
that the Act will be both impartially and learnedly worked
by the tribunals. So regarding it, we observe that the
very rule which the Prince sets up, the Archbishops and
the Prime Minister have induced Parliament to trample
under foot. The rule of the Prince is that existing prac-
tice is so far to be presumed right practice that it shall
not be altered without consent of Laity and Clergy. The
basis of the Act is that existing practice, however esta-
blished by length of time, and however acceptable both
90 LIFE OF THE PEIJS^CE CONSOET.
to Laity and Clergy, may at any time be challenged by
three parishioners, who may never have even seen the
inside of the church as "worshippers, and, unless the will
of the Bishop intercept the process, is to be overset if it
he inconsistent with the judicial, that is the literal, mean-
ing of the words of a statute passed in 1661. Further, it is
now the presumable duty, imposed by law upon the Clergy,
of themselves to alter their practice, even against their
own inclinations and those of the congregation, where it
is not in conformity with the exact prescriptions of that
statute in any one of the myriad details which it comprises.
31. It is true that, where a trial is demanded, the
Bishop may stop it. AVe do not doiibt that this
power, without which the Act would have been even far
worse than it is, will be rationally and prudently exer-
cised by nearly all the Bishops. But the difficulty of so
using it will, to the most honest and enlightened mind,
be very great : in one or two instances, which it would
be invidious to name, we can hardly hope that it will be
considerately employed ; and if but one Bishop out of
twenty-eight or thirty be suitable to their purpose, the
wire-pullers at the centre will put up in that diocese
their three puppet-parishioners, and seek so to rule the
whole country. The whole spirit and tendency of the
Act go to narrow discretion ; to curtail freedom enjoyed
for generations with satisfaction to all ; and to tighten
practice according to a rule adopted more than two cen-
turies ago, and to such intei-pretations of that rule as may
bo pronounced by judges, nearly the whole of whom are
not only ignorant of ecclesiastical history and law, but
apparently as unaware as babes tliat such ignorance is
either a disqualification, or even a disadvantage, I'or the
exercise of their office. But this tendency and spirit of
IIFE O? TnE PItlNCE CONSOET. 91
the Act is aiul has Leon felt to be so intolerable, that it
has been (iixaliticd by the iuti'rpolation of an arbitrary-
power, which may extin^niish the Act in Diocese A, give
it absolute and unrestricted sway in Diocese B, and a
mode of operation adjusted to as many points between
these extremes in Dioceses from C to Z.
32. Now the Prince's plan sets out upon another line of
movement. Not denying the authoi'ity of the law, nor
impeding its ultimate enforcement, it introduced ct)llaterally
into our system a new sanction — namely, a sanction for
things established by usage. They Avere not to be altered
■without consent of Laity and Clergy. This was his simple
project of change. "Where that consent was obtained,
and the desii-e for a change established, still they could
only be altered in the direction of conformity with the
law, which remained apj)lieable in all its rigour, and
withoiit any spurious triad of parishioners or any inter-
vention of an arbitrary veto, to unestablishcd novelties.
We have surely here a very notable competition between
the plans of the Archbishops and of the Prince.
" Look here upon tliis picture — and on this."
The Prince was ever regarded with some jealousy and
apprehension by Churchmen : yet some of them may be
tempted to wish not only that his most valuable life had
been largely prolonged, but that he had been Primate of
all England in 1874. We should not then have been
trembling at this time in fearful anxiety to learn whether
a great and historic Church, rich in work and blessing,
rich in traditions, and richer still in promise, is or is not
to be the victim of the follies committed in 1874.*
* It is needful to correct an error into which Mr. Martin has fallen,
not unnaturally, in a matter lying beside the main scope of his task.
92 LIFE OF THE PUINCE CONSOET.
33. It was to be expected that one wliose life was so
steadily held under the control of conscience should deeply
feel the responsibilities attending the education of the
Eoyal childi'en. In no station of life is there such a com-
mand, or such a fi^ee application, of all the appliances of
instruction. The obstacles which it places in the way of
profound and solid learning are indeed insurmountable.
Tliis disability is perhaps compensated by the tendency of
the station itself to confer a large amount of general infor-
mation, and of social training. Our young Princes and
Princesses have grown up under a sense of social respon-
sibility far heavier than that which is felt by, or impressed
upon, children born and reared at the degree of elevation
next to theirs. In a religious point of view, however,
their dangers are immense : and they are greatly aggra-
vated by the fact that, after the earliest periods of life are
passed, and anything like manhood is attained, they do
not enjoy the benefit of that invaluable check upon
thought and conduct which is afforded by the free com-
munication and mutual correction of equals. They have
He says in p. 338 that after the Papal Brief " the country was put
upon the alert, and the progress of proselytism stayed." Chronolo-
gically, this is not so. It was shortly after the Papal Brief that the
great rush of secessions took place. Then it was tliat Cardinal
Alanning carried into the Roman Church those peculiar and very
remarkaide powers of government to which she at least has not
refused a sphere. Then departed from us Mr. James Hope Scott, Q.C. ;
a man who may, with little exaggeration, be called the (lower of his
generation. With and after them went a host of others. It was
eminently the time of secessions. It may be dillicult to say whether
the Pa])al Brief seriously acted one way or the othei*. For it was
very closely followed by the Judgment in the Gorham case, and this
may in all likelihood have been the principal cause of a blast whii-h
swept away, to their own great detriment as well as ours, a large por-
tion of our most learned, select, and devoted clergy.
LIFE OF THE TKINCE CONSOET. 93
no equals : the cases in whicli a friend can be strong
enough and bold enough to tell them the whole truth
about tlieniselves are of necessity exceptional. It is
much if, as in England, tlie air of Courts is not tainted
with actual falsehood. The free circulation of truth it
hardly can permit : and the central personages in them
are hereby deprived in a great degree of one of the readiest
and most effective helps for their salvation, while, at the
same time, they are set up as a mark to attract all the
wiles of the designing and the vale.
34. It is well known, to the infinite honour of Her
Majesty and of the Prince, how, especially in the con-
spicuous instances of the Dowager Lady Lyttelton and of
the excellent Dean of Windsor, the best provision M'hich
love and wisdom could suggest was made for the religious
training of the Roj'al offspring. In this department, as
well as in others, the Prince looked for a principle, and a
defined scope. As early as March 1842 (p. 175) the inevit-
able Baron had supplied a Memorandum on the subject.
He reverted to it in July 1846 (p. 183) ; and laid it down
that it coiild not be too soon determined in what principles
the Prince of Wales should be brought up. He deprecated
the frame of mind which leads to indiscriminate conserva-
tism, desired freedom of thought, and a reflective ap])re-
ciaf ion of practical morality as indispensable to the relation
between Sovereign and people. And then he proceeded to
the question of religion. The law required that " the
belief of the Church of England shall be the faith of the
members of the lloyal Family " (p. 185) : and this law must
be obeyed. Eut sliould not the young Prince's mind in due
time be opened to changes in progress, and to the probable
effect of discoveries in science ? Society, says the Baron,
is already divided into two classes. The first is composed
94 LITE OF THE PRINCE CONSORT.
of those who hope for improvement from increased know-
ledge of nature, and attention to the laws of our being ;
which will work out the results intended by the Creator.
Of the hicrophants of this class the Baron, while he
favours them, has not hesitated to write thus : "a con-
stant war is carried on openly, but more generally from
masked batteries, by this class of persons, on the pi'evail-
ing religious opinions " (p. 186). " The class contains the
seeds of important modifications in the opinions and
religious institutions of the British Empire."
35. Then we have the second class, whom the Baron
succinctly describes as " the advocates of sup 'rnatural reli-
gion." This is frank enough : and no attempt is made
to disguise the fact that the issue raised was between
Christianity and Theism. The account given of this class
is given ab extra, and not as in the other case from within
the precinct. It is, accordingly, as might have been
expected, fundamentally inaccurate and misleading. " The
orthodox believers regard the supernatural poitions of
Christianity as the basis which sustains its morality, and
as the sole foundations of government, law, and subordi-
nation." Of misrepresentation Baron Stockmar was in-
capable ; but we have here a strange amount of ignorance.
lie might as well have said that supernaturalists were
men who did not cat or diink, and ^vho held that corporal
life was only to be sustained by Divine gi-ace, which was
tlie sole foundation of running and jumping. A man who
lives in the second story of a house rests only, it seems,
upon the air, and not upon the first story and the base-
ment. But, in truth, the Christian morality enjoys all
the supports which belong to the morality of Stockmar,
while it is lifted by the Incarnation to a higher level, with
a larger view, and a place nearer to God. We could not
IIFE OF THE I'EINCE COXSORT. 95
expect him to have wasted his time in reading the -n'orks
of theologians, which, however, he thought himself quali-
fied to describe. Yet he ought surely to have lvno\\n that
8t. Paul expressly deduces the binding character of reli-
gion (Rom. i. 19, 20) from the book of ]S"ature, and also
regards offences against Nature as a distinct and deeper
category of sin (Jhul. 26, 27). Xor would it have been
unworthy of him to bear in mind that Dante has placed
the violent against Nature in a deeper condemnation even
than those M'ho are violent against God (' Inferno,' Canto
XIV. and XV.). The Baron must have been a good deal
puzzled to reconcile his own unequivocal condemnation of
supernatural religion Avith his frank recognition of a legal
necessity for training in the Anglican system of belief.
Upon the whole we must say, even with the gratitude
every Englisliman should feel towards this faithful friend
and adviser of his Sovereign, the Memorandum, as it is
presented by Mr. Martin, has too much the appearance of
one of the "masked batteries " which it describes. Eut
parental wisdom was not to be seduced even by this great
uuthonty, and the arrangements for the education of the
Prince of AVales were made, we believe, in the old Chris-
tian fashion.
36. It is not, however, as a model cither of theological
or of political opinion that any human being can profitably
be proposed for exact imitation, or that we think the
Prince will be longest and best remembered among us.
In the speculative man there remained much more of the
German than in the practical. His contemplation and
study of the living and working England were alike
assiduous and fruitful ; and this man, who never sat
upon our Throne, and who ceased at the early age of
forty-two to stand beside it, did more than any of our
96 LIFE OF THE TEINCE CONSORT.
Sovereigns, except very, very few, to brighten its lustre
and to strengthen its foundations. He did this, by the
exhibition in the highest place, jointly with the Queen,
of a noble and lofty life, which refused to take self for
the centre of its action, and sought its pleasure in the
unceasing performance of duty. There has been, beyond
all doubt, one perceptible and painful change since his
death : a depression of the standard of conduct within
the very highest circle of society. In proof of this
melancholy proposition, we will specify that branch of
morality which may fairly be taken as a testing-branch
— namely, conjugal morality. Among the causes of an
incipient change so disastrous to our future prospects,
we should be inclined to reckon the death of the Prince
Consort, and the disappearance from public view of that
majestic and imposing, as well as attractive and instruc-
tive, picture of a Court which, while he lived, was always
before the eyes of the aristocracy and the nation.
37. Neither this book, nor any book written from a pecu-
liar point of view, can ever supply a standard history of
the period it embraces. It may, nevertheless, supply —
and we think it has thus far supplied — a valuable contri-
bution to, and an indispensable part of, such a history.
This alone more than justifies the publication. But it
has a yet higher title in its faithful care and solid merit
as a biography. From the midst of the hottest glow of
worldly splendour it has drawn forth to public contempla-
tion a genuine piece of solid, sterling, and unworldly
excellence ; a, pure and lofty life, from which every man,
and most of all every Christian, may learn many au
ennobling lesson ; and on which he may do well to
meditate, when he communes with his own heart, in liia
chamber, and is still.
IV.
LIFE or THE PRINCE CONSOET.
Vol. III. London, 1877.*
1. The labours of Mr. ^Martin on the life of the Prince
Consort have been marked by a conscientious dilij^ence
not less noteworthy than his talent and his equitable
temper. With these qualifications, and with the free
access to the innermost centres of confidential information,
which has been so graciously accorded to him by the
Sovereign, he has in his two former Volumes presented
to us a personal portraiture of the Piince Consort so
complete that it scarcely allows the addition of a touch.
The biographer, as he proceeds along the course of the
revolving years, can indeed lengthen the ample catalogue
of actions wise and good ; and can show how time, as it
gives new force, depth, and dignity to the human coun-
tenance, even into a prolonged old age, so also imparts a
riper mellowness, and a more compact solidity, to mental
faculty and work.
2. Monumental commemoration, which reminds man of
his weakness even more than of his strength, and which
has been carried farther pcrbaps in tlie case of the Prince
Consort than of any other distinguished personage, has
something in it that jars, when it goes beyond the modesty
of custom. Yet every statue and memorial of the Prince
* Published in the Church of Emjland Quarterly Review for Januar*
1878.
I. H
98 LIFE OF TTIV. rP.TNHE CONSnUT.
may in some sense be considered as a sermon made visil)le.
He is one of the few, the very few, characters on the
active stage of modern life, in whom the idea of duty
seems to be actually impersonated, and to walk abroad in
the costumes of State. It is good for us to be taken
back, again and again, to see the spectacle, and so to
learn its lessons. After making every allowance for a
work composed almost within the precinct of a Court, and
without pretending to determine the precise place which
history will finally accord to him upon the roll of great-
ness, we are safe in saying that upon the extended surface
of society we may travel far and wide, before the eye is
blessed with so strong and happy a combination of mental
and of moral force. K^or can it be questioned that siich
combination is more precious to mankind in exact propor-
tion as its seat is found, and its activity developed, near
to the summit of the social fabric. Born with all these
faculties to a high station, and lifted up by marriage to
one of unusual splendour, it was his fate, being torn away
in the very flower of his manhood and the vigour of all
his gifts, to add to the lustre of his career that peculiar
touch of pathos given by the master artist of heroic
character to his Achilles ; to whom the consummation
of his glory was only permitted on condition of the
shortening of his life* In the attentive reader of this
Volume will probably deepen the impression he may have
received from those which preceded it, that few indeed
have been the lives, in this curiously chequered age of
ours, which upon the whole come nearer to the standard
which in genei-al we contemplate rather than attain.
3. This repeated presentation to the public eye of such
Iliad, B. ix. 410-0.
LIFE OF THE PEINCE COXSOET. 99
a picture, "vvith all its elevating and all its caliiiiiig
iiiliueiicc's, is indeed so wholesome that we feel anything
rather than displeased with Mr. Martin when he informs
us, in his Preface, that the work has in spite of him
outgrown the limits which he had appointed for it, and
that it must extend through a fourth of these large and
portly Volumes. The consequence, however, is, that it
assumes, as we proceed, the character less of a biography,
and more of a history. It may also be stated with f^ome
confidence that for a final history of the times, and of the
great events it touches, it is both too near and too brief.
Mr. Martin has evidently been guided in his course by the
consideration that the history of the period he has here to
traverse was really a part of the Prince's life ; so opera-
tive was the force that he had exerted in the making of
it. Of this the Prince himself, for once, allows himself
to speak in significant terms : —
"Tho things of all sorts that are laid on onr shon'dcrs, i.e. on
mine, are not to be told. People ft el th it a certain powtr exists,
which has not thrust itself ostentatiuubly forward, and tlicrefuio
they fancy it must ho doing harm, even althuugh the results of
what it does must all be admitted to be good." — P. 457.
4. There arc, indeed, those who surmise that this ex-
tension of Mr. Martin's plan has been effected in order to
carry back the public mind in large detail to the associations
of the Crimean War, and thus to revive the sentiments of
hostility to Russia which at that epoch naturally and
warrantably prevailed. But, even apart from the remem-
brance of the high auspices under which he writes, we
know of nothing to justify the imputation to him of a
mischievous and paltry trick. Tlie imputation itself is
probably due to the exultation with which the portion of
H 2
100 LIFE OF THE PRINCE CONSOKT.
our newspaper press that is hostile to the suhject races in
Turkey has gloated on his reference to the cruelty with
which, in some instances, our wounded were treated by
the Russian soldiers as they lay on the battle-field. This
is an excess to be severely reprobated. Prince Menschikoll
alleged, in justification, that English prisoners had made
use of concealed revolvers (p. 159) to shoot down their
captors ; but this must have been rare, for he finds it
necessary to put in other excuses also, which are frivolous.
Attempts have, however, been made to treat this pro-
ceeding as parallel to the wicked, and indeed fiendish,
proceedings of the Turks in mutilation and cruel torture
on the fields of recent battle. To compare the two is
truly minima componere magnis. To give no quarter, and
to put an end to the life of the wounded, is one thing ; to
mutilate, to torture, and to burn them is another; and
these are the practices, too well attested, of the last few
months.* Mr. Martin for a moment happens to deviate
from his usual impartiality, when he seems (p. IGO) to
match the simple privation of life with this more than
bestial delight in torture. We do not know if it has ever
been stated to him, as it has been to us, on the authority
of Lord Gough, that there were too many acts of this
description committed by the British soldiers, in the war
of the Punjaub, on their wounded and disabled enemies.
5. There is a supposition, much more rational as well as
mueh more charitable, which may tend to account for Mr.
Martin's having altered and enlarged his plan at this par-
ticular juncture. For this alteration has enabled not only
to show the part which the Prince took in all the anxieties
* See, e.i]., the article of Mr. Forbes, in The Nineteenth Century for
November, p. 571.
LIFE OF THE rillNCE CONSORT. 101
of the Crimean War, but to give us the Prince's evidence
in his own detailed and repeated hinguage as to the policy
in furtherance of Avhich it was undertaken. So much has
been recently stated, or mis-stated, in regard to the aim
and motive of that war, that nothing can he more season-
al)le than the opportunity he offers us of learning some-
thing on the suhjcct from high and dispassionate authority.
For the authority is, in truth, very high. We are to
regard the Prince Consort as having been while he lived
the mind's eye, so to speak, of a Sovereign who entered
with energy into all great transactions. There was such
a standing partnership, and common movement of the two,
combined with such a harmony of character and feeling,
that we may regard the will of either one as speaking for
both ; and, jointly, they had unrivalled means from day to
day for estimating what the French call the " situation."
From near presence, and close and constant intercourse,
reaching far beyond established forms, they knew not only
the resolutions of the Aberdeen Cabinet, but the interior
mind of all those members of it who had special titles to
exercise an influence on its foreign policy. Of these the
most important were Lord Aberdeen as Prime Minister,
and Lord Clarendon as Foreign Secretary. Next to them
came Lord Palmerston, on account of his great knowledge
and experience in foreign affairs ; and with him Lord John
Bussell, as the leader of the House of Commons, and as
the person who had taken the seals of the Foreign Office
on the formation of that Ministry, and who resigned them
shoa-tly afterwards to Lord Clarendon, without doubt for
the very sufficient reason that no man can efficiently dis-
charge in conjunction, especially at a time of crisis, the
duties of the Foreign Department and those attaching to
the Leadership of the Commons.
102 LIFE OF THE PEINCE CONSOET.
6. It is a favourite idea with some, that we have hail
handed down from a remote date a traditional policy of
upholding- the Ottoman Empire, like Portugal or Belgium,
without much regard to collateral questions. We helieve
it would he difficult to establish this doctrine by historical
evidence. To those who care to examine the question
ever so little, we recommend an examination of the speech
of Lord Holland in the debate of January 29, 1828. It
was delivered at a time when we were engaged in a policy
of coercion against Turkey, out of which, just before, had
grown the battle of Kavarino. Lord Holland appeared to
show in that debate that we had indeed ancient alliances
with Russia, that we had no treaty at all with Turkey
before 1799, that the treaty then concluded was only for
seven years, that it was simply part and parcel of our mili-
tary measures against France. And it commenced with
these words: "His Britannic Majesty, connected already
with His Majesty the Emperor of llussia by the ties of the
strictest alliance, accedes by the present treaty to the
defensive alliance which lias just been concluded between
His Majesty the Ottoman Emperor and the Emperor of
Russia; " together with certain limiting words, which
need not be cited in this place.
7. It would be curious to ascertain the precise date at
which the idea was first broached, tliat British interests
required the maintenance of the Ottoman Empire. "We
have little doubt that it is posterior to the debate whicli
has just been cited, and that it was far from being gene-
rally recognised by the statesmen of the last generation.
It may pro])ably be traced in the policy of 1840, and the
armed assistance lent to the decrepit Empire against its
Egyptian vassal. It grew, however, with ra])idity, fos-
tered by the rather womanish suspicions and alarms on
LIFE OF THE PIIINCE COXSORT. 103
behalf of India, of which Russia gradually became tlie
object. It has grown with greater rapidity since tlie
Crimean AYar, in proportion to the increased susceptibility
of the country, which has almost learned to regard political
alarm as standing in the first class of its luxuries, those
namely which are daily and indispensable.
8. It may boldly be affirmed that this doctrine of British
interests, as involving a necessity of upholding the Ottoman
Empire, was not the avowed doctrine of the Ibitish
Government in the proceedings immediately anterior to
the Crimean War. Some there are at the present day
who believe that war to have been a war for liritisli in-
terests, founded upon the traditional policy of maintaining
the Porte, with all its crimes, in its " integrity and inde-
pendence," as the proper bulwark of our own sway in
India. Others have thought that we undertook the war
upon a ground certainly more chivalrous ; that, seeing a
weaker country oppressed by a stronger one, we generously
interfered on behalf of the weak against the strong. Of
course, such a theory provokes the question, how far it is
to reach ; and whether we, of all mankind, liave taken out
a general roving commission of knight errantry —
" To ride abroad redressing human wrongs."*
9. The work of Mr. Martin supplies weighty e\'idence
that the policy of the Ci'imean War was based neither
upon the cynical selfishness of the first of these concep-
tions nor upon the high-flown Quixotry of the last. Un-
less the Sovereign :nid her Consort, with their matchless
opportunities of knowledge, were absolutely blindfolded,
the policy which led us into the war was that of repressing
* Tcnnvson's ' Guinevere.'
104 LIFE OF THE riUNCE COXSOET.
an offence against the public law of Europe, but only by
the united authority of the Powers of Europe. Public
la.v aud European concert were in truth its twin watch-
words. From the pages before us we will now supply
the pooof.
" Our conduct throughout,'' says the Queen, wiitini,' to Lord
Aberdeen, on April 1, 1854 (p. 59), " has been actuated by
unselfishness and honesty."
This was at the commencement. At the close, on
March 31, 1856, the Queen writes (p. 471) that to Lord
Clarendon alone (i.e., alone of those in Paris) " is due the
dignified position the Queen's beloved country holds,
thanks to a straightforward, steady, and unselfish policy
throughout."
10. So much for the British interests. On June 21, the
Prince Consort delivers a speech at the Trinity House, in
which (p. 69) he says : —
" All these difficulties, however, may be considered to be com-
pensated by tlie goodness of our cause, 'the vindication of the
public law of Europe.' ''
And also, he proceeds to say, by the French alliance.
On July 5, he writes to the Emperor Napoleon (p. 88) : —
" II mo sera en outre du plus haut int^ret d'assister a une con-
centraliiin dc troupes de cette noble arnie'e, rangei; dans ce moment
a cote' de la notre, pour la de'fense du dioit public europeen."
On November 19 he writes to Lord Clarendon (p. 164)
that the aim of the war was
" to put a term at last to a policy which threatened the existence
of the Ottoman Empire, and, by making all the countries bordering
on the Blark Sen, (le[)end(^neies of llussia, serioii.^ly to endang(3r the
bid.noc of j)o\ver."
LIFE OF THE rrJXCE COXSOUT. 105
To the King of the Belgians, on February 16, 1855, the
Prince writes, comphTining of the charges marie against
us (p. 447) ; and, among others, of this — that we were
" making a tool of France for our own objects in the East
(because of India, &c.) " : —
" The truth of the matter, on the contrary, ia, that a great Euro-
poan question was at issue, and France and ourselves were, and still
are. the only Powers possessed of the tirmness, the courage, A^o the
DISINTEUKSTEDNESS tO grapplo witll it."
That other and lower views gradually fotmd acceptance
in lower quarters, we do not doubt. 13ut these were the
views embraced at the Court, guided as it was by rare
integrity, unsurpassed intelligence, and ample connaissance
de cause.
11. And the language we have cited is in full harmony
with the general strain of the correspondence laid before
Parliament. At the outset, the quarrel was one between
Russia and France in regard to ecclesiastical privileges at
the Holy Places. England was but an amicus curi(e ;
and, in that capacity, she thought liussia in the right.
As, however, the communications went on, the Czar,
unfortunately, committed his case' to a special envoy,
Prince ^McnschikofF, whose demands upon the Porto
appeared to the liritish Government to render hai'mony
in the Turkish Empire, if they should be accepted,
thenceforth impossible. In the further stages of the
correspondence, which had thus shifted its ground, wo
found ourselves in comr>nny with France ; and not with
France only, but with Em ope. At one particular point,
it must in faiiTiess be allowed that Russia, with her
single rapier, had all her antagonists at a disadvantage.
They had collectively accepted, and they proposed to her
106 IIPE OF THE PEINCE CONSORT.
a Note, known as the Yienna Note, which she also ac-
cepted ; and they afterwards receded from it, upon
objection taken to it by Turkey. Russia, however,
covered the miscarriage of her opponents by sustaining
the Turkish interpretation of the words, and thus sheltered
their retreat from the support of the document they
themselves had framed. But it was not upon this mis-
carriage that the dispute came to a final issue. The
broken threads of negotiation were pieced together ; and,
about the time when the year expired, a new instrument,
of a moderate and conciliatory character, was framed at
Constantinople, and approved by the Cabinets of the five
Powers, still in unbroken union. It was the rejection of
this plan by the Emperor Nicholas, when it was presented
to him in January 1854, and not his refusal of the
Turkish amendments to the Vienna Note, that brought
about the war in the following March.
12. Thus far the Prince and the Queen have enabled us
to vindicate the British policy against the accusation of
selfishness. Let us now see how it stands on the other
side, as against the charge of Quixotry. If it is wholly
unwise and unwarrantable for one Power to constitute
itself the judge and the avenger of European law, is
it wholly wise and reasonable for two ? So far as a
question of this kind can be answered in the abstract,
undoubtedly it is not. It is a precedent by no means free
from danger ; a couple of States cannot claim for them-
selves European authority. But this was not the enter-
prise on which Erance and England advisedly set out.
They began their work, say from the time of the Men-
schikoff mission, in close association with Austria and with
Prussia; and the four together were the only Powers
who, by established usage, could represent the concert of
IIFE OF THE PKIXCE CONSORT. 107
Europe, in a case where the fifth, an only remaining
Power of tlie first order, was itself the panel in the dock.
They pursned tliis work in hai'niony through the whole
of the year 1853. "With March 18.54 came the crisis.
Austria urged the two leading States, England and
France, to send in their ultimatum to lliissia, and pro-
mised it her decided support. She redeemed the pledge,
but only to the extent of a strong verbal advocacy.
Without following out the subse(|ueut detail of her
proceedings, she rendered thereafter to the Allies but
equivocal and uncertain service ; without, however, dis-
avowing their policy either in act or woj'd. It was
Prussia, which at the critical moment, to speak in homely
language, bolted ; the vcrj* jjolicy which she had recom-
mended, she declined unconditionally to sustain, from the
first moment when it began to assume the character of a
solid and stern reality. In fact, slie broke up the Euro-
pean concert, by which it was that France and England
had hoped, and had had a right to hope, to put down tlic
stubbornness of the Czar, and to repel his attack upon the
public law of Eui'ope. The question that these Allies had
now to deterTuine was whether, armed as they had been
all ;dong with the panoply of moral authority, they
would, upon this unfortunate and discreditable desertion,
allow all their demands, their reasonings, their ])rofes-
sions, to melt into thin air. They were, in the view of
public right, perhaps entitled to decline the heavy respon-
sibility of executing alone what they had counselled and
designed in company with others. At least there could
have been no one with a good title to reproach them.
But would such a retreat, such a Xiirora^ia, by two such
Powers, have been for the permanent advantages of
European honour, or legality, or peace?
i08 IIPE OF TnE PErN"CE CONSOE?.
13. We shall now produce evidence of the same class aa
before, and from the same sources, to show that the views
we have thus expressed were those of the British Court
at the epoch of the Crimean War. We shall show how
indisputably it was there and then believed that the
continued concert of Europe would abash the offender,
and settle the dispute without bloodshed; how the
Powers, and especially the Power, were regarded, which
paralysed that concert, and broke it up.
On August 28, 1854 (p. 98), the Prince writes thus to
the King of Prussia : —
" The four Powers acted in perfect haniiony up to last March,
when Prussia rejected the Quadruple Treaty, which Austria, with
the wisest intentions, had proposed."
On November 8 (p. 143) he addresses his uncle, King
Leopold, and describes the danger that France may be
tempted " to cherish her traditional arriere-pensees of
territorial aggrandisement " : —
" This danger, I repeat, Austria, Prussin, and Germany ra^iy avert,
by acting with us, not in the manipulntion of protocols, wliich leave
everything to tlie exertions of the Western Powers, and have no
object but to make sure that no liarin is done to tlie enemy. Such a
course is dishonourable, immoral, leads to distrust, and ultimately to
direct hostility. Already the soreness of feeling here against Prussia
is intense."
And as to Prance, October 23, 1854 (p. 137) :
" In Boulogne tlie army, as I now hear, was in hopes to have to
fight next year with Prussia."
Much later, on October 29, 1855 (p. 385), the Prince
writes to Baron Stockmar : —
"The position talccn up by Austria and Prussia is alone to blame
for all ; and I tremble for the Nemesis!"
LIFE OF THE rillNCE CONSOKT. 109
14. Mr. Martin himself, describing this condition of
sentiment, says (p. 161) : —
"As the trngic events of this terrible war were more and more
devcluj)e(i, more and more koeuly was it felt that all its miseries
and carnaii;e might have been prevented, had the German Powi r.s
gone heart and hand with those of the West in telling liussia that
if she persisted in her aggression on Turkey, she would have to mui t
them also in the field."
When, however, the fight had been fought, and tlie
allied Powers were about to obtaiil the fruits of it in a
Treaty of Peace, then Prussia made her claim, as one of
the great Powers, to take part in the negotiations. With
respect to this claim, the Prince shows, on February 16,
1855 (p. 449), that it is inadmissible. Powers must not,
he says, take part in the great game of politics, without
having laid down their stake : —
^&
" Besides the question here is between Powers who have waged
war against eaeh otlier, and wish to conclude a peace. What riglit,
then, have others to interfere who have taken no part in the con-
flict, and have constantly maintained that their interests are not
touched by tlie matter in dispute, and that, therefore, they would.
not take any part in tlie business V"
Prussia was accordingly excluded from the arrange-
ments between the belligerents ; and only afterwards was
allowed to appear at the meetings of the Powers for the
purpose of considering the general and European arrange-
ments embodied in the Treaty of 1856.
The restrained, and sometimes mysterious, conduct of
Austria is repeatedly censured; but her case was entirely
distinct. Her occupation of the Principalities had at
least the air of a qualified co-operation ; her menace of an
entire junction with liie Allies (p. 425) hud to do with
110 LIFE OF THE PEFNCE CONSOUT.
tlie final succumbing of Uussia : and her moral weight
was with them thi'oi;ghout.
15. There are those who will di^aw comparisons, mutatis
nominihis, between the drama of 1853-6 and that of
1875-8. There was in each case an offender against the
law and peace of Europe ; Turkey, by her distinct and
obstinate breach of covenant, taking on the later occasion
the place which Russia had held in the earlier controversy.
There were in each case prolonged attempts to put dowu
the offence by means of European concert. In 1853-4,
these proceeded without a check until the eve of the war.
In 1875-7, the combination was sadly intermittent; but,
in the singular and unprecedented Conference at Con-
stantinople, it was, at least, on the part of the assembled
representatives, perfectly unequivocal. In 1854, the re-
fusal of Prussia to support words by acts completely
altered the situation; and in 187G-7, the assurance con-
veyed to Turkey from England, that only moral suasion
was intended, had the same effect. The difference was
that, in 1854-5, two great Powers, with the partial
support of a third, prosecuted by military means the work
they had undertaken ; in 1877 it was left to Russia alone
to act as the hand and sword of Europe, with the natural
consequence of weighting the scale with the question
what compensation she might claim, or would claim, for
her efforts and her sacrifices. This outline of a parallel
we may leave to the impartial criticism of our readers.
16. Thus far we have seen that the design of the Crimean
War was, in its groundwork, tlie vindication of Europem
law against an unprovoked aggression. It sought, thercifore,
to maintain intactthe condition of the menaced party against
the aggressor ; or in other Avords, to defend against Russia
the integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire.
LIFE OF TTIi: PRINCE COXSOKT. 1 1 1
The condition of the Chrisliuu subjects of the roilc in
general was a subject that had never before that e])0(h
come under the official consideration of Europe. The
internal government ef a country, it may safely be laid
down, cannot well become the subject of effective con-
sideration by other States, except in cases where it leads
to consequences in which they have a true locus standi, a
legitimate concern on their own particular account, or on
account of the general peace. In the case of Greece,
an insurrection growing into a ci\'il war, and disturbing
the Levant, had created this locus standi ; and the inter-
ference of three Powers, led by Groat Britain, had
redressed the mischief. Ko like door had then been
opened in the other Christian provinces of Turkey. The
dispute upon the Holy Places in 1853 had very partially
opened it, when liussia demanded for herself exclusively
an enlarged right of inter-s-ention on behalf of the Oriental
Christians. It thus became necessary, in determining the
policy of the future, to take notice of the condition of the
subject races. The greatest authoi'ities, and pre-emin-
ently Lord Stratford de liedelilfe, believed in the capacity
of the Porte by internal reforms to govern its subjects on
the principle of civil equality. The resolution therefore
was taken to pursue this end, but without that infringe-
ment of the Porte's sovereign rights which Pussia had
attempted ; and this resolution was formally embodied in
a protocol at the outbreak of the war by the Allies and by
Austria. The conclusion of the peace in 1856 fell to the
lot of Lord Palmerston and his colleagues. In the inte;est
of the Porte, and of the general peace of Europe, tlu-y
cancelled the rights of separate interference preSnously
possessed and claimed by Russia. They took the Piin-
cipalities under a direct European protection. On behalf
] 12 LIFE or THE PEIXCE COIS^SOET.
of the subject races generally, they embodied in the
treaty the record of the Hatti-humayoum, or edict issued
by the Sultan, which purported to establish securely the
civil equality of all races and religions in Turkey. This
was undoubtedly a covenant on the part of the Sultan.
But it was a covenant without penalty for breach ; for
the Powers expressly renounced any right to call him to
account, not however, generally, but only as growing out
of the communication he had made. It was thus, in
cancelling the Russian treaties with the Porte, that the
Powers of Europe first became, by the Treaty of Paris in
185G, responsible, in the last I'esort, for securing the
government of the subject races in Turkey on principles
of civil equality.
17. The terms demanded from llussia before the war had
been exceedingly moderate. When the war had broken
out, the Allies justly availed themselves of their under-
stood right to enlarge these terms. Now, in July 1854,
appeared on the ground for the first time the celebrated
Pour Points. After the fall of Sebastopol, they were
again enlarged ; a territorial cession, the extinction and
not merely the limitation of naval power in the Plack Sea,
and some provisions relating to the Baltic, were exacted
from Eussia. In like manner we are now (as far as
is known) witnessing the expansion of the minimised
demands of the Conference at Constantinople into a real
and elfective liberation of Bulgaria, the cession of Armenia,
and perhaps other conditions. But what it is curious to
note is the relative attitudes of the Court and tlie Cabinet
of Lord Palmerston at the time of the Peace. We must
look upon that Peace, according to the evidence of Mr.
Martin's volume, as due to the Cabinet, and as accepted
at Windsor on Constitutional grounds, ruthcrthan because
LIFE OF THE PEINCE CONSOET. 113
it was approved on its own merits. On March 21, 1856
(p. 470), the Prince writes: —
" The Peace is to be signed on Montlay. It is not sucli as we
could l.ave wished ; still infinitely to be preferred to the prosecu-
tion of the wur, with the present compliciition of general policy."
The views of the Queen are expressed in a letter to the
Emperor on April 3 (p. 473) : —
"Although sharing in the feeling of the majority of my people,
who Ihink this Peace is i)eriiai)S a little premature, I feel bound to
tell you that I approve highly of the terms in whii-h it is couclieil,
as a result not unworthy of the sacrifices made by us in comniou
dining this just war, and as insuring, so far as this is possible, tho
Btaliility and the equilibrium of Europe."
18. Even those who do not at all think the Peace to
have been premature must, as Avitnesses, corroborate the
opinion of Her Majesty with respect to the popular
sentiment at the time. This had, during the negotiations
of 1853, been calm and moderate in a high degree. It
was first thrown into excitement* by the destruction
of the Turkish fleet at Sinope ; which, being simply a
military coup, was, under some unknown code of senti-
ment, branded as a massacre. The sufferings of the
Army during the winter very greatly heightened, as was
luitural, the susceptibility of tlie country. But now in
October 1854 the Prince writes (p. 137) tliat men, "if
they have seen blood, are no longer tlie same, and are not
to be controlled. . . . The cry now is for the annihihition
of liussia." It was much to the credit of Lord Palmerstou
and his Cabinet, that the Peace was actually made ; for
* [Some would place the first symi)toms of disturbance in the
balance of tlu' jiopular mind a little, but ouly a very little, earlier. — •
W. E. G., 1878.]
I. I
114 LIFE OF THE PEIIv'CE CONSOET.
it was not without hazard to their popuharity that the
work was carried through.
19. Such is, we believe, a fair outline of the case of the
Crimean War, as it is exhibited in this volume. That
war passed through all the phases of popularity; the
people, and especially the newspapers, were so fond of it
while it lasted, that they were, as we have seen, reluctant
to let it end. It is an unquestionable fact, that Mr.
Cobden and Mr. Bright, who stoutly and most disinter-
estedly opposed it, and who, with the bloom of the Corn
Law triumph upon them, wore before it began the most
popular men in the country, lost for the time, by their
opposition to it, all hold upon the general public. The
war, however, soon and even rapidly waned in favour.
At length it came to be looked upon by many, if not by
most, as an admitted folly. The nation appeared to have
come round to the opinion of Cobden and of Bright.
And yet the war had attained its purpose ; which was, to
repress efEectually the aggression of Kussia, and to secure
to Tuikey breathing-time and full scope for the reform of
its government.
20. It may be said that, after all, she did not reform her
government. Most true ; but it is only within a short time
that this fact has become at all generally known to our
countrymen. And, moreover, this reform was not, pro-
perly speaking, the object of the war, but rather an aim
incidental to the conditions of the Peace. Wliy, theii,
did it fall into disfavour? Because men estimated its
object, not as it ai)pears in this volume, not as it was
drawn out in the minds of the statesmen who made tho
war, but according to their own unauthorised and exag-
gerated ideas of its aim, and of the position of the several
parties. Turkey, it had then been too commonly held,
LITE OF Tin; i-niNCE coxsokt. 115
was a young vigorous country, only wanting an open
and calm atmosphere to break out into the beauty and
bloom of a young civilisation. Eussia was to be cut into
morsels, or at the least to bo crij)pled by the amputation
of important members. The extravagance of these antici-
pations led to disappointment ; and the disappointment,
for which people had themselves, or perhaps their n(nvs-
papers, to thank, Avas avenged upon the Crimean War.
21. The persons wlio are really eutith;d to vaunt their
foresight in this matter, as superior alike to the views of
Sovereigns and of statesmen, are the few, the very few,
wlio objected to the war from the beginning to the end,
and who founded this objection not upon a ijhilanthropic
yet scarcely rational proscription of wai- under all circum-
stances and conditions, but upon a deeper insight into
the nature and foundations of Mahometan poAver over
Christian races, than liad fallen to the lot either of diplo-
macy or of statesmanship. Of these, perhaps the most
distinguished are Mr. Freeman ami Dr. Newman, both of
whom in 1853 proclainunl the hopeless natm-c, not of the
Ottoman as such, but of the Ottoman ascendancy. 15oth
have rcpul)lisbed their works of that date, and Mr Free-
man has taken a most active and able part in all the
recent controversies; in which, to the surprise of many
admirers, the living voice of Dr. Newman has not once
been heard.
22. Independently of its actual history, the Crimean
"War has in various unexpected ways left its mark upon us.
The fiictitious r(])utation, the thin gloss of character, with
which it invested Turkey, enaliled tbat most corrupt of
States to ape with effect one great vice of civilisation, by
accumulating in twenty years of peace a debt of two
hundred millions. The market value of this debt is at
I 2
116 LITE OF THE PKIXCE COXSOET.
present at most twenty millions ; and he -svould be a san-
guine man who could believe that, with the restoration of
peace, it could ever reach one-fourth of the sum which
Turkey pledged herself to pay. This vast amount was
divided between the profits of middlemen, the peculations
of Pachas, the unbounded cost of the profligacy of Sultans,
the payment of old dividends out of new capitals, and, it
must be added, the creation of a highly respectable iron
fleet, and of an excellent war materiel, which has cost the
Russians many a thousand lives. All this, "we appre-
hend, has been done mainly at the charges of France and
England, whose joint losses on the Turkish debt may be
thought to form a sort of disastrous postscript to the
Crimean alliance, and a pendant to the hundi'ed and fifty
millions which they spent upon the War.
23. There were two other changes, which became per-
ceptible after the conflict, and which ought, perhaps, to
be referred to it as a cause. One of them is the more
feverish condition of the public mind with regard to
aff'airs abroad.
Tlie long continuance of the French Revolutionary War,
and the numerous disasters which preceded a final triumph,
mainly due to the intoxication of Napoleon, fairly nau-
seated the public taste, or appetite, for arbitraments of
the sword. Moreover, there had been entailed upon us a
debt nominally of eight, but really of nine, hundri'd
millions ; a sum which probably represented more nearly
a third than a fourth part in value of the entire posses-
sions of the country, so that every man who thought him-
self owner of three thousand pounds, in trutli owned not
greatly more than two. Together with this Debt, thero
was an elaborate system of protective legislation, fettering
the industry by which alone our burdens could be borne
LIFE OF THE PRIIfCE CONSOHT. 117
or diininislicfl, and a widely spread, and but too natural
and intelligible, political disaffection. From 1815 until
the Crimean period, tbe nation maybe said to have formed
one great peace society ; and invasion of the island by a
hostile power, though it had been brouglit so near under
Napoleon, was hardly dreamt of.
24. During that period, a fresh guarantee of peace
seemed to be afforded us in a close and cordial alliance
with France, which seems to have been sublimated, so
to speak, into a very notable personal affection between
the reigning houses. In August 1855 Her Majesty,
habitually measured in thought and expression, says of
the Emperor (p. 351) : —
"I know few penj)Io whom I liayo felt involuniarily nioro inclined
to conliiie in, and speak unreseivcdlj- to; I sliuuld not fear .s;iyin<^
anything to him. I felt — I do not know how to express it — safe
with him."
A letter on the 29th of the same month ends as follows
(p. 522) :-
" Permettezqne j'exprimo ici tons les sentiments de tcndre amitie
et d'aft'eetion avec lesqncls je me dis, Sire et clier Frere, de Votie
Mnjeste Impe'rialo la bien bonne et affectionnee Soour et Amie,
"Victoria R."
And even of the Prince the Queen had reported (p.
351):—
"He quite admits tliat it is extraordinary how very miicli
attached one becomes to the Emperor, when one lives with him
quite at one's ease, and intimately."
In 1857, during the Indian Mutiny, our friendship was,
as it were, reconsecrated by the invitation of the Emperor
to send our troops through France on the way to the East.
Yet in 1859, after two short years, our Military and Naval
118 LIFE OF THE PEINCE CONSORT.
Estimates were largely augmented, and a new and very
costly scheme of fortifications was proposed, under the
influence of a general apprehension that invasion from
France had become a probable contingency, requiring
great schemes of defensive precaution. When the civil
war in America led to a vast development of military
power, British susceptibility fastened on the United States
as its object, and the belief became fashionable that we
were to be invaded in Canada. Wlien Germany had
obtained, by the War of 1870-1, the greatest triumph
recorded in her annals, then it was Germany that was to
invade us. In the intervals of these alarms, the danger
of India from Russia was always available to sustain this
morbid, and somewhat womanish, excitement.
25. The second of the changes, to which we have re-
ferred, has been the immense increase in the Military and
JS^aval Estimates since tlie Crimean War. Without entering
into minute details, it may be stated that our average annual
expenditure under these heads is much more than twice
the amount, at which it was placed in 1835 by the Con-
servative Government of Sir Robert Peel ; and that, after
setting aside special expenditure for secondary wars, the
average annual charge for the years 1830-50 did not
greatly exceed half what it has been for the years 1857-77.
It would not be fair to ascribe the whole of this change to
the altered humour of tlie public. Something considerable
is due to the chauge in armaments, and the increased value
of labour. Yet we believe it to be the fact that that
altered humour, assiduously wrought upon by the pro-
fessional spirit, and by the promoters of expenditure in
general, has been the main cause of the alteration, and
not a real and substantive necessity. There has been one
important change made, which has of itself constituted a
LIFE OF THE PRINCE CONSOKT. 119
great and most valuable economy. We have been enabled
to give up, in the greater part of our colonies, the dan-
gerous and costly practice of studdinjj them, under a pro-
fessed notion of defence, with small fractions of the British
army. This economy renders yet more striking that vast
increase of charge, of which only the increased wealth of
the country at large has made it, as a whole, so little
disposed to complain.
26. There have been arguments used on behalf of this
change of system. One of them has been the growth of
Continental armaments. But the chief powers of the
Continent have been engaged in wars on a large scale,
with which we have had nothing to do. France, Prussia,
and Austria have, each of them, had two such wars in the
last twenty years. Then it has been a favourite plea
that, by keeping liberal military and naval establishments,
we should be placed in a state of security and saved from
panics. But the result has been exactly the reverse.
While our expenditure remained low, the dread of inva-
sion was a thing hardly known. We make this statement
advisedly, notwithstanding the rofcrencc to panics in and
before 1852, mentioned by the Prince in February of that
year (' Life,' ii. 433). These supposed panics we take to
have been no more than whispers within the Az'my and the
Court. They did not really lay hold on the public mind.
But, since our charges began to be progressively and
largely augmented, we have had, it may be said, a con-
tinuing series of panics, with first one Power and then
another as the object of our ajjprehensions. Again, it has
been said, the Duke of Wellington was favourable to the
new system. And that is, in some measure, true of the
great Duke in his later years ; but whoever heard of it
when liL! was Prime Minister, or before old age was upon
120 LIPE OP THE PRINCE CONSOKT.
him? It was as he approached fourscore, during the
Administration of Sir Robert Peel, that the Duke became
an alarmist. But it is unquestionable that his fears were,
notwithstanding his great authority, regarded by that pru-
dent Minister and his colleagues as due to the commencing
weakness of age, and were not allowed to act upon the
amounts of force which from year to year they proposed
to Parliament for the defence of the country.
27. Bi:t, lastly, it was found very convenient to ascribe
the very sad sufferings and shortcomings of the winter spent
before Sebastopol to the previous economies of the time of
peace. Evidently an impression had been made to this
effect (p. 486) upon the just and intelligent mind of the
Queen herself. But what is the warrant for it? The
war broke out ; and we, who had no pretensions to be a
great military power, actually fought the battle of the
Alma with a somewhat larger number of men than France,
at that time the first military Power in the world, had
been able to find and transport for the purpose. It is
said, and is believed, that after that battle the British
General felt a confidence in the power of the Allies at
once to master Sebastopol, which the French did not
feel, and that it was their negative which prevented the
attempt. Next, we, who had been paralysed forsooth by
economy, had assigned to us the right flank to the south
of the fortress, which was the post of danger, while the
French forces lay in comparalivc security between the
British and the sea. Upon us, in consequence, came the
heavy stress of Inkermann, and right well did our gallant
soldiers bear it. True, the ranks of our Army were after-
wards miserably thinned by sickness. The country was
justly irritated, and demanded inquiry. The demand was
met not with a single inquiry, but (little to our credit)
LIFE OF THE rraXCE COXSORT. 121
vrhh no less than three. Tliere was one by a Committee of
Parliament; one by Eoyal Commissioners sent to the spot;
and one by a Eoard of Officers at Chelsea. They delivered
three different and conflicting verdicts ; but no one of
them found that the cause of the mischief lay in par-
simony practised before the war ; the charge is one often
and conveniently made, but never proved.
28. It is true, without doubt, that oiir organisation was
deficient in various branches. But it has never been
shown that the really needful improvements might not
have been made within those general limits of military
charge which subsisted during the reign of comparative
economy. The truth we believe to be this. Our military
authorities were wedded to the antiquated system of
soldiering for life, which stands in diametrical opposition
to the laws of military practice now universally acknow-
ledged. As long as that system prevailed, it was natundly
deemed the most essential point of all to keep up a force,
numerically considerable, of old soldiers. To this end not
only persuasion, but something like artifice, was addressed.
So many i-egiments were kept in British Korth America,
80 many in the West Indies, and in other Colonial gar-
risons ; because this dispersion presented the aspect of a
quasi-military service, and a portion of the army was, as it
were, kept out of view. The economies were accordingly
thrown to some extent iipon the wrong points ; the mafcricl
was very low ; a long period was allowed to pass without
measures — by far the most vital of all — for improving the
condition of the soldier ; and the impulse towards those
measures, and towards real reform in the Army, when it did
come, was a civil rather than a military impulse. Indeed,
there is no reason to doubt that in his later years the Duke
of "Wellington, alarmist as he had become, was also an
122 LIFE OF THE PEINCE CONSOKT.
obstacle to the detailed and toilsome work of administra-
tive reform in tlie Army. It had, however, been fairly
begun under his pupil, Lord Hardinge, alike an able
administrator and an excellent man; and it was in course
of prosecution when the Crimean AVar broke upon us.
29. The Prince could not but bring from Germany
military conceptions which were, as to certain aims, much
in advance of those current among ourselves ; and at the
epoch of the war, as well as before it, his active mind was
turned to the consideration of our deficiencies. He laid
his views before the Government of Lord Aberdeen in an
able Memorandum (p. 185), which contains much import-
ant matter. He had, indeed, so early as in his letter of
February 19, 1852, to the Duke of Wellington, suggested
the invaluable system of reserves, which is still so feebly
and inadequately worked. In other respects, however,
his paper can hardly be said to move upon the lines of
Army reformers generally, since it docs not include any one
of three points which with them were essential ! namely,
short service for the men, abolition of purchase for the
officers, and the abandonment of the expense of garrison
forces in colonies other than military posts.
30. We have already pointed out that tlie character of
the Volume before us is historical quite as much as biogra-
phical, and we shall further notice in succession two or
three points of interest on which it throws a light.
The attachment of the Sovereign and her Consort to 8ir
liobcrt Peel, the Duke of Wellington, and Lord Aberdeen,
led them to watch with interest the working of the
Aberdeen Cabinet, in which the Peelites held no less than
six offices, besides having four members of their small
party in the most iuiportnnt positions outside the Cabinet.
The six Cabinet Ministers were Lord Aberdeen, the Duke
LIFE OF THE nUNCi; COXSOKT. 123
of Arp-yll,* Sir James Graham, the Duke of Xewcastlc,
;Mr. (Uadstone, ami ^fr. Sydney Herhert. The four
outside the door were Mr. Cardwcll at the Board of Trade,
Lord Cannini? at the Post Office, Lord St. Germans,
Yiceroy of Irehmd. and Sir John Young, Chief Secretary.
Another Cahinet Jlinistcr, Sir William ^Eolesworth, was
perhaps more nearly associated with tliem than with the
AVliii's. Holding this large sliare of official power, the
Peelitcs did not bring more than about thirty independent
votes to the support of the Ministry, in addition to which
they neutralised tlie Opposition of perhaps as many more
members who sat on the other side of the House. Mr.
Mai-tin says (p. 90), "It was apparent to all the workl
that no cor(lial unanimity existed between the Peelito
section of the Ministry and their colleagues."
31. This is an entire mistake. It must be stated, to the
credit of all parties, but especially of the ^Yhig section of
that Cabinet, that although the proportions of official
power were so different from those of the voting strength
in Parliament, there was no sectional demarcation, nor
any approach to it, within the Cabinet. In proof of this
statement, it may be mentioned that when, in the recess
of 1853-4, Lord Palmerston had resigned his office on
account of the impending Reform Bill, and it was desired,
to induce him to reconsider his decision, the two persons
who were chosen for the duty of communicating to him
the wish of his colleagues were the Duke of Newcastle
and Mr. Gladstone. Not even when the Eastern Question
became the engrossing subject of the day was a sectional
* The Duke of Argyll was invited at a very early age, on account of
his hiijh personal character ami his talent, to enter the Cabinet oC Lurd
Aliercii'on, but he diil nut beloUi; to the ex-olKcial corps who passed by
the na\iie of Peelites, while he was iu political accordance with them.
124 LIFE OF THE rRIXCE CONSORT.
division to be tracocl. It may be true, if nuances are to be
minutely investigated, that the Peclite colour was on the
whole a shade or two more pacific than the Whig ; but
even this is true of the leading individuals rather than of
the sections, and it may be safely affirmed that, of all the
steps taken by that Government during the long and com-
plicated negotiations before the Crimean War, there was
not one which was forced, as will sometimes happen, by a
majority of the Cabinet upon the minority. Eifts there
were without doubt in the imposing structure, but they
were due entirely to individual views or pretensions, and
in no way to sectional antagonism.
32. The retirement of Lord Aberdeen was a subject of
grief to the Court and to his friends ; but he was so far
fortunate that, having been made the victim of a cry, partly
popular and partly due to political feeling, he was saved,
as was the Duke of Newcastle, from the responsibility of
an act of difficult and doi;btful choice. Their friends, Sir
James Graham, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Sidney Herbert,
were less happy. It was their fate to join the Cabinet of
Lord Palmerston, formed at a critical juncture, after some
delay and difficulty, and then to quit it within a fortnight
or three weeks. The cause was simply and solely this.
The Aberdeen Government had resisted, unanimously and
strongly, the appointment of what was termed the Scbas-
topol Committee. The Palmerston Government set out
with the intention of continuing that resistance. Its
Head, and the majority of its members, arrived at the
conclusion that the resistance would be ineffectual ; and
they determined to succumb. The Peclites adhered to
their text ; and, as the minority, they in form resigned,
but in fact, and of necessity, they were driven from their
offices. Into the rights of the question we shall not
LIFE OF THE riilXCE COXSOKT. 125
inter; but, undoubtedly, they were condemned by the
general opinion out of doors. Moreover, as in the letting-
out of water, the breach, once made, was soon and con-
siderably widened. They had been parties in the Cabinet,
not only to the war, but to the extension, after the out-
break had taken place, of the conditions required from
llussia. But when it appeared that those demands were
to be still further extended, or were to be interpreted with
an unexpected rigour, and that the practical object of the
Ministerial policy appeared to be a great military success
in prosecuting the siege of Sebastopol to a triumphant
issue, they declined to accompany the ^linistry in their
course. Again they met with the condemnation of the
country ; and the Prince Consort, while indicating his
high opinion of the men, has recorded (p. 298 et alihi) his
adverse judgment. One admission may perhaps be made
in their favour. In the innumerable combinations of the
political chessboard, there is none more difficult for an
upright man than to discern the exact path of duty, when
he has shared in bringing his country into war, and when,
in the midst of that war, he finds, or believes himself to
find, that it is being waged for pui'poses in excess of those
which he had approved.
33. The course of the Sebastopol inquiries likewise
tended to show that the high Constitutional doctrine which
they had set up could not be infringed with impunity.
They had held that the inquiry was an executive duty, and
could only be couduct(>d aright by a Commission under the
authority of the Crown. The country felt, or thouglit, it
had obtained a triumph by the appointment of a Parlia-
mentary Committee, which was capped, as we have said,
by a Commission, this in its turn being traversed by a
Board of Officers. The Committee censured the Ministers ;
126 LIFE OF THE PEINCE CONSOET.
though it was phiin that, in the business of supply, they,
and Mr. Sidney Herbert in particular, with an indefatig-
able diligence, had run far ahead of any demands received
from the camp. The Commission censured the executive
departments of the army on the spot. The Board of
Officers acquitted the military, and censured the com-
missariat at home. No attempt was permitted to try the
question to its core, as between these conflicting judg-
ments. Mr. Roebuck very properly made a motion to
bring the Report of his Committee under the consideration
of the House, when the other two competing verdicts
would have been compared with it, and with one another.
The Peelites supported his motion. But he was defeated
by a large majority ; so that the question Avhich broke up
one Cabinet, and formidably rent another, which agitated
England and sorely stained her military reputation in the
eyes of Europe, remained then, and remains now, untried
by any court of final appeal. Nor did this determined
smothering of so great a matter cause public displeasure.
On the contrary, as ~Sh\ Martin observes (p. 308), it gave
satisfaction. Tlie feeling, he says tndy, was turned into
other channels. " The past could not be mended — best
leave it alone." The nation was befooled ; and befooled
with pleasure, and by its own act.
34. A sui'vey of these years, conducted in an historic
spirit, will, we think, leave on the mind, among other
impressions, a sense of the great incidental evils which
accompany the breaking up of those singularly, but fiuely
and strongly, organised wholes, our known political parties.
Together with Sir Robert Peel, nearly the whole official
corps of the Conservatives was discharged in 184(5; and
the discharge proved to be a final one. The Tories, when
brought into office, had to supply the highest places with
La& Angeles, Cak
LTFE Of TUE PUINCE C0N30KT. 127
raw, that is to say, fresh, recruits. This could not he
without some detriment to the public ser\-ice ; but ju.stiee
requires the admission that the body of English gentiy,
trained in the English foshion, affords material of great
aptitude for public lil'c. There were evils on the other side
much more serious than this. It took no less than thir-
teen years to eli'cct the final incor{)oration of the Peelites
into the Liberal party. When they took their places
among its leaders, the official staff on one side was
doubled, as on the other side it was almost annihilated.
It is possible that to this duplication ought greatly to be
attributed those personal discontents and political cross-
purposes for which the Liberal party has of late years
been disastrously remarkable. Moreover, for eleven out of
these thirteen years of disembodied existence, the Peelites
were independent members. They were like roving ice-
bergs, on which men could not land with safety, but with
which ships might come into perilous collision. Their
weight was too great not to count, but it counted first
this way and then that. It is not alleged against them
that their conduct was dishonourable, but their politiral
action was attended with much public inconvenience ; and
even those who think they were enlightened statesmen
may feel that the existence of these sensibly large segments
of a representative chamber, in a state of detachment from
all the organisation of party, acts upon the Parliamentary
vessel as a cargo of corn in bulk acts, in foul weather, on
the trim of a ship at sea. Again, as a party, they had
been, like their leader, pacific and economical. Tbe
effects of their separation from official Liberalism during
the first Government of Lord Palmerston were easily trace-
able in the policy of that Government as to various
matters of importance. From tliis time onwards Lord
128 UFE OF THE PRINCE CO]SrSORT.
Aberdeen was in retirement, and Peelism ceased to be, as
Buch, in contact with the Court, at which it had certainly
weighed as an important factor of political opinion.
35. The Prince resembled Lord Aberdeen in this, that,
with an eminently just and liberal mind, he clung to
traditions of Continental policy, or these traditions clung to
him which were by no means uniformly liberal. We cannot
but trace his hand in the recognition (p. 44) of the Five
Great Powers as having been, " since the peace of 1815,"
the guarantors of treaties, the guardians of civilisation,
the champions of right. AVhen Sardinia was struggling
for the liberation of Italy, and when she had acted as a
very timely ally in the Crimean ^\'ar, Belgium is emphati-
cally described (p. 501) as " the only satisfactory child of
the new epoch " : and in conversation with Louis Napoleon
in 1854, the Prince wished, indeed, that Austria were out
of Lombardy for Austria's own sake, but held that she
could not recognise its title to an Italian nationality, and
that she must hold it for the sake of her military frontier
(p. 119). But the reconstituted Italy has thus far been
in European politics a Power eminently Conservative ; and
the only fear is lest she should be seduced, by the bad
example of other Powers, into speculations and schemes of
territorial aggrandisement.
3G. We have still to offer a remark on the important
subject of the Danubian Principalities, which is touched by
Mr. Martin. Subsequently to the Peace of Paris, Moldavia
and Wallachia were united into one State under the name
of Roumania, and after a time there was placed at its head
a foreign Prince. To this measure Austria and the Porto
were strongly opposed ; and we grieve to say that the
influence of official England was thrown into their scale.
Its adoption was mainly due to the sound instinct and the
LIFE OF THE PRINCE CONSORT. 129
decided action of the people of the t^vo Provinces ; Avliich
Russia at the very least thought it prudent not to thwart,
and which France energetically favoured, and helped on-
wards to a successful issue. Lord Clarendon expressed
the opinion (p. 466) that, if these Provinces were united
under a foreign Prince, such a Prince would in a few years
be able to declare his independence.
37. Mr. ^lartin, strangely enough to our mind, says that
events have shown how just were these apprehensions
(p. 465). Is this just ? AVhat are the facts ? That for
twenty years, though the misgovernment of Turkey would
at any moment have afforded a pretext, lloumania remained
in nearly motionless submissiun to the suzerainty of the
Porte ; that she did absolutely nothing to assist the abortive
Bulgarian rebellion of May 1876 ; that she showed no
synqiathy with the Servian and ^Montenegrin wars of that
summer ; and that she did not take a step of any kind in
opposition to the Porte, until the overpowering might of
llussia demanded a military passage through her territory,
and virtually forced her into active hostilities. Had Turkey
fulfilled the promises of civil equality which she has
shamelessly and obstinately broken, but which Lord
Clarendon honestly believed she would be able and dis-
posed to keep, what opportunity would Roumania have
had, even if so inclined, to rise against Turkey ? Did not
her quietude, during nearly two years of troubles, partly
bursting, and partly festering, on her frontier, show how
wise it had been to give her contentment and some
solidity of existence ? If Moldavia and Wallachia had
continued in tlieir state of severance and weakness, it
would have either been not more difficult, but much
easier, for Russia to agitate them by intrigue duiiug
the tranquil years 1856-75, or to issue her commands in
I. £
130 LIFE OF THE PETNCE CON^SORT.
1877 for supplying a free passage through their land to
her armies.
38. But we cannot ha\re any quarrel with Mr. Martin.
We must part from him in the good humour which gratitude
inspires. In the production of his work, he is without
doubt ministering to the just demand of a fond and un-
quenchable affection in the highest place. But he is also
performing a great service to the country : he gives the
permanence of the written record to a life of public duty,
which is certainly the most conspicuous that the nine-
teenth century has witnessed. It is perhaps also the
noblest and the purest : the only rival to it in these
respects, that we are bokl enough to name, is the life of
the noble-minded man who died as Earl Spencer, but
who was better known as Lord Althorp.
We venture to hope that Mr. Martin's labours will not
end either witli three volumes, or Mith the fourth ; but
that when his work is completed, he will with new
energy reduce it to a form suited for a wide popular
circulation. Outside the circle of domestic affections, the
proper place for the Prince's memory to repose in is the
heart of the people.
V.
THE COUNTY FRANCHISE, AND MR. LOWE
THEREON*
1 . Mr. LowEf and I are, in some respecta, not ill fitted for
a friendly duel on the subject of the representation of the
people in Parliament. He did not confer, and I did not
inflict, a speech on the House of Commons, when the sub-
ject was recently under discussion. We are agreed, as I
believe, on most questions of politics, indeed rather closely
agreed on some important matters, such as public thrift,
in which few agree with either of us ; and we are united,
as I hope, in mutual regard. Moreover, we have already,
many years ago, exhibited opposite leanings upon the
question whether the general idea of extension of the
suffrage is one Avhich ought to be viewed with favour, or
the reverse. For my part, whatever may be the case with
Mr. Lowe, I have this chance at least of relative impar-
tiality, that I look upon the cause as one which calls upon
me for adhesion as an individual, but not for the guidance
of others in any larger ciipaeity. But further, our history
has now reached a point, at which it is well that the sub-
ject of a further extension of popular fi-anchises should be
" bolted to the bran." For w(! are again, as we were in
1854, in 1860, and in 1866, open to one of the greatest
* Reprinted from The Nineteenth Century for November 1877.
t See Fortn'<jhtlij Review, October 1877.
K 2
132 THE COrXTY FEANCmSE,
moral dangers that can beset the politics of a self-governed
country — the danger of having a great question insincerely
dealt with.
2. By the large majority of the Liberal party the prin-
ciple of such an extension was adopted long ago. It has now
the deliberate sanction of the leader in each House ; and
neither Lord Granville nor Lord Hartington is a man given
to deal lightly with serious matters. The Ministers have
resisted it with arguments only temporary and conven-
tional ; arguments which a breath may at any moment
blow away. Their real objection to conceding it is plain.
It is not a definite fear of the vote which the agricultural
householders would give, but a fear of irritating and
estranging the farming class by empowering their labourers
to give a vote at all ; by placing in a minority that class
which now has the command of the agricultural constitu-
encies, and thus exchanging a certain and well-disciplined
support for a doubtful many-sided chance. In a word,
they are playing with the question. They desire the
credit of a settlement, and are ready to step in between
the Liberal leaders and their work ; but they are unwill-
ing to provoke dangers to their party, now asleep. The
only thing that can be predicted of them with certainty
is, that they will do the exact opposite of that which was
done by Sir Robert Peel in 1829 and 1846: they will
handle the subject, to the best of their judgment, as one
which may legitimately be used, either by adoption or by
a faint and procrastinating repulse, as shall best suit the
interests of their party. Eut this is a motive wliich, even
in cases where it may be fairly entertained, cannot always,
for various reasons, be professed. So the speech of the
present majority will say one thing, while its heart con-
ceals another. Ilere and there may possibly be found a
AND MK. LOWE THEEEOy. 133
Liberal -whose line Avill be not identical, but parallel, so
as to strike the front of the same adversaries, or convei'g-
ing, so as to reach the same conclusion.
3. It is in this sense that we are in danger of having tlie
question insincerely dealt with. Eut not by Mr. Lowe.
Upon the whole, I think we have not, in the whole array
of our public men, a more ingenuous, a more artless, any
more than we have a more logical or trenchant, rcasoner.
"Whatever subject he touches, liis first object is, like Ajax,
to drag it into light : into such a light as Tennyson would
call a fierce light. Those who do not agree with him
may say that it is a liglit like the lights of Eembrandt,
which leave much of the picture in deep shadow ; but, if
w^e think so, it is open to us to do our best to get these
also under the eye of day. And I believe myself to
agree with Mr. Lowe in a proposition which, as I think,
lies deeper tlian any of the particular arguments directly
bearing upon the question.
4. It is this : that the liberties of our fellow- subjects
form a theme of too high a nature to be determined by the
interests of party. They ought to be extended, irrespec-
tive of their effects on party, to the furthest point com-
patible with the well-being of the Constitution, with the
established public order under which they live. They
are a gift so good in themselves, so full of educating
power, so apt to enhance and multiply the aggregate of
the nation's energies, that nothing can equitably be placed
in competition w4th them, unless it be the security of that
public order. How far this competition ever has occurred,
or is likely to occur, among us, I will inquire by-and-byc.
For the present, I only urge that the principles of party
combination are unduly extended and uplifted, when they
are either openly avowed, or inwardly permitted to operate,
134 THE COrifTT FRANCHISE,
as a reason either for withholding liberty, or for endanger-
ing that public order. Party is a legitimate and necessary,
but essentially a secondary and subordinate, instrument
for promoting the public good. Mr. Lowe, with perfect
consistency, compromised in 1866 the power and position
of his party on the principle which he was right in deem-
ing higher than party (had it been at issue); namely, that
the Constitution ought not to be put into the hands of
men unfit to work it. He is justified in protesting against
every renewed indication from the Tories that they mean
to repeat the manoeuvre, the plot, the education, call it
what we may, of 1867; and in calling on them, though
he might as well call upon the statues of the Vatican, or
the bones and vases disinterred by Dr. Schliemann, to
decide this question on its merits, whatever they may be.
But he and I must alike be prepared to stand the recoil of
our own guns, even though the ' ' kick" may be inconvenient.
AYe have no right to withhold the household franchise
from the counties on the ground that the peasantry will
in the long-run follow the parson and the squire, so as to
strengthen the hands of the Tory party ; and that it is
better for the country to have a more restricted constitu-
ency in the main Liberal, rather than a more enlarged one
in the main Tory. Against this I set up the proposition
that whatever be the eff'ect on party, it is better that a
nation preferring self-government should be self-governed;
that the basis should be consistent as well as wide ; and
that privilege and franchises should not be tossed about
by caprice, but distributed with a firm and an even hand.
5. Before 18;i2, the Parliamentary Constitution of this
country was full of flaws in theory, and blots in practice,
that would not bear the light. But it was, notwith-
Btanding, one of the wonders of the world. Time was its
AND MR. LOWE TnEEEON. 135
parent ; Silence was its nurse. Until the American Revo-
lution had been accomplished it stood alone (among all
great countries) in the world. "Whatever its defects, it
had imbibed enough of the free air of heaven to keep the
lungs of liberty in play. Some of its worst deeds, such
as the repeal in 1754 of the law passed the year before in
favour of the Jews,* were due not to its excluding, but to its
admitting, the influence of popular opinion. It did much
evil, and it left much good undone ; but it either led, or
did not lag behind, the national feeling and opinion. If
on any great long-enduring (question it was in conflict with
the wish of the majority of the nation, that question was
the exclusion of the Stuarts from the throne : and who
shall say that here the nation was right, and the Pavlia-
ment was wrong ? If the American war and the Revo-
lutionary war were great errors, they were not less
pardonable than they were great ; and in any case they
were wars undertaken in consonance with the feeling of
the country. Upon the whole, perhaps, the domestic
policy, which for a decade of years followed the close of
the great Revolutionary war, forms the most discreditable
chapter in its history : but this is only a repetition of a
lesson, that mankind is all too dull and slow to learn ; the
lesson, that war, except it be fought for liberty, is the
most deadly enemy of liberty.
6. Tlu! Parliamentary Constitution of our fathers was a
mosaic ; like that Cabinet, the Cabinet of Lord Chatham,
the composition of which has been embedded, by the
eloquent description of Mr. Rurke, in the permanent
literature of the country. The forms and colours of the
bits tliat made it up were indeed yet more curious. It
* Soe May, Const. Hid. ii. 266 (third ed.).
136 THE COUXTT FEANCHISE,
included every variety of franchise, from pure nomination
by an individual down or up to household suffrage ; say
from zero to what is deemed infinity. It gave to the
aristocracy, and to landed wealth, the preponderance, of
wliich the larger part has now been practically handed
over to wealth at large. Subject always to this confes-
sion, it made an admirable provision for diversity of ele-
ments, for the representation of mind, for the political
training, from youth upwards, of the most capable material
of the country. In those days, the idea of the representa-
tion of labour by members of the labouring class had not
come to the birth : if it had, who shall say that greater
difficulty than now need have been experienced in giving
it practical effect? Generally, in the special respects I
have named, the old Parliamentary Constitution was,
I believe, intrinsically more favourable to the public
interests than our present system. It might also be held,
that expenditure as a whole was more economical, and
that mere cliques and sections of the community had not
means equal to those, which they now so assiduously
employ, for pushing their own interests against the in-
terests of the nation. But it is hard to say what shai'e
of the mischief may be due to the more highly organised
state of society, the greater activity of its forces, the
readier intercommunication of its parts ; not to mention
the large cost incurred in the recognition and supply of
real public wants, to which formerly no heed, or no
effectual heed, was given. It may, however, well be
doubted whether, if Parliament had sooner been reformed,
Roman Catholic Emancipation would have been passed as
early as in 1829; and whether, if it had been reformed
later, the Com Laws might not, with loss of strain and
effort, have been repealed before 1846.
AUD ME. LOAVE inEEEON. 137
7. One of my oLjects in this biicf retrospect is to suggest
what pai'ty prejudice appears to forget, that the true
character of our working Parliamentary system is not
determined exclusively by the condition of the franchise
and what is termed the distribution of scats. Another is
to make an apology for those who felt that, in surrendering
the former system as a whole, to substitute for it the
scheme of 1832, they were committing themselves to a
series of changes, and not to one alone. The convictions
of men like Mr. Eurke, Lord Grenville, Mr. Canning, ^Ir.
Ilallam, in its favour, represent something much higher,
much more historical, than has since been, or could be,
arrayed in defence of schemes, essentially intermediate
and provisional, against further modification. Tor be it
remembered, that the old system was not condemned
principally for its working demerits. With the repeal of
the Test Act and tlie Eoman Catholic disabilities, Avith
the initiation of Free Trade and the retrenchment of the
Wc'llington Government in such fresh remembrance, it
hardly could be so condemned. It was for anomaly and
inequality amounting to caricature ; for the representation
of the Peerage in a popular chamber ; above all, it was
upon the general doctrine of self-government, and for the
general exclusion of a class, whose fitness none dared to
impeach, from the franchise.
8. That class was the middle class. But that class does
not to my knowledge carry upon it, like the Kings of the
heroic age, any exclusive note of divine descent. If it
had no such note, and if it was admitted for its quali-
fications, tlien we must inquire, as occasion offers, what
other portions of the adult male community, or whether
indeed the mass of that community, under only the con-
ditions of due veiification and of order, has its qualifi-
138 THE COUNTY FEANCHISE,
cations also. Here we have, without doubt, a fair subject
of argument. But it will not do to plead the formidable
aspect of a long list of ciphers, and to say we have
admitted so many that we are tired, and really cannot
admit any more.
9. Xor I think will it suffice to threaten, as Mr.
Lowe threatens, us with a tumble down the precipice,
towards which he says we are rapidly gliding, and
at the foot of which we shall be smashed to atoms.
The argument has lost its force by its repetition, like the
promises of Turkish reform. We have the advantage of
experience. We have fallen down these precipices, and
know what it is. AVe fell down a precipice in 1832, a
much higher precipice than any now before us, and were
greatly the better for it. We fell down another precipice
in 18G7, and we are, to say the least, none the worse.
"Leaping in the dark" I do not recommend; but I con-
tend that there is light enough. The middle class were
admitted, because they were loyal to our institutions,
sober and thoughtful in disposition, having access to
political information, reasonably capable of forming a
judgment on public affairs, well disposed to defer to the
o])inion and advice of those who might be more capable
still. In 1867 we determined, and in that year and
1869 we gave full effect to the determination, that the
householders in towns were so far possessed of these
qualities in the aggregate, that they likewise ought to
possess the franchise. And now the question is raised
whether it ouglit not, on like grounds, to be given to
householders in the counties. There is not one of them who,
if he moved into a town and dwelt in the meanest hovel
there, would not have what we want to give him. Prima
facit they have had a plea, at least since the Act of 1867.
AJTD MR. LOWE THERKOIT. 109
To get rid of this plea, we must put forth something in bar
of it. Some answer or other must be lodged. What shall
the demurrer be ? Shall it be inferiority of qualification ?
Shall it be the essential difference, or the Constitutional
distinction, between county and town constituencies ? Or
shall it be this : we have made one false stop already ; it
is irretrievable ; but we will not make another. Or are
we to be deterred from political liberality by mechanical
difficulties, and by the assumed necessity of an increase
in the costliness, already so mischievous, of elections ?
10. 1 will endeavour to deal with these objections suc-
cessively. But let me begin with dismissing very briefly
any objection founded on the idea of essential distinction
between town and county representation. We have too
many towns, both real and considerable, and too large a
town population, in the counties, and too many little bits
of counties figuring under the name of towns, to be
warranted in urging this distinction as a bamer to a great
enfranchisement. "We may still, if we like, mark off our
county representation proper by the present, or even by
enlarged, franchises from property ; but most men will
agree that the argument upon county household-suffrage
must be decided on grounds and pleas other than this.
1 1 . And first, as to the great matter, that of qualification.
There is really, if we carry the strict sense of the word to
its extreme, no such thing. Xo man is perfectly qualified
either for judging or for conducting the affairs of this
great empire. It is a question of degree, who are the
least disqualified; and "qualification" is therefore a
relative term. Now one element of qualification, thus
understood, is interest. This element is found in county
householders, at least as much as in those of the town :
fcr itinerancy tends to abate the full sense of it, and
140 THE COUNTY FRANCHISE,
itinerancy prevails less in counties than in towns. Another
is the disposition, the desire, to judge rightly and patrioti-
cally of public questions. Here the greatest disabling
causes are selfishness and passion. Now, in regard to
selfishness, the more formidable of the two, a long expe-
rience impresses me with the belief that this e\Hl temper
docs not grow in intensity as we move downwards in
society from class to class. I rather believe that, if a
distinction is to be drawn in this respect, it must be
di-awn in favour of, and not against, the classes (if such
they should be called) which are lower, larger, less
opulent, and, after allowing fully for trades unions, less
organised.
12. As to popular passion, its serious operation in our
own time and country is rare. "When it does operate
upon a mass of men, a very formidable case may conceiv-
ably arise. It is difficult to reason with the passions of
an individual or of a few ; with those of a multitude,
once aroused, it is impossible. But it is also obvious that,
so far as the passionate susceptibilities of multitudes of
men deserve to be taken into account, the topic may
be used far more effectively against those whom we
have admitted than against those whom we have not.
The town populations dwell in masses closely wedged
together, and they habitually assemble in crowds for
the purposes of many of their occupations. It is in
this state of juxtaposition that political electricity flies
from man to man with a violence which displaces judg-
ment from its seat, and carries ofE individual minds in a
flood by the resistless rush of sympathy. The carter, the
ploughman; the cowherd, the great bulk, in fact, of
agricultural labourers, work habitually in absolute or
comparative dispersion, and, with them, sober-mindedness
AND MR. LOWE TilEREOK, 141
might more readily lapse into gloom and torpor, than
mount into dangerous excitement.
13. As to mental training, indeed, and intellectual com-
petency, the case is somewhat dill'erent. Yet even here
one of the great advantages of a wide suffrage comes into
view. It is, that every section of the community knoAvs
something, and something material to the general weal,
wliich the other sections do not know. Every section
can thus make a contribution to the common stock which,
without its intervention, must be wanting. There are
some questions on which a lower class not only may,
but must be, better qualified to judge than a higher
one. With respect to intellectual, not moral, competency
generally, I admit that it is leisure, training, and culture
which give not only the broadest and firmest, but the
most elastic capacity for the treatment of public questions.
"Were we beings of pure intellect, or were the operations
of the understanding unaffected by interest and " partial
affection," the argument would be very strong for some-
thing like the Russian Government: for giving a monopoly
of ])olitical power to the most highly educated persons.
And I own it appears to me that this is the legitimate
upshot of many of the arguments used in 1866, and again
at this time, against the enlargement of the suffrage. The
answer is, that no single portion of the community is fit
to be trusted with absolute power; and that those portions
of it which have less of leisure, of intellectual training,
and of general capacity for affairs, may notwithstanding
make up for the deficiency by a disposition practically to
admit its existence, and to lean, freely and confidingly, on
the judgments of those who have superior o})portunities,
and have also, or are supposed to have, superior fitness of
all kinds. Independence, of which I have yet to speak,
142 THE COUNTY FKAKCHISE,
and which is justly reckoned among the valuable qualifi-
cations of an elector, is the countei'poise to this (so to call
it) adjective tendency; but the two are not, except in
their abuse, contradictory one to the other.
14. At this point let us suspend for a moment the process
of handling this and that particular argument ; and let us
look at the question a little more at large according to
political justice : that is to say, accortling to common
sense, applied to the particular province in which lie such
questions of right and wrong as arise out of the relations
of political society. For the present, I shall so far pro-
ceed upon a petitio principii as to assume (1) that we
are considering the case of adult males, neither disquali-
fied by mental infirmity, nor deprived of liberty on
account of crime, nor loading the community with the
cost of their subsistence ; (2) that in questions of political
fitness we have to deal with this or that section in the
mass, and not with the eccentric and exceptional cases of
individuals ; (3) that in practice the question before us is
simply that of household suffrage in the counties.
15. There is something so shocking to the nerves in the
idea of anything like universal suff'rage, especially if com-
bined with equal electoral districts, that, in the ears of
many, it sounds like universal murder. Not even in the
white heat of his alarm does Mr. Lowe believe that we
are as yet sufficiently depraved to entertain it. "That will
come in its own sweet time . . . but not just yot.""^'
Let us look a little more closely into the face of this
monster, and tiy to scan its features. What does the
thing mean ? It means that adult males, subjects of Her
Majesty, not specially disabled, and duly identified by
FurtnigJdly Review, Oct. 1876, p. 445.
AND MR. LOWE THEREON. 113
public authority as to place and particulars, should have
the power of exercising by a vote an influence on tlie
government of the country.
Now about rights I will not argue : for the very intro-
duction of the word is apt to have a maddening efl'ect ;
and many, who will teach and preach to the uttermost,
and without the smallest qualification, the right of pro-
perty, as if it were the Eleventh commandment, seem to
forget that, apart from degree, it is in kind the same as
the right of franchise — that is to say, it is good for
the community, and its limits and conditions are to be
decided by the community, through its proper organs.
Let us theu reason upon another line, that of qualilication.
There are some reasons why it is well that each man
should have such a power as the vote confers. First, by
his rates, his taxes, or his use of consumable articles, he
is a contributor to the public revenue. Secondly, by his
labour (we are not now dealing with the owner of capital)
he is a contributor to the public wealth. Thirdly, in
more than nine cases out of ten, he has given pledges to
society by constituting himself the head of a family, in
which is lodged a large part of his aftections. Fourthly,
as he is possessed of the means of making himself useful,
so also he is largely possessed of the means of making
himself, as pauper, vagabond, criminal, or otherwise,
mischievous and burdensome to the nation. Xow it is to
be desired that all those who live in a country should
take an interest in that country : should love that country.
One of the means of fostering such an interest and such ;i
love is to invest them with a share in affairs common to
others with themselves. On this principle, from the
earliest times, our local and parochial govenimcnts have
been constructed. It does not at first sight appear why
1 14 TITE COTJNTr FRANCHISE,
its operation should stop here : Tvhy it may not be ex-
tended ^vith advantage to the general government of the
country, with its larger perspective, its more elevating
and ennobling topics. Presumptively, it will be good for
him, and for it, that he should be led by the vote to take
an interest, to feel that he has a share, in its affairs. lie
will love it all the better ; he will serve it all the more
faithfully.
16. But then we are fairly met by the observation, that
while the numerical force of votes is equal, the men who
give them are unequal. The right of governing, says
^rr. Burke, lies in wisdom and virtue. The extremes of
difference in capacity, according to these, qualifications,
are separated almost immeasurably. While it is easy to
maintain that each man may with advantage have some
share of political power, it is unreasonable, nay absurd as
I think, to hold in the abstract that all ought to have an
equal share. Presumptively, again, the shares ought to
vary with the intellectual and moral fitness. But no
scale has ever been discovered by which such an adjust-
ment could be effected. So far, then, as abstract reason-
in"- is concerned, we seem to have arrived at that awkward
predicament, a reductio ad ahsurdum : if we cannot give
that which men ought to have, without also giving that
which they ought not. But let us not despair.
17. In the first place, the argument of unequal capacity
does not tell so uniformly against the more numerous
classes of the community as might be supposed. Whether
from moral causes, or for whatever other reason, the
popular judgment, on a certain number of important
questions, is more just than that of the higher order.
And, thus far, they are not more incapable, but more
capable. In the second place, our laws attempt to vindi-
AND MR. LOWi: THEREON. 145
cato the authority of mind, as a political element, by
giving a certain number of scats in Parliament to our
Universities ; with some evil, and some good, results. In
the third place, the rude and unsatisfactory, but yet
practically available, criterion of property has assigned to
it a considerable sphere of direct operation, through
plurality of franchises, arranged under rules to which the
country is accustomed, and which no one wishes to dis-
turb. Hence, while we very rarely find a labourer who
has more than one vote, it is almost as rare to find a man
of property who has not, in different capacities and con-
stituencies, two, three, or moi-e, even up to six, or eight,
or ten. Besides this, propeity has a sphere of indirect
operation larger still ; within which, sometimes by undue
means, but sometimes also without any such taint, it
exercises a very widely spread iulluence.
18. From these sources we draw some rather important
limitations to the two propositions on which an adversary
would be disposed to take his stand ; and which are : —
(1.) That the higher, or leisured class, is the class which
ought to govern.
(2.) In the words of Mr. Lowe,* " that while you are
di'eaming of equality you are creating the gTossest in-
equality, by placing the minority, in which are included
the rich and the educated, at the mercy of those who live
by daily labour."
But this inequality, this numerical superiority of those
nearest the ground, is inherent in all representative
government. Let society be a cone, or a pyramid ; it is
always so constituted that, as we descend from the ap(^x
to the base, the numbers of each successive layer down-
* F. R. ibid. p. 449.
I.
146 THE C017XTY FKAXCmSE,
wards always exceed the numbers of all the layers above
it. It is not like an arithmetical progression, 1, 2, 3, 4 ;
but more like a geometrical progression, 1, 2, 4, 8, and so
on in each series respectively. The gentry, landed and
commercial, are more numerous than the aristocracy: the
farmers and tradesmen are more numerous than the aris-
tocracy, plus the gentry : the artisans are more numerous
than the aristocracy, plus the gentry, plus the farmers
and tradesmen. If the objection drawn from the pre-
ponderance of numbers in the lowest enfranchised class
is good for anything, it is fatal to every true repre-
sentative government in the world. But it is confuted
by the facts. Our knights and burgesses did not eat up
our earls and barons. Our middle class did not eat up
the gentry and aristocracy. The artisans have not eaten
up the three.
19. In oi'der to entitle it to weight, the objection ought
to include proof, not only of severance of interest, but
likewise of an intention or disposition to act upon the
particular and separate interest against the general in-
terests of the whole. But this vicious selfishness, this
jjarticularismus, as the Germans would call it, although
it exists abxxndantly in many small knots and sections
of the community, is not found to an appreciable
extent in any of its great, and so to speak natural, or
organic, divisions. Our last great experiment has now
been at work for a decade of years : one Parliament has
lived and died, another has been born and is growing old ;
and not a single act of injustice has either of them
perpetrated in the interest of the labouring class. We
need not stop to ask what would have been said if they
had inflicted on the uppermost portions of society one
half of such an injustice as was inllicted on the lower by
AND Mr.. LOWE TIIKKEOIT. 147
the Act of 1814.* "With •\vliat other acts of injustice
either of them may bo chargeable is another matter ; but
in the interests of the labouring class, they are chargeable
with none. Is it not idle tlien, and more than idle, if we
set up an imaginary disposition as the demonstration of
an imaginary danger, and flourish those idols in the face
of the country as though they were solid arguments
against a proposal, which does not even raise the shadow
of a Constitutional question, but aims only at giving to
the second moiety of our liouseholding labourers what we
have already given to the liist?
20. Mr. Lowe thinks that the arguments of those favour-
aide to household suffi'age in the coi;nties are "simply and
solely an appeal to the love of equality." The word has
here an ambiguity, which I must endeavour to unravel.
It is not well to distribute the franchise on the principles
of a lotteiy, or arbitrarily to withhold from one member
of a class what is given to another, on no principle more
intelligible to his mind than that of an invisible local line,
which is not drawn according to employment, education,
character, means, or any other intelligible distinction.
It is well, for example, that the peasant of "Wilton and
the peasant of Milts, the peasant of Wallingford and the
peasant of Berks, the peasant of Bassetlaw and the peasant
of Notts, should be treated alike in respect to the fran-
chise. The same holds with respect to the artisan, the
miner, the mill-and-forge man of JStourbridge, compared
* Is not Mr. Lowe a little hard on the universal suffrage of France,
whiMi ho charges on it a jjrotective tariff, seeing that the no-sull'rage of
Kussia has one tenfuM more jirotective ; and also the prohibitiuu of free
speech and free writing, when it is engaged in a great national struggle
against the enemies of its law of universal surt'rage who uphold that jiro-
hibitioa, and enforce it by fine and imprisonment? (^F.I,\ ibid. p. 147.)
L 2
H8 THE COUNTY FKANCHISE,
with his compeer in Dudley ; and so elsewhere. That ia
to say, distinctions should be intelligible and not fantastic.
In this sense, the arguments for the extension have some-
thing to do with equality. But that is not the equality
dreaded by its opponents. The equality dreaded' by its
opponents is the broad political theorem, that all men are
born equal, and ought to continue so.
21. With this bastard political theorem, the arguments
for the extension have not anything to do. If they had,
they would not take that strong hold on the English
mind which now excites Mr. Lowe's alarms. There is
no broad political idea which has entered less into the
formation of the political system of this country than the
love of equality. The love of justice, as distinguished
from equality, is strong among our countrymen ; the love
of equality, as distinguished from justice, is very weak.
It was not the love of equality which induced the
working men of England to struggle with all their might
in 1831-2 for a Reform Act, which not only, as they
knew full well, did not confer the vote upon their class
at large, but which provided for the extinction of the
truly popular franchises theretofore existing in Preston,
in Newark, and in many other places. It was not the
love of equality which induced the artisans and peasants in
the counties to view with satisfaction the passing of a law
in 1867 that denied to them what is given to the artisans
and peasants (of whom by-and-bye) in the boroughs. It
is not the love of equality which has carried into eveiy
corner of the country the distinct undeniable popular
preference, whenever other things are substantially equal,
for a man who is a lord over a man who is not.
22. In truth, the love of freedom itself is hardly
etionger in England than the love of aristocracy; as Sir
AND MR. LOWK TnEREON. 119
"William Molcsworth, himself not the least of our political
philosophers, once said to me of the force of this feeling
■with the people ; " it is a religion." It is not the love of
equality which lifts to the level of a popular toast at every
average or promiscuous puhlic dinner the name of the
House of Lords. And this, although the stereotyped reply
to the toast will never be found to allege, that from the
House of Lords, as from the highest focus of political in-
telligence, have proceeded the whole, or a large part, or
any part whatever, of the great legislative measures which
have conferred renown upon the age. The speaker, who
"responds," is commonly content to urge that the House
of Lords has not (since 1832) pushed its resistance to
these measures up to such a point as to endanger the
peace of the country. The great strength of the House
of Lords in popular estimation docs not, so far as I can
judge, lie in its legislative performances, nor even in the
vast possessions of its members ; but in the admirable
manner in which a large proportion of them, without
distinction of politics, perform public and social duties in
their local, yet scarcely private, spheres. And it is the
love, not of eqiiality, but of inequality, among the
people, which makes these noblemen almost kings in
their minor yet far from narrow circles, and pennits their
fellow-countrymen to contemplate, for the most part with-
out the slightest admixture of envy, their favoured lot.
23. I am sorry that Mr. Lowe's penetrating, almost
piercing, power of view has not faithfully exhibited to
him so great and capital a feature in the character of
his countrymen. Not only is it a thing desirable for
a political observer to take this property of the British
character into view, but it is absolutely indispensable ; and
without it our history must be to him a series of riddles,
150 THE COrSTTT FRANCHISE,
to which there is no key. Call this love of inequality by
"what name you please, the complement of the love of
freedom, or its negative pole, or the shadow which the
love of freedom casts, or the reverberation of its voice
in the halls of the constitution ; it is an acting, living,
and life-giving power, which forms an inseparable essen-
tial element in our political habits of mind, and asserts
itself at every step in the processes of our system.
24. Hence it is that the Eeform Act of 1832 proved to
be a safe and even a strengthening measure. That perilous
rocking of our institutions, which attended several stages
of its progress, was due, not to the Bill, but to the resist-
ance offered to the Bill. Had the middle classes of this
country generally acceded to the possession of power in
that spirit of ignorance or class selfishness which treats
all that is outside, and especially all that is above, itself,
as its natural enemy, the ruin of our institutions must of
course have followed the passing of the Act. This middle
class, in the then subsisting state of the representation,
constituted undoubtedly a great majority as compared
•with the higher class, who were upon the whole the
previous possessors of power. Why did not this majority
combine to assert itself against, and to trample down the
minority, whom it had displaced, so far as mere numbers
were concerned, from the control of the helm of State ? I
think Mr. Frederic Harrison was the first to point out, in
one of our periodicals,* that the great access of power and
impetiis of movement which the Reform Act gave to the
Liberal party was due not so much to the provisions of
the Bill themselves as to the energetic mood into which
the nation had been elevated by the obstinate and long*
• F. R. ibid. p. 449.
AND MR. LOWE TUEKEON. 151
continued struggle to secure them. There Tvas ahso the
odium which necessarily attached to the champious of
resistance ; for their seeming attitude, though not by any
means their uniform frame of mind, was that cither of a
tyrannical selfishness, or of an unmanly superstition.
Yet, in spite of all this, and in spite of the splendid
services of the administration of Lord Grey in 1833 and
1834, that Government had become, at the close of the
second session of the Reformed Parliament, weak in the
country, sickly and to all appearance near its end ; until
the ill-judged assertion of mere prerogative by King
William the Fourth, in November of the last-named year,
neutralised the natui'al operation of Parliamentary decay,
compelled the nation to stand upon its defence, and con-
veyed to the Liberal party, by a strong reaction, the access
of health and \igorous organisation which took effect in
a leng-thened course of generous and far-reaching legisla-
tion.
25. We then obtained from practical experience a lesson
which ought to have been sufficis-nt for all following
times. The argument indeed is plausible, and until it
had been exploded by a living confutation it was perhaps
something more that the admission to the franchise, by a
single stroke, of a mass numerically sufficient to overbear
the whole previously existing constituency, and thus
violently to dci-ange the balance of political forces, could
not but be a perilous and rash experiment. But the
Keform Act showed that we might securely discard the
mere simulacra of representation ; that the Government,
which had been over and for the nation, might safely be
of and by the nation ; that the newly enfranchised classes
had greatly invigorated the action of the system ; that
they had modified it for good, but that they eschewed the
152 THE COUI^TY FEAJfCniSE,
career of the upstart, and desired, upon the Avhole, to act
in the spirit of the olden time. Years passed on. Educa-
tion spread. The new commercial legislation, conferring
the double boon of a free supply of food and a free vent
for the products of industry, paralysed the sinews of
Chartism, and won the heart and confidence of the people ;
which had undoubtedly, by many acts of strangely blind
and ungenerous internal government, been forced out of
the line of their natural, congenial loyalty and trustful-
ness into disaffection or suspicion. There came soon a
testing day. The Revolutions of 1830 on the continent
of Europe had put into uneasy motion a great force of dis-
integrating elements among ourselves. Thus it was before
the Reform Act: but how after it? In 1848 there
arrived a new batch of Revolutions, more wide and more
searching. It was given out in that year that on the
10th of April issue would be taken between the loyal,
peaceful inhabitants of London and the enemies of order.
A vast organisation was prepared for defence. But when
the day arrived, it appeared that order had no enemies ;
not one single staff was tried upon one single head, nor
one charge even of blank cartridge fired. The people,
high and low, were all on one side. The expeiiment of
reform had thus converted repulsion into attraction, mijius
forces into plus ; and had immensely added to the power
of government, and the aggregate disposable forces of the
nation, by amalgamating the hearts of men.
26. And yet when, a few years later, it was timidly and
with bated breath proposed to repeat a process which had
proved so richly beneficial, and to deal with the artisans
as we had dealt with the middle class, the old terrors, the
old bugbears, were at once put in requisition, and surely
with far less apology than before. It was not now a
AND MK. LOWE TnEKEOy. 153
question of departing from a time-grown and time-
honoured system, which had wound itself (so to speak)
into the national life, and with respect to which no man,
within the six hundred years of our representative history,
could point to the period when it had not been. It was
not now a question of tempting the unknown : except,
indeed, as a man who had broken a horse yesterday
tempts the unknown when he begins to break another
liorse to-day. It was still held either that a people is
always politically drunk or mad, or at the least that the
gift of the franchise must make them so. Any reference
to the manner in which these predictions had been made
and falsified in the case of the ten-pound constituency
was met by a kind of deification of the middle class, the
class in the golden mean of the philosopher ; the class that
had made and gained the petition " Give me neither
poverty nor riches " ; the class whose composition was so
saturated with ^drtue and intelligence as to neutralise the
poisons that lay hidden in the gift of political enfranchise-
ment. Below them, nothing but an abyss of darkness and
di'unkcmness, with trades unions dimly moving in the midst ;
whicli were certain to organise an overwhelming multi-
tude in the name of Labour, for the purpose of establishing
a new despotism of the many over the few.
27. Such were the ungainly pleas current in 1866.
And these objections, for their appointed time, did their
appointed mischief. But, after a year or two of the nation's
life had been spent in a conflict that shoidd never have been
waged, we went down the "precipice," and landed at the
foot. Two Parliaments of very different complexions,
merits, and performances have been returned under the
influence of the constituency furnished by the household
suffrage; both of them have shown, in their respective
154 THE COUNTY FEANCHISE,
ways, an attention to the interests of labour which was
greatly needed, and more than amply justified; but
neither of them has supplied so much as a shadow of a
shade of warrant for the charge, that the working men
would combine together, iu the interests of their own
class, to wage war upon other classes. The marvel is,
that they have been either unable or unwilling to combine
even to the moderate and reasonable extent which would
have sufficed to place half a dozen or a dozen of them-
selves iu the popular chamber, and thereby usefully to
enlarge its means of acquaintance with the ideas, wants,
and tendencies of the people.
28. Thus we have now had a second trial of the great
experiment, with a result substantially identical : a result
which demonstrates that the working class, like the middle
class, are in the best sense Conservative ; that the working
class, like the middle class, are lovers, not of equality,
but of inequality ; that they wish to be enrolled upon
the lists of the Constitution, not as men enter a hostile
fortress to destroy it, but as they enrol themselves in a
corps of volunteers, to strengthen and augment it.
29. It is this great safeguard, the love of inequality,
which has made safe the changes past, and which wiU
make safe the changes yet to come ; which will augment the
quantity of strength avaihible for all our public and national
ends, and will not deteriorate its quality. Do not then let
it be with us in this matter as it was in the course of the
free-trade legislation, when each successive "interest,"
as it was handled, and as its predictions, always plausible,
were met by pointing to the proved futility of similar
anticipations in all former cases, protested that there were
specialities affecting just that one only calling in par-
ticular which would make freedom, beneficial as it had
AND MR. LOWE THKREON. 155
proved to others, ruinous to it. I believe I have myself
listened, hisce aun'bus, to the dirges of at least fifty trades,
chanted beforehand on their own coming death, all of
■which are now not only alive, but more vigorous and
more extended by far, than they were before their immo-
lation. This is not altogether creditable. But there is
Bome excuse for men whose very means of livelihood
"were about to be subjected to a novel manipulation, if
the balance of their judgments were for the time dis-
turbed. Surely the statesman sits ujjon a higher emin-
ence, and ought to obtain a broader view. Now let us
see what has happened. First, at the time of the old
Refoim Act, although the popular constituencies pre-
viously existing had not exhibited revolutionary tenden-
cies, it was contended that the middle class would be
unsafe depositaries of power. Next, when the middle
class had by their moderation aud patriotism redeemed
themselves from this imputation, and it was proposed in
1866 to admit the artisans of our towns to the franchise,
it was held that the middle class had indeed proved to be
paragons of political virtue, but the artisan was a peri-
lous creature, and could not be trusted. However, he
has been admitted, and with him a class below him in
the towns, among whom, if anywhere, the elements of
unfitness were to be suspected. The constituencies, in
which these classes form a majority, have returned to
Parliament a Tory majority, which, except upon one very
peculiar occasion, the middle class constituency never
gave. Is it now to be held that, though the artisans and
labourers of the towns may be trusted, there is an impure
influence, a kind of political stench, in the atmosphere
beyond the limits of Parliamentary boroughs, which is
fatal to intellectual and moral health, and that the county
156 THE COUNTY FRANCHISE,
householder will destroy the Constitution which the town
householder has so vigorously upheld ?
30. There was certainly a time when it might have
been urged with plausibility, if not with reason, that the
rural voter had not the independence which is an essential
condition for the beneficial exercise of the franchise.
"When the traditions of the old Poor Law had not yet been
effaced ; when, under the law of settlement, the peasant
was virtually all but an astrictus glehce ; when highly
skilled labour had not had its new impulse and develop-
ment from agricultural improvements and the introduc-
tion of machinery ; when there was a press for the palace,
the mansion, and even the counting-house, but none for
the farm, for the shop, or for the cottage ; when tlie
school was a rare experiment, instead of an invariable
feature of every parish and locality, on a scale measured
with something like precision by the wants of the popu-
lation ; when the rate of wages in very many countries
did not suffice for health or decency, to say nothing of
comfort, rest, or recreation ; then the argument had a
Aveight which it has now wholly lost, even indejiendently
of the glaring fact, that our rural householders grow
steadily from year to year less rural, and include from year
to year a larger fraction of population essentially urban.
31. Mr. Lowe is, however, together with many more,
apprehensive that the admission of the peasantry to the
vote will strengthen the Conservative party. If this be
so, I am sorry ; but I cannot help it. I cannot hold that
self-government is for Liberals, and political nonentity
for Tories. If the rural voters lean too much to the Tory
party, tlieir admission to a share in the self-government
of the nation will be the very thing most likely to correct
what is undue in that leaning. Were they indeed to be
AND MIt. LOWE THEREON. 157
Bubjoct to intimiclation, were thoy liable to the substitu-
tion by an extraneous agency of another man's judgment
for their own, the case would be diftercnt ; but if, out of
their respect for the clergyman, the landlord, and the
farmer, the peasant chooses to take the advice of any of
the three in the disposal of his vote, the principles of
Liberalism bind me to respect that respect. I must take
my chance. But the chance is not all one way. We,
the Liberals, are apt to say that the influence of money,
working through the public-house, is a considerable ele-
ment in the strength of urban Toryism : it is less likely
so to operate among the more dispersed constituencies of
the country. The longer the Tory party withhold the
franchise de facto, whatever be the grounds, the more the
Liberals will be regarded as the givers of it, even though
it be given like the Eelief Acts of 1828 and 1829, and the
Franchise Act of 1867, through the Tories. A graver
question is behind. In the rural controversy between
capital and labour, even apart from one gross and unfor-
gotten offence in a higher rank, the parochial clergy have
not always been able to abstain from partisanship, and,
where they have been partisans, it has commonly not
been on the side of labour. Notwithstanding their
general and exemplary devotion to parochial duty, this
has tended to stimulate a feeling in favour of the dis-
establishment of the Church. Of this sentiment I can-
not measure the breadth or depth ; but it may be found
to foiTU a real ingredient in the general question. It has
been further stimulated by one incidental cii'cumstance,
far from unimportant. The agricultural labourers, in
managing their case as to wages, have required the aid of
speakers, who are rather harshly named agitators; and
the speakcxs among them are commonly those who,
158 THE COUKTT FRAISTCHISE,
through the conduct of religious exercises, are placed
more or less in alliance with Nonconformity. I need
hardly add, that Nonconformity, which still supplies, to
so great an extent, the backbone of British Liberalism, is
now largely intent on effecting disestablishment.
32. Eut it is only a small part of the opponents of the
extension with whom the supposed want of independence
is a favourite or a congenial argument. It is the latent,
creeping, phantasmal horror, the "vague spiritual fear"
of numerical preponderance in the forctground, universal
suffrage in the distance, which disposes many men under
all sorts of pretences, and Mr. Lowe with a frankness of
avowal that does him honour, to deny household suffrage
to one half the working population of the land after the
other half, no whit better qualified, have shown that they
can use it innocently and well. This fear of numbers is
with some an idiosyncratic habit: with others it is no
better, after all the living and working experience we
have had, than an ungenerous and unmanly fear. The
supposed dangers of a numerical preponderance are set
aside by the fact, that the class which possesses the pre-
ponderance does not act for itself but for the country
The supposed danger of inferior information and capacity,
in the masses not enjoying the advantage of leisure, is
completely neutralised by their general disposition to turn
to account the precepts and example of those whom they
believe to be better informed. We have in this country a
Monarchy and an aristocracy : and we have them, because
the country likes to have them ; and likes to have them,
not by a fitful passing humour, but by the alndlng influ-
ences of its traditions, its feelings, and its convictions. If
these things be true, we may go forward fearlessly; if
they be false, we ought, without loss of time, to go a
AND ME. LOWE xnEREOX. 159
great way back. In neither case is it well tliat we
eliould stand where we are.
33. And indeed tlie arguments which command or de-
serve most respect in this opposition are those of the very
few who found their objection to a public enlargement of
the sufii-ago on a supposed failure in what has already been
done. It is at any rate a high and chivalrous line of
argument, in part adoijtcd by Mr. Lowe, which insists
U])on the claims of Politics as the grand architectonic*
art, claims them as the proper dominion of the most ele-
vated and accomplished minds, and boldly avers that, fioiii
the day when the common clay of which artisans are made
came to enter so largely into the composition of the town
constituencies, the former level of Parliamentary doctrine
and practice has declined. Economy, it is said, is at a
discount; the meddlesome intrusion of Govei'nment into
matters formerly left to local and individual energies is in
vogue ; a benumbing centralisation creeps upon us ; dema-
goguism, in the form of subservience to the interests of
class, with the avoidance of unpopular reforms, is, as Mr.
Lowe and I agree in thinking, largely practised. Mixed
questions are taken hold of by their popular end ; and the
unpopular but wholesome part is left to stand o\(jrsine die.
34. Thus has been handled the great subject of local
government; the Administration has been in office for four
sessions, and has not lifted a hand, except to give away,
in successive doses of public money administered to the
ratepayers, the powerful leverage by which they might
have propelled the movement of a great and truly Consti-
tutional reform. Mr. Lowe and I are here at one. Indeed,
no one perhaps has been less in sympathy than myself
Aristot. Eth. Nicorn. i. 2.
160 THE COUNTY FRANCHISE,
with the action of the present Parliament. But we must
try to consider the years since 1868 as a whole, and to
give them fair play. So considering them, I say that the
faults, of omission and of commission, are almost wholly
faults for which household suffrage is not responsible, and
that it has exhibited a virtue which entirely outweighs,
and casts into the shade, the small contribution it may
have made, through the subserviency to appetite of a
sprinkling of town voters, to the debit side of the account.
This great merit is, a quicker sympathy with labour. Until
the household suffrage had been given, labour had not
received anything like full justice in regard to either of
the two important subjects of combinations and contracts.
35. It is pleasant to argue, as I have thus far argued,
the optimising side of the question. I go all lengths in
opposing those who ascribe to the extension of the suffrage
the existing and in some respects growing evils of our
Parliamentary system. I am one of those who think
them very great ; and I proceed so far as to admit that no
extension of the suffrage, wise and right as it may be, will
cure them. The longer I Kve, the less do I see, in the
public institutions of any country, even a tendency to
approximate to au ideal standard. Turning to our own,
amidst all our vaunted and all our real improvements, I
perceive in some very important respects a sad tendency
to decline. It seems to me that, as a whole, our level of
public principle and public action was at its zenith in the
twenty years or thereabouts which succeeded the lleform
Act of 1832, and that it has since perceptibly gone down.
I agree with Mr. Lowe that we are in danger of engen-
dering both a gerontocracy and a ploUtocracy.* He asks
♦ F, a. ibid. p. 493.
AND MR. LOWE THKREON. 161
■whether any one is hold onoii2;h to allege that household
suftVage has improved the House of Commons. I have
already pointed out the essential point in which it has.
But, under the mixed conditions of human life, it often
happens that what is improving in one point of view may
at the very same time he decaying or declining in another.
The gradual movement in favour of gerontocracy and plou-
tocracy did not hegin with household suffrage, nor am I
aware that their advance has heen accelerated by it.
36. The influences which determine both the moral and
the intellectual standard of a legislature are very mixed
and very diverse. Montes(|uieu, I think, says, that in the
infancy of nations the man forms the State ; in their ma-
turity, the State fonns the man. But 1 form a very high
estimate of the power still possessed by individuals, even
in a State so old as ours. I am not stifficientiy detached
and impartial to discuss this portion of the subject. I turn
to another side of it — to the qualifications which attract
the favour of a constituency.
37. These, too, are very various ; birth, station, talent,
character, former service, landed possessions, commercial
and manufacturing connection, and lastly, money. The
two circumstances which strike me most forcibly, and
most painfully, are, first, the rapid and constant advance
of the money power ; secondly, the reduction, almost to
zero, of the chances of entrance into Parliament for men
■who have nothing to rely upon but their talent and their
character; nothing, that is to say, but the two qualities,
■which ceilainly stand before all others in the capacity of
rendi'ring service to the coxTutry. These, again, are
chiefly the young; for such uicn have usually, by the
time they reacli middle life, attained, without great
difficulty, to wealth or to competence. But tlicy have
I. M
162 THE COUNTY FEANCHISE,
then passed the proper period for beginning an effective
Parliamentary education. There have been honourable
and distinguished exceptions ; but, as a rule, it would be
as rational to begin training for the ballet at forty-five or
fifty, as for the real, testing work of the Cabinet. That
union of suppleness and strength which is absolutely
requisite for the higher labours of the administrator and
the statesman is a gift the development of which, unless
it be commenced betimes, nature soon places beyond
i-each. There is indeed scope and function in Parliament
for the middle-aged man, and even for men like myself,
no longer middle-aged ; but nothing can compensate for
a falling off in the stock of the young men whom we need
for tbe coming time ; and we need the choicest in the
country. The only education for the highest work in the
House of Commons is, as a rule, that given in the House
of Commons. Happily, wc have still a supply, in cases
where hi^h birth and family influence can be brought to
bear. 15 ut we cannot afford the confinement of the
admission to these cases : first, because they arc not
enough ; secondly, because our being confined to that
class for the statesmen of the future is a limitation highly
adverse to the free action of popular principles, and
tending to add enormously to the weight cast into the
other scale. If I must hold the language of party, I say
it is the Liberal party that is the great sufferer by the
exclusion of this class ; for its members have had a lai-ge,
if not the largest, share in the promotion of Liberal
measures.
38. Their place has been taken mainly by men who have
been recommen(l(?d to their constituents by the possession
of money. The numbers of tliose who sit in ^-irtue of
the other (iualificatious that have been euumerated, are
AND MH. LOWE THKREON. 1G3
probahly much as they were. There has been one case
only of great gain, and one of great loss. The loss has
been among those who had the very best capacity to serve
the country. The gain has accrued to those whose main
object is to serve themselves. I do not mean in a corrupt
sense. It is to serve themselves by social advancement.
The total exclusion of such men is probably not to be
desired; but their swollen and swelling numbers are a
national calamity. It is a calamity with a double edge.
Por what becomes of the excluded ? Where do they
now obtain their education? They arc mainly driven to
the Press. The services of the Press to the community,
and most of all to public men, are invaluable ; but the
value of the education it affords to the young is a very
dilf'erent (question. It gives them a laborious training in
irresponsible, anonymous, and pungent criticism, in lieu
of the inanlj- and noble discipline which a youth spent in
Parliament imparts. In the light of day, under the eye
and judgment of tlie best, at once stimulated and re-
strained, at once encouraged and abashed, our youth had
everything to sustain a high sense of political warfare, to
develop the better parts of a knightly nature, and to
rebuke the sordid and the base. Invert all these expres-
sions, and we obtain a tolerably accurate description of
the kind of education which our modern arrangements
have provided for the most ready, brilliant, and ser-
viceable of the young men of England, in lieu of a seat in
Parliament. These are not pleasant things to say ; but it
is perhaps time they should be said.
39. One great cause of the mischief doubtless is the ex-
pensiveness of elections. It is nothing less than astonishing
to find our countrymen so little awake not only to the
serious amount of this mischief, but to its scandalous and
M 2
164 THE COUNTT FEAITCHISE,
debasing character; this is ploiitocracy indeed, in the
most deformed of all its shapes, and with the ugliest of
all its faces. Wisdom and virtue ! cries Mr. Burke.
Poimds, shillings, and pence ! answer the low practice
and opinion of England. We think, or act as if we
thought, that as the thews and sinews of a soldier in some
armies may be replaced by a certain sum of money, plus
other thews and sinews, so intellectual and moral force
may fairly enough be turned out of doors, provided a
certain amount of money, perhaps without any thews and
sinews at all, be forthcoming in its place.
40. Under the system of the unreformed Parliament, it
is true that particular elections occasionally cost enormous
sums ; even sums that are now never heard of. But such
elections were exceedingly rare. And that old system,
which made no vaunt of being popular, was as a whole
far more favourable to poor, but capable and cultivated
men, than is our present seemingly democratic legislation,
A great reform in this respect ought to be an article of
the Liberal creed. If no such reform is achieved, the
mere extension of the sufirage will augment this par-
ticular evil, and a portion of the good it should effect will
thus be neutralised. There are two obstacles : one is a
general deadness of opinion respecting the mischief ; the
other is Tory opposition to its removal. As to the first,
let one instance suffice. In a new university seat, on a
recent vacancy, the indispensable condition for becoming
a candidate -was to produce the sum of four thousand
pounds. The seat might almost as well have been sold,
like Mr. Ward Beecher's pews in Brooklyn or jS'ew York,
by public auction. What must be the gcmcral level of
opinion in a country on the point, when this can
happen in one of the constituencies thought to be most
AND MR. LOWK THEEEON. 165
cnlisih toned ? IBut there is also another singular feature
in tlie case. The party which opposes the extension of
the francliise, and urges, among other reasons of resistance,
the increase of expense it will cause, is the very same
party which resists, and will resist, every serious attempt
to cheapen elections. Two new articles, pretty closely
associated together, have lately been added to the Tory
creed, not by a general council, but by silent con-
sent : faith in the long purse, and faith in what Mr.
Bright, by one of his many happy phi-ases, dubbed tlie
residuum.
41. Mr. Lowe and I supply two conspicuous instances
of disinterested choice on tlie part of our respective con-
stituencies ; choice which, whether right or wrong, has
been made on purely public grounds. What Ave want,
and want still more than the cheapening of elections, is
that every constituency, that each party in every con-
stituency shall choose its candidate upon purely public
grounds. In the town constituencies, of which alone
I am now about to speak, this is not so. We should
not then have had a man of the eminence and value of
Lord Selborne, after he had sat for a single Parliament,
excluded long, and excluded hopelessly, had it not been
for an exercise of nominating influence and a disposition
in the particular borough to conform to it, which con-
stituted an accident as rare as it was happy. Vv"e shoidd
not have had the distinguished Solicitor-General of a
Government having so much favour with the constituen-
cies as the present Government once had, waiting through
more than one session for a seat. We should not have had,
as we have at this moment, many men of tried capacity and
distinguished public service, and many other men of high
and proved promise, waiting in vain outside the doors.
166 THE COUNTY FRANCHISE,
We should not have had that decline in the average quality
of the personnel of the Eepresentative House, which has,
I fear, unquestionably taken place since the first Parlia-
ment that met under the Reform Act.
42. On this subject I frankly own that I do not under-
stand Mr. Lowe. I should have anticipated from him a keen
anxiety that local claims should not prevail against public
motives in the choice of candidates : that all candidates
should be chosen as he has himself been chosen. Eut he
tells us of that " excellent principle in English elections,"
the principle of " seeking our electing bodies "in " organi-
sations which are in the habit of acting together for other
than electoral purposes." Why is this so excellent a
principle ? It would seem odd on general grounds to say
that, when you have a function of the very highest im-
portance to be discharged, you should entrust the discharge
of it, not to bodies chosen and put together for their fitness
to discharge it, but to bodies chosen, and presumably
fitted, to do something else. It seems like saying this :
electoral powers shall be given to non-electoral fitness. I
can see, indeed, a set of reasons for lauding this principle ;
but they are reasons turned upside down. This plan,
standing as it now stands, almost without modification,
has been found to offer the strong(.'st obstacles to extension
of the franchise. It raises the self-consciousness, the
localism, the egotism of each constituency to its maximum.
It creates for bodies, what we denounce and destroy in
individuals, a vested interest in representation. It is tlio
public-house monopoly over again, carried into the world
of politics. It lays the ground for the new-fashioned
bribery of our day, the bribery of constituencies, of such
a portion of them, that is to say, as will turn the scale; in
tlie lump : by local public works, by building specula-
AND MR. LOAVK TlIKltKON'. 107
tions, by roads and other town improvements which " our
I'espective representative " has effected or announced.
These, I am sure, are not Mr. Lowe's reasons for the eulogy-
he has pronounced : but they are, I fear, the reasons of
many. Will he forgive me if I make bold to say that I
think his reason is a superstition ? A method which once
was unavoidable, and was then not only unavoidable but
admirable, he lauds after the reasons for it have ceased
to exist, and when new reasons for modifying and relaxing
it have come into force. I admit that Mr. Burke com-
mended it ; and very loth am I, except in some vital
matters of the French Revolution, to dissent from that
great authority. But, since the time of Mr. Burke, old
dangers have disappeared, new dangers have come into
view, new e^als into almost a virulent activity ; the ad-
justment of political and social forces has been entirely
remodelled. This dictum lands me for a moment upon the
field of history.
43. During the first twenty years of the reign of George
the Third, the public liberties had not yet been solidly
and finally consolidated. Ireland was still held as a con-
quered country. Scotland was entirely without popular
representation. I take this opportunity of recording my
gratitude for the invaluable public services of a man whom,
except as to his public serWces, I do not wish to mention.
The name of Wilkes deserves distinction in our sphere ;
it deserves to be enrolled upon the list of the great cham-
pions of our freedom.
44. The onginal virtue and end of our borough-system
were, in making provision for the wants of the State, to es-
tablish public liberty against the aristocracy and the Crown.
The self-consciousness and the local traditions of each con-
stituency had then no tendency to di'aw it away from the
168 THE COUNTY FRANCHISE,
straightest public aims. Tliey were all engaged, with one
mind, in one purpose ; and in nothing else. In a standing
internal effort of this kind, the burgesses derived an
immense addition of strength from the fact that they
represented not only a certain number of individuals
— the individual was then comparatively nobody and
nothing — but recognised historical bodies.
45. Since the Reform Act, if not before it, this great
controversy has been at an end. The public liberties are
absolutely in the hands of the constituencies. It is not
from the Crown, nor even from the aristocracy, that they
have anything to fear ; but it is upon less conspicuous
issues, from subtler and from meaner influences outside
them, and from what is within them ; from sluggishness
as to public affairs, from the wealth-worship which marks
and deforms our time, from the disposition to regard too
much the local and sectional interests or considerations,
too little those which are of the nation only. To find the
best man, that is their duty ; to define the word, that is
their difiiculty, a difiiculty they have not yet surmounted.
4G. I think I have now shown why we should pause
before giving an unqualified adhesion to Mr. Lowe's pane-
gyric on his ' ' excellent principle." My words may be taken
as a partial exhibition of what is to be said against it.
They might load to injustice if I were supposed to mean
that nothing can be said in their favour. The words will
be as unpalatable as the roll in Jeremiah, that was read
by Baruch the scribe, and which, because it shocked the
cars of the king, Jchudi cut u]) Avith a penknife, and cast
it into the fire that was upon the hearth.'''" Ihit there is
little fear of their leading to injustice. Such is tho
Jeremiah x.xxvi.
AND ME. LOWE THEKEOX. 109
supererogatory strength embedded in the present arrange-
ment of constituencies, that they can not only uphold
themselves, hut they can also, not in round argument, but
in fact, deny, at least for a time, the franchise to those
who ought to, but do not, possess it. " Rag tag and
bobtail," disguised and got up with makeshift arms,
hovering in the distance, have before now decided battles.
So in the battle of the franchise there hovers on the flanks
an awful phantom. It is yclept "redistribution of seats."
This hobgoblin decided the battle, and slew the INlinistry
of 1866. It may decide more battles, and slay more
Ministries. Its name acts with a subtle and magic power
on the inner conscioixsness, not the outer one, of the
" member " for our city or borougli. AVhen the enfran-
chising arguments, long floating dimly before him, begin a
little to warTU his blood, or if not that, yet to make him
feel uncomfortable ; all this is in tlio outer consciousness
alone. I3ut wlieu the black banner waves in his eye, on
which are written the spectral letters " redistribution of
seats," they operate as drastically as if they were mene
mcne tekel upharsin, they go straight to the seat of life,
to the very heart and mind, not indeed of the man, but
of the "member."
47. Let me not then be too sanguine, and let Mr. Lowe
abate his alarms. His " excellent principle," especially
when mounted on such a charger as himself, will ytt do
service in the held. It is a veteran that has stood, and
will stand, nnieh battering. It may be long before the
country is able to reckon with it, and the reckoning,
when it does come, will be but mild. Do not then let it
exasperate the nation, by an obstinate withholding of the
county franchise from that moiety of our householdei-s
which is not the least qualified to use it innocently and
170 THE COUNTY FRANCHISE.
\vell. This in the meantime, with good measure for the
cheapening of elections, will be a great and signal boon.
And we shall lie at the foot of the "precipice," as we
now stand at the top, in perfect comfort. And our Con-
stitution, so often destroyed by rash and profane hands,
wdth its nine, or ninety times nine, cat-like lives, will
still be, for the Mr. Lowe of that day, the Constitution
" which has been the admiration of the world for five
hundred years." Much, when all these matters are
settled, will have been done to invigorate the institutions
of the land, to strengthen the national cohesion, to in-
crease the sum total of the public energies, to establish
confidence between class and class, to train the people for
the habitual, hereditary discharge of public duty. But
I am sorry that my harp, like the harp " in Tara's hall,"
must yet, amidst all this prospective joy, be again "tuned
to notes of sadness." ^Ye shall not have landed in Utopia.
Some new leaks will open where more old ones have been
stopped. That ancient trio, the world, the flesh, and the
devil, will be too strong for even an approach to the
abstract standard of a Polity. The public, a fine animal,
is strong but sleepy. When he gets active, he gets tired ;
they tell him he has been excited, and it has been bad for
his health ; he lays his head upon his pillow ; but the
interests, ever so anxious lest he should hurt himself by
over-exertion, ever wakefxd, ever nimble, ever " redeem-
ing the time," that is to say, selling it in the best market
— they set to while he is asleep, and make a night of it.
There will always be scandals to make us humble, and
faults and wants crying aloud to make us diligent; but
political progress, if intermittent and qualified, has on the
whole been practical and real, and such, in tliis land of
ours, may it ever be.
VI.
LAST WORDS ON THE COUNTY FRANCHISE *
1. To close a scone from what is called "Parliament out
of session," or at least my own part in that scene, I will
now endeavour to sum up the case on the extension of
household suffrage; to the Counties, as it stands between
Mr. Lowe and myself. My arguments have been as
follows.
( 1 . ) That the question is again in danger of being played
with, for the mere purposes of party, like the same ques-
tion for the lioroughs in the session of 1867. I placed
this argument in the foreground of my appeal to Mr.
Lowe, with a hope grounded on the proverb that the
burnt child dreads the fire.
(2.) That the mere ])rcsumptions against organic change,
which were strong until the epoch of the first Reform Act,
had then become comparatively weak ; and that the acts
of 1867 and 1869, which enfranchised the householders in
the towns, had created an opposite presumption in favour
of the householders in the counties, unless a valid plea in
bar could be set up.
(3.) No such plea can be found in the natural distinction
between town and county; now that so many of our
" Knights of the shire" represent constituencies essentially
urban, and that so many of our " Eurgesses " do in fact sit
ReprintuJ from Tlie Nineteenth Century, January 1878.
172 LAST WORDS ON THE COtNTY FKANCHISE.
for little couuties, in which the town suffrage has heen
given to populations completely or principally rural. The
present distribution of the vote, then, is capricious ; and
a capricious law cannot command respect or permanence.
(4.) No such bar can be found in comparative want of
qualification ; either as to absence of substantial interest
or as to selfishness, or as to passion. Every class admitted
to the franchise improves, in some new respect, the
competency of Parliament. Tlie argument in favour of
capacity merely intellectual as an exclusive title, urged
as it is now urged, logically and really means absolute
government ; and, among our countrymen, any lack in
this respect is amply made up by the trust and deference
towards others of the classes less informed, or less endowed
with leisure.
(5.) Passing episodically to a broader ground, my paper
argues, that there are some positive reasons for the enfran-
chisement of persons who contribute to the revenue and
to the national wealth ; give, through the family, pledges
to society ; and may also do it serious mischiefs. These
persons, as I argue, will be more useful, and less harmful,
when associated with its interests, and trained in their
degree to its political as well as its local afi^airs.
(6.) Inequality in the voters, taken in the abstract,
might require inequality in the vote. If we admit that this
inequality is in part (and in part only) measured by pro-
perty and station, a scale to determine it would be both
odious and impi'acticable ; and it is attained to some ex-
tent, without objection, both by the direct and by the
indirect influence which attaches to possessions.
(7.) To the merely numerical argument, that the rich
and educated minority are to be given over to a majority
of daily labourers, I reply that it proves too much and too
LAST WORDS OJf TnE COtTNTT FKANCniSE. 173
littlo. Too miich ; for it would make all our enfranchiso-
mi'iits wrong, since each class admitted, in the downward
series, has outnumbered the aggregate of classes above it.
Too little ; for all these enfranchisements have done good,
so that the mere argument of number need not raise the
presumption of harm to follow.
(8.) The love of political equality may be dangerous;
but as distinct from the love of liberty, it does not prevail
in this country.
(9.) The experience of 1848, amidst the shock of Euro-
pean revolutions, showed that the reform of Parliament
had immensely strengthened the foundations of our social
order.
(10.) The experience of 18G9— 77 has shown that the
large admission of labour as an element of the constituencies
has given us Parliaments more alive to its just interests,
but ill no respect disposed to trespass on the rights of the
non-labouring classes.
(11.) The independence of the county householder is
safe as against intimidation ; and we have no reason to
suppose he will not duly use for himself the faculty of
self-government.
2. From these arguments I passed on to collateral
topics, in which I am very much at one with Mr. Lowe ;
and which, therefore, need not here be further noticed.
Let me then consider his Keply.
And first I must point out that those who form their
idea of my argument from his pages will form an incorrect
and misleading idea of it. He states at the outset, and
repeatedly,* that 1 have urged the expediency of creating
equal electoral districts. They are once named incident-
• Fortnightly Review, pp. 733, 735, 742.
174 LAST WOEDS ON THE COUNTY FRANCHISE.
ally, but only as enhancing in the minds of many the
horrors of " anything like universal suffrage," and are then
forthwith excluded from the argument ; * which contem-
plates, as we all do, a redistribution of seats, and says as
to this:f "The reckoning, when it docs come, will be
but mild."
When, passing from a series of narrower and more
special to wider arguments, I " suspend for a moment "J
that series, the Answer says "he asks leave to withdraw"§
his conclusion, and, " he threw up the attempt."
When I say there are "some reasons" in favour of
enfranchising certain persons, || this he converts into the
proposition that they are " entitled to a vote." IF
When I point out certain " conditions previous,"
namely contribution to revenue, contribution to national
■wealth, the pledges of the " hoiise-fathcr " as such, the
mischiefs that the bad citizen may do,** the Heply sets
forth f I that these are ray only arguments, "the four
Corinthian pillars which are destined to support the
enormous fabric of universal suffrage." This, it is added,
" will hardly be believed." I go farther. I trust it will
not be believed at all. For example, the very same para-
graph contains an argument perfectly distinct, to which
the previous arguments are introductory. It argues " that
all those who live in a country should take an interest in
that country, should love that country;" and that the
vote gives that sense of interest, and fosters that love.
Mr. Lowe may say, if he likes, that this is a bad argu-
ment; but to deny its existence is hardly consistent either
* Slip. p. 142. II Sup. p. 143.
t Sitp. p. 169. i F. li. p. 742.
t Sup. J). 142. ** Sup. p. 148.
§ F. R. pp. 737, 742. ft ^'- i<- P- T6d
LAST WOUDS ON THE COUNTY FRANCHISE. 175
"u-ith the logic for which he is famous, or with the care
which so grave a subject demands.
Having given these instances by way of caveat, and
having shown how he has separated the four Corinthian
piUars from their fellows, I will now inquire with what
measure of notice he thinks these pillars themselves
severally deserve to be handled.
3. The man, I have urged, is "a contributor to the
public revenue." To this it is answered: "The same
thing may be said of every dog " ; and "a man satisfies
the qualification by paying for a glass of beer." Now,
when tlic plea on my side is that adult men generally
are habitual and large contributors to revenue, it is no
answer to urge that a particular person may contribute
but slightly and casually. Still less is it an answer, in
law or fact, to say that a dog contributes to revenue. In
law, a man who chooses to keep a dog pays for leave to
keep him. In fact, I had thought Mr. Lowe's own Parlia-
mentary experience of the dog-tax had conclusively taught
him that, while the barking was certainly considerable,
they were men, and not dogs, who paid the impost.
4. The man, I have again urged, contributes by his
labour (as distinct fi'om capital) to the public wealth.
The Reply says, that so does the cart-horse. Now suppose
a labourer is digging in my garden, and a friend says to
me, "No doubt you ])ay him wages." I do not answer,
" Why should 1 ? Would you pay Avages to the spade ? "
Tlie spade, like the cart-horse, contributes to the result;
but neither the spade nor the cart-horse has, as the man
has because he is a man, the first elements of capacity to
give a vote.
5. The man, I h:ive pleaded, "has given pledges to
society by constituting himself the head of a family, in
176 lAST WORDS ON THE COUNTY FRANCHISE.
which is lodged a large part of his affections." The
answer is : " This is the condition of the continuance of
the species, which we share with the lower animals."
Here, I must own, is opened to me a new chapter in
natural history. I was not aware that the lower animals
did constitute families as man does, or that the sires of
horses and dogs, for example, did, as man does, invest
affections, which are a large and real portion of ourselves,
in the being and welfare of their offspring. I use
advisedly the term " invest," and commend it to the
consideration of those who may be tempted to think that
the affections are after all no more than "sentiment,"
that the human heart is but a shadow, and that property
is the only thing which has reality and solidity enough
about it for an investment.
6. Every man, I likewise observed, has great powers of
mischief. So, says the Reply, "has almost every animal."
It is most true. Therefore, so far as animal nature gives
us the opportunity, we endeavour to neutralise these
powers of mischief, and to convert them into instruments
of good, by domestication ; a process which is not in its
nature penal, but which turns mainly on improved treat-
ment, and gives increased happiness of life. It is ray
opponent who has established this analogy, in succinct
and almost contemptuous terms; but, so far as it subsists
at all, it teaches that powers of miscliief in mixed natures
are best met, not by blind undistinguishing force, not by
resistance without remedy, but by developing the faculties,
and enlarging to their utmost soope the op])ortunities for
good, of the creature to whom they belong.
7. We are told,* "it is well settled " that no one is per-
* F. E. p. 739.
LAST WORDS ON THK COUMY FRANCniSE. 177
mitted to say " anything against the poor." If so, it is
at least equally well settled that, without any permission,
they may be ccnsui'ed and condemned ad lihiiiua ; and the
Keply itself is the proof. The "virtues, capacities, and
talents" imputed to them are "imaginary."* Their
desires are stronger as their needs are greater, and as the
stake which they risk by change is smaller.f They arc
more likely to seek to create by law a property for them-
selves than to respect the property of others. J They will
require their wages to be maintained by law, the articles
they consume to be relieved from taxation, the articles
they produce to be covered against competition. § The
very qualities which the opponents of liberty might fairly
be expected to regard with some favour, are treated with
ridicule or vituperation. I had pointed out their notorious
tendency to defer to classes and persons superior in
station, and favoured with leisure. How absurd, inti-
mates the Reply, that they should confide in those against
whom they are to protect themselves! || I had pointed
out that the English people are lovers, not of equality, but
of inequality. But this, instead of appeasing, exasperates.
It seems that I,
''like many nnollior babbler, luirt
AVhom I would soothe, and liarmcd where I woukl htal."1J'
Yet surely the points arc worthy of some consideration
by the impartial inquirer, by the honest and ingenuous
alarmist, by every man except those whose mental vision
enables them to concentrate light, as a burning-glass con-
centrates heat, and to flash it with a vividness almost
* F. i?. p. 745. § Ihkl. p. 745.
t Ihkl p. 7r.6. II Vnd. p. 7:56.
j /6k/. p. 7;59. "il Tcuny.-on, 'Guinevere.*
178 LAST WOEDS OJT THE COFNTT FEATfCHISE.
preternatural tipon some one nick or corner of a sutjcct,
but condemns them to see that subject in and at the nick
or corner only, and never in its full and natural scope.
On those, to whom we defer, we are undoubtedly less
disposed to trespass. If among beings variously endowed,
gifted with freedom of the will, and fitted for progress,
we find social inequality to be deemed by our country-
men a sound and normal arrangement, that is surely in
the nature pro tanto of a security against the levelling, if
not plundering, tendencies which it is Mr. Lowe's
calamity to believe ingrained in the English people.
8. If, in a case like this, what may be termed conciliatory
arguments fail to obtain the smallest grain of acknowledg-
ment, so it is the doom of facts to remain hopelessly
invisible. To me it seemed a plea not without its place
in the general argument, that the popular judgment was
often more just than that of the higher orders. The
Reply says : * " We should like to have had an instance,
but none is given." To enumerate the instances in full
would be beyond the compass of an article which aims at
bringing the question to a point ; or, indeed, of any
article. It might be enough to say the "instances"
make up nearly the whole history of the country since
the peace of 1815. If tliis be too vague, I will give
some heads, most of wliich include largo groups of in-
stances. 1. The Abolition of Slavery. 2. The Eeform
of Parliament. 3. The Abolition of the Corn Laws, of
the Navigation Laws, of some twelve hundred Duties of
Customs and Excise. 4. The Abolition of the Sacra-
mental and other Ileligious Tests. 5. The Eeform of the
shameful Criminal Code, which too long dishonoured the
• F. R. p. 738.
LAST WORDS ON THE COTTKTY FRANCnrSE. 179
country- 6. The Reform of our unjust and unequal Laws
of Combination and of Contract. 7. The direction of our
Foreign Policy in a sense favourable to the aspirations of
freedom and not to the tactics of the Holy Alliance. 8. I
will add another and a very testing question, drawn from
another sphere. "We have all had before us the life and
character of the Prince Consort. On wliat social levels was
he most justly judged and most highly estimated ? Was
it in the salons, or was it by the nation ? In this list I
avoid burning questions of to-day, or I might lodge an
appeal to Mr. Lo^vo individually on the matter of Ivluca-
tion, and on the great controversy of the East. Uut, in
sum, it would be difficult to name a subject of the first
magnitude which might not be specified in the list, unless
perhaps that of Eoman Catholic emancipation. Without
any other exception, the popular judgment on these broad
issues has been more nearly just and true, has gone more
to the root of the matter, than that of the higher orders.
The question is not whether this confession is one agree-
able to make, but whether it in true. Sometimes, indeed,
as in the case of the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, high and
low, rich and poor, may have gone wrong together.
9. But I may faiiiy retort the question which has been
put, and ask the adversary to furnish his list of great and
engrossing subjects, in which the higher orders have, during
the last half-century, been mainly right, and the people
wrong. Nor let him, with Protean elasticity, turn on me
and say, " Aha ! there it is : you evidently mean that mere
numbers, as they have judged moi-e justly, should have all
the power." I mean no such thing. The nation has
drawn a great, perhaps the greatest, part of its lights
from the minority placed above ; but has drawn them
from a minority of that minority. Look back upon that
N 2
180 LAST WORDS ON THE COTUSTTY FKANCHISE.
dark time of our domestic history, which followed the
peace of 1815. As it is in the higher order that the very
hij;hest forms of personal character are exhibited, so in the
political sphere there were never wantinc; those who taught,
amidst sui-rounding- antipathies, the lessons of liberty and
of wisdom. Moreover, I should be the first to assert that,
while the main propelling force has come from beneath,
such a force cannot in questions of reconstruction be self-
directing, and that there has remained for the leisured
classes the performance of a service in shaping, guiding,
modifying the great currents of conviction, sympathy, and
will which has been secondary but yet invaluable.
10. We should remember that our religion itself did not
take its earlier root, or find its primitive home, in the minds
of kings, philosophers, and statesmen. Not many rich, not
many noble were called. The wisdom and the culture
were mostly plotting against our Lord, while the common
people heard Him gladly. But the regenerating forces of
the Gospel made their way from the base to the summit
of society ; and the highest thought and intellect of man,
won with time to the noble service, hired as it were at
the sixth, ninth, and eleventh hour, wrought hard and
with effect to develop, defend, and consolidate the truth.
Paradox it may seem to be, but fact it is, that the
immense advantages which leisure and learning have
conf(;rred are largely neutralised, and in some cases
utterly outweighed, by the blinding influences of a subtler,
deeper, and more comprehensive selfishness : —
« E poi r affetto 1' intelletto Icga." *
11. The Heply, in one of its most dashing portions,
observes f that I give reasons for the enfranchisement of the
* Dante, 'ParaJiso,' xiii. 117. f F. H. pp. 7oG-7.
LAST WORDS OX THE COUJTTY FR.VNCniSE. 181
peasant, wliich only touch liim s^o far as ho forms part of the
gemis homo. This is as true with respect to some of the
reasons which I have given as it is untrue with respect to
others. I do believe, and have very h)ng ago publicly
professed a belief, in that matter, which I desire to make
at least intelligible, perhaps in some cases even accept-
able, to others. That those who contribute to the pur-
poses of a society should share its powers, is almost an
axiom in the foundation of a voluntary institution. What
I hold as to the larger combination of men in political
society is, not that it is an axiom, but that there is a
certain amount of presumption iji its favour. Such a
presumption may be liable to be set aside by counter-
pleas, as in the cases of women, minors, paupers, cri-
minals, and so forth ; but it exists, and it supplies not
the case, but the inception of the ease, for enfranchise-
ment. Nor does this presumption of policy merely em-
brace what is due from the society to the individual ; it
contemplates quite as much what the individual can
su]i])ly to the society in point of vigour and cohesion. It
surely seems difficult to deny that vigour and cohesion
will be greater, where all the parts can be thoroughly
welded into the working machinery, than where a pro-
portion, and a large propoi'tion, of them, remaining out-
side it, are borne along by it as so much dead weight.
Augmentation of vital power in the State is what every
wise and good citizen sliould desire. The more closely,
and the more largely, the power of human will, aifec-
tions, and understanding can be placed in association
wuth the maiiispinngs of the State, the greater Avill
be that augmentation. Enfranchisement tends to attain
this end ; tlierefore enfranchisement is presumably to bo
desired.
182 LAST WOEDS ON THE COUNTY FRANCHISE.
12. But presumption is not proof, and it may be over-
powered by evidence and counter-argument. What sort
of evidence, and what sort of argument, docs the Reply
adduce ? It makes no appeal to British experience ; it
does not attempt to show that, in so much as a single
instance, the constituencies based upon household suffrage
have made one solitary attempt at aggression on that
minority, composed of the educated and the wealthy, for
whose perilous condition it is so full of alarm and of
compassion. It alleges the risks we run from the old and
the rich, the danger of a gerontocracy and a ploutocracy :
whereas, to make its argument good, it should have
shown the imminence of a ptochocracy. Whatever the
poor might be accused of meaning, surely the old will not
legislate in the direction of temerity, nor the rich send
forth the mandate of their own spoliation. It waives,
indeed, the argument of the "precipice"; and this is so
far a gain. But alack ! the old hobgoblins, instead of
being consigned to ignominious oblivion, are dressed out
in new costumes, drawn from that inexhaustible store
of glittering and imposing "properties" which every
theatre where political pieces are in use can supply.
My presumptive and preliminary pleas have been sup-
ported by appeals to our experience since 1832 and since
18(57 : by tlie character and ideas of the English people,
which do not menace our institutions, but are in close
and willing harmony with them ; by showing that it is
caprice, and not principle, which gives to one peasant
A\liat it witbholds from another, and witliholds from one
artisan what it gives to auotlier. I must add tbat all
this huckstering and haggling upon what the hagglers
and hucksterers themselves know is certain to be done,
though it may teach the enfranchised to value enfrau-
LAST WUUDS ON TUi; COL'XTl' rUAKCUISK. 183
chiscmcnt more higlily because tliey will luive to struggle
for it, yet must also tend to diminish confidence in the
governing classes, if not to induce new misgivings as to
their good faith.
13. So far I have dwelt in the main on the mode in
which the arguments for the extension arc dealt with by
the lleply. I now f earch for the substantive reasons which
it advances* in bar of the inevitable concession. Only let
me first observe that if it is not only inevitable, but
known to be inevitable — and the lleply gives no sign of
being without this knowledge — I should have thought it
to be eminently for the interest of those, who may share
its views, to grant what they have got to grant with as
much grace as possible, rather than to bless only under
visible compulsion, and with the wiy mouth and angry
tones of cursing.
14. The " reasons," then, are these. There is no " in-
tolerable evil " now felt, compelling us to change. Again,
the new electors may, if united, throw the old into a
hopeless minority ; and thej- may readily so unite, because
they are homogeneous. This change is not even sought
by them : it is thrust into their hands. No instance can
be shown of a country which is flourishing, happy, and
contented, where the vote is given to adult males gene-
rally. And though the anticipations of danger, in which
the lleply indulges, may be " extreme cases," yet it
claims to "have a perfect right to make every su])i)osi-
tion consistent with possibility." Let us go briefly
through these pleas in tlieii- order.
15. And, beginning in a generous mood, I admit that the
existing state of things " does not for the community at
• F. R. pp. 743-6.
184 LAST WOllDS ON THE COUNTY niANCHISE.
large, perhaps not for tliose immediately concerned,
constitute what is commonly called an intolerable evil.
But surely it is the wisdom of States to redress their evils
before they become intolerable, and their folly to wait for
that ripeness of calamity, cum nee mala ipsa nee eorum
remedia ferre possunms. It was not the sense of intoler-
able evil that carried the first Reform Act ; but the
"sentimental" idea, as the Reply would call it, that an
extreme of capricious anomaly was bad, that capable men
were excluded from the franchise, and that their admis-
sion would strengthen and consolidate the State. Our
taxation was not intolerable, when Mr. Lowe himself so
largely reduced it ; nor our system of popular education,
when he vitally modified and profoundly invigorated it,
by shifting its central principle from prescriptions to
results.
16. But the new electors would be so numerous as to
throw the old into a " hopeless minority." I liad pointed
out that the very same objection had applied to all our
enfranchisements. Eveiy great enlargement downwards
has brought in a number exceeding that of the former pos-
sessors of political power. True, says the Reply ; but
why exaggerate this "natural defect of representative
government " ?* Here is as pure a petitio principii as the
annals of illogic (to coin the word for the occasion) can
supply. Tf the admission of these new-fledged majorities
dislocates or saps the fabric of the Constitution, then
indeed their numerical force is the " natural defect of
representative govurnment." But experience, to which
the Reply here and there just purports to off'er a lip-
service tliat in heart it withdraws, has shown us that
• F. R. p. 739.
LAST WORDS ON THE COUXTY FRANCHISE. 185
these admissions have not dislocated or sapped the State,
but have also greatly consolidated what tlicy had first
greatly enlarged. "Broadening downward" the walls,
they have made the structure harder to overthrow. This
" natural defect " has up to the present time been found no
defect at all, but a source of strength and peace, and a
guarantee of permanence, and therefore more like a natural
virtue.
17. But then, unlike other classes, this class is "a
homogeneous class," and therefore it can readily unite.
Why and in what sense is labour homogeneous ? Is there
no homogeneity in the instinct of property? In that
instinct, which may be "inert and timid" indeed in pro-
moting some kinds of change, because it is already so well-
to-do ; but which is lynx-eyed, sensitive, and astute beyond
all others, in detecting, and in promoting or obstructing as
the case may be, what touches its own peculiar interests.
Any political union of the labouring masses can only be
brought about by sacrifices of time, which to them are sacri-
fices of to-morrow's bread ; but the leisured classes have
their hours and days much, som(>tinu\s a great deal too
much, at their free di^sposal. Probably there is no public
man among us of Mr. Lowe's standing, or of even a tenth
part of his experience, who has been thrown so little into
contact with the labouring classes. "We must all regret it.
Had it been otherwise, it would have been better certainly
for them, and possibly for him. This homogeneity is an
idol that he has set up, of which not the feet only but the
limbs and head are of clay, and the brain of I know not
what. Between the Irish ;ind the blnglish (luartcrs of our
towns, between the skilled and the \inskillcd labourer,
between the rural peasant and the op])idan artisan, be-
tween the political parties into which these ai'e divided,
186 LAST WOKDS OX THE COUNTY FEANCHISE.
and again between these and numbers even of literary and
professional men, there is, indeed, the tie of a common
predicate : they live by their work, and not on their
means. But homogeneity has never yet, except in 1831-2,
made the labourers, even of the towns, unite. And then
they united not for themselves but for others. Why, then,
is this dream of hostile and selfish union between them
and the far more variant population of the country to
frighten us from our propriety ?
18. The Reply, however, says they do not want the
suffrage ; you are thrusting it upon them. It is the old
story. When the voice of a petitioner is calm and low, we
cannot hear it. When it is full and loud, then we " must
not yield to intimidation." The Keply, as usual, dispenses
with the evidence on one side, and excludes it on the
other. I cannot wonder that it produces none to su.stain
the dictum ; for there is none. But on the other side, are
there no "agitators," who are "not to be ducked"? Is
there not a Press that gives utterance to the voice of
Labour, and is not that utterance pretty plain ? Arc there
not ti'om year to year great, though perfectly peaceable,
meetings, attended, and tliat even from a distance, by
thousands who can ill afford it? Has not Exeter Hall
been filled Ijy, and in the interest of, the rural labourers, last
season, under tlic presidency of Mr. Bright ? There are
even now at least two members of Parliament who are, in
a special sense, the representatives of the working men ;
and their voice is in utter contradiction to the assurances
so confidently given by the member for the University of
London.
19. And now as to the demand tliat is made on us for an
instance of a country flourishing and contented where the
suffrage is general. Were we to refer to a small country,
LAST WORDS ON THE COUNTY FRANCniSE. 187
the answer would not unfairly be that we could not argue
from it to a large one. Let us turn, then, as the Reply
turns, to America. And wliat is here tiie inipeacliment '?
First, a sti'ike, M'hich was not comparable in extent to
Bonie English strikes, under the ten-pound suffrage, within
the memoiy of our own generation ; and which has ended.
Secondly, a civil war brought about, strangely enough, by
the action of those among the States associated, in wliich
the right of representation, belonging to the popTdations
numerically, was, under the slave system, given over ex-
clusively to the whites. In the North the war never was
a question of class. All classes were alike intent upon it :
and the Reply, which dares all that can be dared by those
of women born, does not make bold to state that if the
suffrage had been limited after its own heart, the limita-
tion would have made the smallest difference. What, on
the other hand, can America say for her Constitution ?
That, througliout her vast territoiy, there is not a man
who is not loyal to it. That, in her legislation, the public
interest is always preferred to th(! small interests of class ;
yet tliat under it all classes live in habitual harmony.
Tliat, ^\•hatever may be said of the repulsion of tlu; best
citizens from public life, there is no State in the world the
affairs of which, foreign and domestic, ai'e transacted Avith
an ability more effective ; perhaps we in England liave
reason to say, more drastic. That, in its liour of agony,
that Constitution was put under a strain at the least as
severe as any recorded in history, and that it came through
that strain unhurt. And this, though America does not
possess by any means the same advantages which we
hajjpily enjoy, in the recollections of history, in the land-
marks of usage, and in the lessons of tradition.
20. Still less hapi)y, if less happy there can be, is the
188 LAST WORDS ON THE COUNTY FEANCDISE.
reference to France. For in that country we have lately
seen order menaced, and a Constitution violently strained,
by those who sought to escape from the verdict of the
extended suffrage; but on the other hand, with a rare
self-command and a noble temperance, that order kept in
safety, and that Constitution in balance, by the advocates
of wide public liberty. After weeks of agonising suspense,
at length the end has come. IN'ot a hand was raised to
strike, even for freedom; not a word was spoken, that
could stir even the least patient into action ; and France,
rich in every other distinction, but long so slow to make
ground in her political education, has achieved a bloodless
victory as remai-kable, in the peaceful annals of the world,
as the most splendid of all her successes on the battle-
field can ever be in military history. With the bravery
of a defeated Osman Pasha, the head of the State has
frankly owued the facts, and has promised, in his message
to the Legislature, that the end of this crisis "shall be tiie
starting-point of a new era, and that all the public powers
shall co-operate in promoting its development."
21. Finally, the Keply claims "a perfect right to make
every supposition consistent with possibility." A claim,
which might give a meditative man much food for thought.
In the first place, if sauce for the goose it is sauce for the
gander ; and every supposition consistent with possibility
may as reasonably be made in the interest of an extended
enfranchisement. Let us assume, however, that it is good ;
good on botli sides. But both the author of the lleply and
I have been taught at Oxford that probable evidence is
the guide of life ; the only guide Avliich it commonly
affords. I wish, therefore, that the lieply, wliicli lays
claim to an eminently practical character, had informed
us how, under this licence, on each side of disputed ques-
LAST WOKDS ON THE COTJNTT FEANCHISE. 189
tions, to make " every supposition consistent with possi-
bility," the business of life can be carried on. Let us
apply it in a few cases. A wife may betray; therefore no
one should nuirry. A friend may deceive ; let us re-
nounce all friends. A coachman may break my neck ; I
never will drive out. A cook may poison me ; I will
live upon blackberries and acorns. A standing army may
put down liberty ; let not the House of Commons vote a
man. Xor will it avail, in the interests of the lleply, to
limit this licence of extravagant hypothesis to cases where
the evil is grave, and the position defenceless ; no evil is
graver to a nation than the extinction of its freedom : the
wealthy class cannot be more defenceless against the
ravages of an invading peasantry than each member of it
is, when, without a qualm, once, twice, or even thrice a
day he sits down to table, against his cook. AVhy does
not the Reply adopt at once the outspoken language of
Henry the Eighth, who addressed his peasantry as "but
brutes and inexpert folk," and say to Lincolnshire
labourers now what that very frank sovereign said to
them, as Mr. Bright* tells us, in 1537 : " How presump-
tuous are ye, the rude commons of one shire, and that
one of the most brute and beastly of the whole realm " ?
22. The truth is, the greatest of all the differences
between us is in the point of view from which we exaniino
and aiiproach the question of the sull'rage. For me, enfran-
chisement, in the absence of a reasonable bar, is a good ;
and is only to be foregone upon proof that it will be accom-
panied and outweighed by some evil, incident to the form
in which it is proposed. For those who share the senti-
ments of the E-ply, if I judge them light, it is an e\il,
* Bright's English History, ii. 406.
190 LAST "WOEDS ON THE COIJKTY FRANCHISE.
only to be encountered for the sake of escaping some
other and yet greater evil. I look to it, as angmenting
the sum total of forces, enlisted in the nation's in-
terest, and placed at the disposal of the State : they,
as multiplying the risks and shocks, to ■which all human
institutions are exposed. Their idea of a Constitution
is, that it is a fortress to be gallantly defended by
a few ; and their idea of a people, that it is a vast
army posted round about with hostile intentions, which it
is a duty and an honour to resist, as long as resistance
can be maintained. We find it easy to decry the political
ideas of the ancient Greeks ; but those cherished among
us are less consistent, and in some respects less rational.
They contemplated with acquiescence or approval the evil
institution of slavery ; but they considered, as the English
of a former time considered, that every freeman should
have a share in the determination of the laws by which he
was to be governed. The spirit of our religion, truly popular
as it is, has effaced from our system the very name and
idea of the slave ; but what if the selfishness of class,
inhering in our politics, has prevented us from giving to
the idea of freedom that which is its consummation, and
to the character of the citizen, in the humbler orders, the
amplitude of which it is susceptible?
At any rate Ave have this undeniable fact full in our
view : we withhold the boon of the franchise from that
half of our labouring householders which, if a distinction
must be di'awn, is really and obviously the safer of the two.
We withhold it, perliaps with some musty precedents to
sustain us, fetched from distant ages and from foreign
lauds, but not so miich as one of them carrying the
stamp of true British origin. Failing to find foothold in
our history, or within the wide spaces of the probable,
LAST TV'OEDS ON THE COTJXTT FRANCHISE. 191
we take refuge in the shadowy regions, domos vacuns et
inania regna, of all that is " consistent with possibility."
23. 'While this claim is being made, and while the pre-
sent paper is being written, Mr. Joseph Arch appears as a
fellow-contributor to this Re\-iew, and states, in vigorous
language, the grievance of the rural labourer. He feels
it keenly, and he puts it strongly. He is not likely then
to understate, upon this arena of free speech, the Avants
and wishes of his clients. And what are the portentous
demands he makes ? More air, more water, more dwell-
ings, weather-proof and accommodated to the purposes of
decency and vii'tue ; yet even these by no abstract or
communistic standard, only by the extension to the
country at large, which he thinks the rural franchise
would secure, of the provisions already applied to towns.
One, and one only, political proposal, indeed, he makes :
it is the alteration of the present laws touching primo-
geniture and entail ; but, in this alarming pretension,
what if it should be remarked that Mr. Lowe agrees
with him ?
24. I earnestly hope that these reiterated accusations
of class-purpose, hostile to society in general, against the
county householders, may once for all be abandoned :
were it only for the reason, that they might lead to retali-
ation. It is not wise to provoke the examination of the
history of our Statute Book, with a vicAV to ascertain and
enumerate the instances where the narrow and obli(jue
purposes of class have been pursued by Tarliaments in the
choice of which the upper orders had it all their own way.
Let this question be closed before the adverse critic
unrolls the story, under the farmer's eyes, of the substi-
tution of a malt-tax for the older services charged directly
on the land ; or invites the attention of the labourer to
192 XAPT WOBDS ON THE COXTNTY FRANCHISE.
the course of legislation, since the Eevolution as well as
before it, upon wages, upon combinations, upon crime,
upon army and navy discipliue, upon bread. Let bygones
be bygones. Eut bygones they will not be, if ugly
phantoms are persistently sent into a field from which it
would be too easy finally to drive them by an army of too
solid and too sad realities. I have no dreams of a golden
age ; there will always be more than enough to deplore,
more than enough to mend. But let us at least thrust
aside the needless difficulty of wanton crimination ; aud
let us labour, in patience and good- will towards all, to
handle and direct for the best the movement of our
time.
VII
POSTSCEIPTUM OX THE COUNTY FRANCHISE.*
1. My estimate of the comparative value of the popular
judgment in politics has, to use an expression of Milton's,
" stumbled some " ; and minds in a state of apprehension
are apt to magnify the thing itself, -whicli has caused tluir
alarm, as well as the consequences which they expect to
flow from it. But I can hardly regret that some limita-
tions have been for a moment forgotten, if the result has
been to produce a discussion, in which every contributor
lias thrown new liglit upon the case. It is, perhaps,
natural that I should prefer to all others the very able
papers of Mr. Hutton and Mr. Harrison. To these I am
indebted for illustration and defence much better than any
I could myself have supplied ; but I will give in few words
my view of the position up to which competing, but also
converging, efforts have brought the general subject.
2. It will now be clearly understood that we arc not
debating whether government ought to be carried on by
the people rather than by the leisured classes. In this
country, at least, the people themselves would be the very
first to reject such a proposal, if any one could be found
* Reprinted extract from Tlie Nineteenth Centnri/ for July 1878,
Art. XI., "A Modern Symi)osium." [It was an inconsistency to write
this Postscript after my 'Last Words.' But the soft and silken cord,
with which the Editor of The Nineteenth Century guides his con-
tr.butors, usually draws them whithersoever he will. — W. E. G., 1878. J
I.
194 POSTSCRIPTTJM OX THE COUIfTT FRANCHISE.
to make it. J^eitlier lias it been contended that tlieir
powers of political action are superior to those of the
limited portions of society, which possess such vast
advantages in leisure, tradition, wealth, hereditary apti-
tude, and every kind of opportunity. Nor even, as
might be hastily inferred from the succinct title of this
literary crcmos, that "the popular judgment in 'all kinds
of politics is more just than that of the higher orders."
The people are of necessity unfit for the rapid, multi-
farious action of the administrative mind ; unfurnished
with the ready, elastic, and extended, if superficial,
knowledge which the work of government, in this country
beyond all others, demands ; destitute of that acquaint-
ance with the world, with the minds and tempers of men,
with the arts of occasion and opportunity, in fact, with
the whole doctrine of circumstance, which lying outside
the matter of political plans and propositions, neverthe-
less frequently determines not the policy alone, but the
duty of propounding them. T^o people of a magnitude to
be called a nation has ever, in strictness, governed itself;
the utmost which appears to be attainable, under the con-
ditions of human life, is that it should choose its governors,
and that it should, on select and rare occasions, bear
directly upon their action. History shows how seldom
even this point has in any considerable manner been
attained. It is written in legible characters, and with a
pen of iron, on the rock of human destiny, that within
the domain of practical politics the people must in the
main be passive.
3. It would be well if this were all. But I must make
a further admission. That teachableness for which most
of th(! writers in this series give them credit will on some
occasions, and in some persons on all occasions, degenerate
POSTSOnTPTUM ON THE COFNTT FRANCHISE. 105
into, or be replaced by, a degree of subserviency. The
greatest, apparently, of all the difficulties in establishing
true popular government is the difficulty — it should, per-
haps, be said the impossibility — of keeping the national
pulse in a state of habitual and healthy animation. At
certain junctures it may be raised even to a feverish heat.
Qiut these accesses are, in all countries, short and rare ;
they come and go like the pas.sing wave. The movement
is below par a hundred times for once that it is above.
The conditions of life bear lightly upon the few, but hard
upon the many. To the many, politics of an operative
quality are in ordinary times an impossibility, in the most
favourable times a burden; but to the few, with their
wealth and leisure, they are an easy and healthful exercise,
nay often an entertainment and even a luxuiy, and a
seasoning of life. At unexciting seasons, the member of
the upper or middle class will usually cleave to his party.
But I apprehend that the ties of party, as distinct from
those of sympathy, opinion, and personal confidence iu
leaders, are less felt among the masses than among those
in su]H'rior circumstances. The present weighs more
heavily upon them ; and they must have as a rule, other
circumstances being equal, less energy available either for
the anticipation of the future, or the retention of the past.
Upon the whole then, in the absence of truly great and
stirring subjects, the working man, ov popolano, Avill very
frequently come to the poll with his mind in a rather
negative state ; and though, setting aside the few baser
nioml)ers of the class, he would not entertain the offer of
an undisguised bribe, there is a disguised and standing
bribe, which may be said commonly to lie in the hands of
superiors in station, especially if this superiority be com-
bined with any personal contact invohing mutual interests.
2
196 POSTSCEIPTUM ON THE COUNTY FEANCHISE.
So that we cannot be surprised if the mere desire to please
the employer or the landlord, as such, steps into the
vacant or lethargic mind, and, for the purpose of directing
the vote, stands instead of the reason of the case. This, it
will be observed, is a mode of operation quite distinct from
legitimate influence, though it is far from being the most
illegitimate.
4. Again, I allow it to be possible that in particular
cases the mere possession of the suffrage may be a cause
of deterioration, and thus of relative unfitness, to the
possessor. The superiority of the popular judgment in
politics, so far as it is superior, is, according to my view,
due mainly to moral causes, to a greater mental integrity,
which, again, is greatly owing to the comparative absence
of the more subtle agencies of temptation. But the work-
ing man, whom Fortune does not taint, and whom it is
nobody's interest to corrupt, is one thing ; the working
man practised upon, courted, flattered, whether by the
old-fashioned arts or by the new-fangled Conservative
demagoguism now so much in vogue, is another. His
little bark will carry no great breadth of canvas ; and the
puff" of factitious adulation will act upon its equilibrium
like a squall. Of course I do not speak of those select
men who, as Mr. Harrison has so well shown, are the
homogeneous and sympathising standard-bearers that
Nature has elected, and stamped with her own indis-
putable _^ai, to guide the working community from witliin
its own precinct. I speak of the average man, when sub-
ject to more than what had thus far been his average
danger. On the whole, I admit freely that the deductions
from the benefit of popular suffrage are varied and serious.
But what we are now contending with is the allegation
that it is not a benefit at all, but a mischief.
rosTSCEiPTnii on the county franchise. 197
5. To point the issue still more exactly, let me say
that I decline to widen it, as Mr. Lowe would have me,
hy allowing it to comprohoud universal suffrage. The
Apostle said, " Knowing the terrors of the Lord, wo per-
suade men;" and Mr. Lowe, with perfectly warrantable
tactics, knowing the terrors of universal suffrage, seeks to
persuade men thereby. "What we want in these papers is
conviction rather than persuasion. I therefore put aside
universal suffrage, which, without doubt, must include
some elements of unimagined horror, elements not yet
fully developed, because, as far as I know, it differs from
household suffrage only in the free inclusion of lodgers,
whether belonging to the family or otherwise. I have
never heard of an attempt, as yet, to register those who
sleep under the dry arches of Waterloo Bridge. Eut let
us pass by the subject, as one too dreadful to contem-
plate, and be content to deal with the original matter
of debate — namely, the establishment in the counties of
the enfranchising law which, ten years ago, we gave to
the towns.
6. This being the issue, Mr. Lowe has, in the middle of
his short paper, stated the argument fi'om his point of
view with his usual exactness. He says the rationale is
extremely simple ; and so far I agree with him. His
main contention is, that the mcmb(!r of the lower class is
liable to all the sources of error which affect the member
of the higher class, and with these is " liable to many
deceptions from which the other is exempt." He must
take most of his opinions at second hand, and " his chance
of being riglit depends on the hands into which he may
chance to fall." And Mr. Lowe thinks it a strange paradox
to maintain (as indeed it would be if any one did maintain
it) that " a man with all the causes of error incident to the
198 POSTSCKIPTUM ON THE COrNTT PEANCHISE.
■wisest, and several more peculiarly his own, is less liable
to error than they." " Tlie wisest," I stop to observe, mean
the richest ; but the question chiefly at issue is whether
wealth, together with its accompaniments, is altogether
entitled to this commanding and conclusive panegyric.
7. That the rich have vast advantages, I am among
the first to contend : that the very highest and noblest,
because most fully and largely developed, specimens of
humanity are found among the highest class, I for one
believe. But they too have their mob, as well as their
elect and favoured specimens. I concede, however, to
Mr. Lowe, without hesitation or reluctance, the superiority
of their intellectual qualifications ; not universally, for
among their mob there are many exceptions, but as a
whole. There remains behind a grave inquiry, to which
it seems to me that the opponents generally have given
very insufiicient heed. It is whether political judgments
are formed by means of intellectual qualifications alone.
For if there be another element which helps to determine
them in all or in certain cases, it may then prove that the
entrance of that element into the case may disturb and
overset what, as I freely admit, would otherwise be solid
and well-poised computations.
8. Now my stand has been taken on a basis of fact, which
no one has attempted to shake. I afiirm that, so far as
we know the facts, and Avith a possible exception or two,
the popular judgment on the great achievements of the
last half-century, which have made our age (thus far) a
praise among the ages, has been more just and true than
that of the majority of the higher orders. Mr. Lowe
alleges that these have been the trophies of "moderate"
Liberalism. Sometimes: but this is not true (for example)
of the first lleform Act, nor of Negro Emancipation, nor
rOSTSCKIPTUlI ON THE COUXTl' FEANCHISE. 193
of Com Law Eepcal, nor of cheap postage, nor of relief of
the ])ress from taxes, nor of tlic furtlicr extension of the
franchise, nor of the Abolition of Church Rates, nor of Irish
disestablishment, nor of the Irish Land Act : not to mention
that moderate Liberalism, except on the occasions when
it recalcitrates, is as much eschewed by the Tories as the
Liberalism dubbed immoderate. So that my proposition
stands. Can Mr. Lowe fail to perceive how telling, how
grave a fact this is, if it be a fact at all ? It is surely one
broad enough to sustain the superstnicture I have laid
u])on it, which is simply this : that now, when wc have
enfranchised one full half of this class, which felt and
judged on the greatest matters so much more soundly than
we did, and that half the more questionable of the two, it
will not be well to withhold the corresponding boon,
demanded by eijuality, by growing intelligence, and by
unquestioned docility, from the other moiety. Indeed,
until this great basis of fact, on which we stand, can be
shaken, it appears to me that we might be warranted in
declining to adduce argument on details, and might sim])ly
ask our opponents to present their proof that the working
population, who, to say the very least, have not opposed
the good and great measures that have been so uniformly
resisted by the majority of the higher class, ought by
rights to be shut out from the franchise which that higher
class enjoys.
9. I have indicated that it is, on the whole, in the moral
sphere that we are to look for the causes of a superiority,
which is within its own limits undeniable. Moral ele-
ments of character are as true, and often as powerful a
factor, in framing judgments upon matters of human interest
and action as intellectual forces. But there is anotlier
element in the question not less vital : the character of
200 rOSTSCRIPTUM ON THE COUNTY FRANCHISE.
the surroundings, the contiguous objects of attraction and
repulsion, the beguiling and tempting agencies in the midst
of which we live. Those who have but a sufficiency for life
set a less value perhaps upon it, and certainly upon its
incidental advantages, than persons who live in the midst
of superfluities varying from a few to a multitude almost
numberless. These superfluities are like the threads that
bound down Gulliver to the soil ; and they form habits of
mind which at length pass into our fixed mental and moral
constitution, and cease to form objectsof distinct conscious-
ness. If it be true that wealth and ease bring with them
in a majority of cases an increased growth in the harden-
ing crust of egotism and selfishness, the deduction thereby
made from the capacity of right judgment in large and
most important questions, may be greater than the addition
which leisure, money, and opportunity have allowed.
10. I touch here upon deep mines of truth, never yet
explored, nor within the power of human intelligence to
explore fully, though we are taught to believe in an
Eye that has observed, and a Mind that has accurately
registered the whole. Even in the present twilight of our
practical and moral knowledge, we may perceive, by every
form of instance, how often the wisdom of love, goodness,
and simplicity wins, even in the races of this world, against
the wisdom of crafty and astute self-seeking. Even more
is tliis true in the fields of open thought than in the direct
and sharp competitions of life. In questions to which his
budding knowledge reaches, even the child has often a
more serene and effective sense of justice thnn a gi'own
man ; and a partial analogy obtains between the relations
of age and those of class. History affords, I think, a grand
and powerful illustration of the argument in the cnse of
the acceptance of Christianity; which acceptance will bo
rosTSCRiPxrii on the couxtt fraxchise. 201
arlmitted, I presume, to have been a great advance upon
the road of trutli and of human welfare. "Was it the
wealthy and the learned who, with their vast advanta2;es,
and their siipposed exemption from special sources of error,
outstripped their humbler fellow-creatures in bowing their
heads to the authority of the Gospel ? * Did scribes and
Pharisees, or did shepherds and fishermen, yield the first,
most, and readiest converts to the Saviour and the company
of His apostles ? It was not an arbitrary act, for there ia
no such act of the Almighty which "hid these things
from the wise and prudent and rcvi'aled them unto ba])es."
The whole code of our Saviour's teaching on the condition
of rich and poor with reference to the acceptance of moral
truth is not the rhetoric of an enthusiast, nor the straitened
philosophy of a local notable, who mistook the accidents of
one time and place for principles of universal knowledge.
They were the utterances of the "Wisdom that
" Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent. "f
11. There was not, be it observed, any denial in the
new religion of the intellectual superiority, which, upon
the whole or in the majority of cases, attends upon wealth
and leisure. But that curtain was lifted which, wov{»n
by self-love, hides from us many unpalatable truths. As
the barbarian, with his undeveloped organs, sees and
hears at distances which the senses of the cultured state
cannot overpass, and yet is utterly deficient as to fine
details of sound and colour, even so it seems that, in
judging of the great questions of policy which appeal to
the primal truths and laws of our nature, those classes
• See sup. p. 180. f ^ope, ' Essay on Man.'
202 POSTSCEIPTUM ON THE COUNTY FRANCHISE.
may excel who, if they lack the opportunities, yet escape
the suhtle perils of the wealthy state. True they receive
much of their instruction from persons of the classes
above them, from the "minority of the minority"; but
this in no way mends the argument on behalf of the
majority of the minority, who habitually reject, as it
passes by their doors, that teaching which the men of the
highways and the hedges as commonly are eager, or ready,
to receive.
YIII.
KIN BEYOND SEA *
**Wlirn TiOve unites, wide space divides in vain,
Aud bands may clasp across the spreading main."
1. It is now nearly half a century since the works of De
Tocqueville and De Beaumont, founded upon personal
observation, broujilit the institutions of the United States
effectually "within the circle of European thought and
interest. They were co-operators, hut not upon an equal
scale. De Beaumont belongs to the class of ordinary,
thv^iigh able, writers : De Tocqueville was the Burke of
his age, and his treatise upon America may well be
regarded as among the best books hitherto produced for
the political student of all times and countries.
2. But higher and deeper than the concern of the old
world at large in the thirteen colonies, now grown into
thirty-eight States, besides eight Territories, is the special
interest of England in their condition and prospects.
I do not speak of political controversies between them
and us, which are happily, as I trust, at an end. I do
not speak of the vast contribution, which, from year to
year, through the ojieratious of a colossal trade, each
makes to the wealth and comfort of the other : nor of the
• Published in the North American Review for September 1878.
Republished by permission : with one or two notes, and a few correc-
tions, of which ;i part were seut to the Ixoview, but arrived too late.
204 KIN BEYOND SEA.
friendly controversy, which in its own place it mij^ht
be well to raise, between the leanings of America to Pro-
tectionism, and the more daring reliance of the old country
upon free and unrestricted intercourse with all the world.
jS'or of the menace which, in the prospective development
of her resources, America offers to the commercial pre-
eminence of England.* On this subject I will only say
that it is she alone who, at a coming time, can, and pro-
bably will, wrest from us that commercial primacy. We
have no title, I have no inclination, to murmur at the
prospect. If she acquires it, she will make the acquisi-
tion by the right of the strongest ; but, in this instance,
the strongest means the best. She will probably become
what we are now, the head servant in the great house-
hold of the World, the employer of all employed ; because
her service will be the most and ablest. We have no
more title against her, than Venice, or Genoa, or Holland
has had against us. One great duty is entailed upon us,
which we, unfortunately, neglect ; the duty of preparing,
by a resolute and sturdy effort, to reduce our public
burdens, in preparation for a day when we shall probably
have less capacity than we have now to bear them.
3. Passing by all these subjects, with their varied attrac-
tions, I come to another, which lies within the tranquil
domain of political philosophy. The students of the
future, in this department, will have much to say in the
way of comparison between American and British institu-
*
[This topic was much more largely handled by me in the Financial
Statement which I delivered, as Chancellor of the Hxcliequer, on May
2, 186t). I recommend attention to the excellent article by Mr.
Henderson, in the Contemporarii Reiinv for October 1878: and I agree
with the author in being disposed to think that the protective laws of
America eflectually bar the full development of her competing power.—
W. E. G., Nov. 6, 1878.]
KIN BEYOND SEA. 20.5
tions. The relationship between these two is unique in
liistory. It is always interesting to trace and to compare
Constitutions, as it is to compare languapjcs ; especially in
such instances as those of the Greek States and the Italian
Republics, or the diversified forms of the feudal system in
the different countries of Europe. IJut there is no paralhd
in all the records of the world to the case of that prolific
British mother, who has sent forth her iiiiiuincrahle
children over all the earth to be the founders of half-a-
dozen empires. She, with her proji:eny, may almost claim
to constitute a kind of Universal Church in politics. But,
among these children, there is one whose place in tlie
world's eye and in history is superlative : it is the
Americen Uepublic. She is the eldest born. She has,
taking the capacity of her land into \-iew as well as its
mere measurement, a natural base for the greatest con-
tinuous empire ever established by man. And it may be
well here to mention what has not always been sufficiently
observed, that the distinction between continuous empire;,
and empire severed and dispersed over sea, is vital. The
development, which the Uepublic has effected, has beeu
unexampled in its rapidity and force. "While other
countries have doubled, or at most trebled, their popula-
tion, she has risen, duiing one single century of freedom,
in round numbers, from two millions to forty-five. As to
riches, it is reasonable to establish, from the decennial
stages of the progress thus far achieved, a series for the
future ; and, reckoning upon this basis, T suppose that the
very next Census, in the year 1880, will exhibit her to
the world as certainly the wealtliiest of all the nations.
The huge figure of a thousand millions sterling, which
may be taken roundly as the annual income of the United
Kingdom, has been reached at a surprising rate ; a rate
206 KIX BEYOND SEA.
which may perhaps be best expressed by saying that, if
we could have started forty or fifty years ago from zero,
at the rate of our recent annual increment, we should now
have reached our present position. But while we have
been advancing with tliis portentous rapidity, America is
passing us by as if in a canter. Yet even now the work
of searching the soil and the bowels of the territory, and
opening out her enterprise throughout its vast expanse, is
in its infancy. The England and the America of the
present are probably the two strongest nations of the
world. But there can hardly be a doubt, as between the
America and the England of the future, that the daughter,
at some no very distant time, will, whether fairer or less
fair, be unquestionably yet stronger than the mother.
" niatre forti filia fortior." *
4. But all this pompous detail of material triumphs,
whether for the one or for the other, is worse than idle,
unless the men of the two countries sliall remain, or shall
become, greater than the mere things that they produce,
and shall know how to regard those things simply as tools
and materials for the attainments of the highest purposes
of their being. Ascending, then, from the ground floor of
material industry towards the regions in which these
purposes are to be wrought out, it is for each nation to
consider how far its institutions have reached a state, in
wliich they can contribute their maximui. to the store of
human happiness and excellence. And for the political
student all over the world, it will be beyond anything
ciiiious as well as useful to examine, with what diversi-
ties, as well as what resemblances, of apparatus, the two
* See Hor. OJ. 1. 13.
, KIN BETOXD ST.k. 207
greater branches of a race born to command have been
minded, or induced, or constrained to work out, in their
eea-severed seats, their political destinies according to the
respective laws appointed for them.
No higher ambition can find vent in a paper such as
this, than to suggest the position and claims of the sub-
ject, and slightly to indicate a few outlines, or at least,
fragments, of the working material.
5. In many and the most fundamental respects the two
still carry in undiminished, perhaps in increasing, clear-
ness, the notes of resemblance that beseem a parent and u
child.
]3oth wish for self-government ; and, however grave the
drawbacks under which in one or both it exists, the two
have, among the great nations of the world, made the
most effectual advances towards the true aim of rational
politics.
They are similarly associated in their fixed idea that
the force, in which all government takes effect, is to be
constantly backed, and, as it were, illuminated, by thouglit
in speech and writing. The ruler of St. Paul's time
"bare the sword" (Rom. xiii. 4). Bare it, as the
Apostle says, with a mission to do right ; but he says
nothiug of any duty, or any custom, to show by reason
that he was doing right. Our two governments, whatso-
ever they do, have to give reasons for it ; not reasons
■which will convince the unreasonable, but reasons which
on the whole will convince the average mind, and carry it
unitedly forwards in a course of action, often, though not
always wise, and carrying within itself provisions, where
it is unwise, for the correction of its own unwisdom before
it grow into an intolerable rankness. They are govern-
ments, not of force only, but of persuasion.
208 Enf BETOXD SEA.
6. Many more are the concords, and not less vital than
these, of the two nations, as expressed in their institu-
tions. They alike prefer the practical to the abstract.
They tolerate opinion, with only a reserve on behalf of
decency ; and they desire to confine coercion to the pro-
vince of action, and to leave thought, as such, entirely
free. They set a high value on liberty for its own sake.
They desire to give full scope to the principles of self-
reliance in the people, and they deem self-help to be im-
measurably superior to help in any other form ; to be the
only help, in short, which ought not to be continually, or
periodically, put upon its trial, and required to make good
its title. They mistrust and mislike the centralisation of
power ; and they cherish municipal, local, even parochial
liberties, as nursery grounds, not only for the production
here and there of able men, but for the general training of
public virtue and independent spirit. They regard pub-
licity as the vital air of politics ; through which alone, in
its freest circulation, opinions can be thrown into common
stock for the good of all, and the balance of relative rights
and claims can be habitually and peaceably adjusted. It
would be difficult, in the case of any other pair of nations,
to present an assemblage of traits at once so common aud
so distinctive, as has been given in this probably imperfect
enumeration.
7. There were, however, the strongest reasons why
America could not grow into a reflection or repetition of
England. Passing from a narrow island to a continent
almost without bounds, the colonists at once and vitally
altered their conditions of thought, as well as of existence,
in relation to the most important and most operative of
all social facts, the possession of the soil. In England,
inequality lies imbedded in the very base of the social
KIN BEYOND SEA. 209
structure ; in America it is a late, incidental, unrecognised
product, not of tradition, but of industry and wealth, aa
tliey advance with various and, of necessity, unequal steps.
Heredity, seated as an idea in the heart's core of English-
men, and sustaining far more than it is sustained by those
of our institutions which express it, was as truly absent
from the intellectual and moral store, with which the
colonists traversed the Atlantic, as if it had been some
forgotten article in the bills of lading that made up their
cargoes. Equality combined with liberty, and renewable
at each descent from one generation to another, like a
lease with stipulated breaks, was the groundwork of their
social creed. In vain was it sought, by arrangements
such as those connected with the name of Baltimore or of
Penn, to qualify the action of those overpowering forces
which so determined the case. Slavery itself, strange
as it now may seem, failed to impair the theory how-
ever it may have impoi'ted into the practice a hideous
solecism. No hardier republicanism was generated in
New England than in the Slave States of tlie South,
which produced so many of the great statesmen of
Ameiica.
8. It may be said that the North, and not the South,
had the larger number of colonists ; and was the centra
of those commanding moral influences which gave to the
country as a whole its political and moral atmosphere.
The type and form of manhood for America was supplied
neither by the Recusant in Maryland, nor by the Cavalier
in Virginia, but by the Puritan of New England; and it
would have been a form and type widely ditierent could
the colonisation have taken place a couple of centuries, or
a single century, sooner. Neither the Tudor, nor even
the Plantagenet period, could have supplied its special
I. p
210 KIN BEYOND SEA.
fonn. The Eeformation was a cardinal factor in its pro-
duction ; and this in more ways than one.
9. Before that great epoch, the political forces of the
country were represented on the whole by the Monarch
on one side, and the people on the other. In the people,
setting aside the latent vein of LoUardism, there was a
general homogeneity with respect to all that concerned
the relation of governors and governed. In the deposition
of Sovereigns, the resistance to abuses, the establishment
of institutions for the defence of liberty, there were no
two parties to divide the land. But, with the Reforma-
tion, a new dualism was sensibly developed among us.
Not a dualism so violent as to break up the national unity,
but yet one so marked and substantial, that thenceforward
it was very difficult for any individual or body of men to
represent the entire English character, and the old balance
of its forces. The wrench which severed the Church and
people from the Bom an obedience left for domestic settle-
ment thereafter a tremendous internal question, between
the historical and the new, which in its milder form per-
plexes us to this day. Except during the short reign of
Edward VI., the civil power,^ in various methods and
degrees, took what may be termed the traditionary side,
and favoured the development of the historical more than
the individual aspect of the national religion. These
elements confronted one another during the reigns of the
earlier Stuarts, not only with obstinacy but with fierce-
ness. There had grown up with the Tudors, from a
variety of causes, a great exaggeration of the idea of Boyal
power; and this arrived, under James I. and Charles I.,
at a rank maturity. Not less, but even more masculine
and determined, was the converse development. Mr.
Hallam saw, and has said, that at the outbreak of tho
KIN BKVOXD SEA, 211
Great Eobellion, the old British Constitution vras in dan-
ger, not from one party but from both. In that mixed
fabric had once been harmonised the ideas, both of reli-
gious duty, and of allegiance as related to it, which were
noAV held in severance. The hardiest and dominating
portion of the American Colonists represented that sever-
ance in its extremest form, and had dropped out of the
order of the ideas, which they carried across the water,
all those elements of political Anglicism, which give to
aristocracy in tliis country a position only second in
strength to that of freedom. State and Church alike had
frowned u])on them ; and their strong reaction was a re-
action of their entire nature, alike of tlie spiritual and
the secular man. All that was democratic in the policy of
England, and all that was Protestant in her religion, they
carried witli them, in pronounced and exclusive forms,
to a soil and a scene singularly suited for their growtli.
10. It is to the honour of tlic British Monarchy that,
upon the whole, it frankly recog-nised the facts, and did not
]>edanti(al]y endeavour to constrain by artificial and alien
limitations the growth of the infant States. It is a thing
to be remembered that the accusations of the colonies in
1776 were entirely levelled at the King actually on the
throne, and that a general acquittal was thus given by
them to every preceding reign. Their infancy had been
upon the whole what tluir manhood was to be, self-governed
and republican. Their Revolution, as we call it, was like
ours in the main, a vindication of liberties inherited and
possessed. It was a Conservative revolution ; and the
ha])py result was that, notwitlistanding llie sharpness of
the collision with the mother-country, and with domestic
loyalisra, the Thirteen Colonies made provision for their
future in conformity, as to all that determined life and
p 2
212 KIN BEYONB SEA.
manners, with the recollections of their past. The two
Constitutions of the two countries express indeed rather
the differences than the resemblances of the nations.
The one is a thing grown, the other a thing made : the
one a praxis, the other a poitsis : the one the ofl'spring of
tendency and indeterminate time, the other of choice and
of an epoch. But, as the British Constitution is the most
subtle organism which bas proceeded from the womb and
the long gestation of progressive history, so the American
Constitution is, so far as I can see, the most wonderful
work ever struck oif at a given time by the brain and
purpose of man. It has had a century of trial, under the
pressure of exigencies caused by an expansion unexampled
in point of rapidity and range : and its exemption from
formal change, though not entire, has certainly proved
the sagacity of the constructors, and the stubborn strength
of the fabric.
11. One whose life has been greatly absorbed in work-
ing, with others, the institutions of his own country, has
not had the opportunities necessary for the careful and
searching scrutiny of institutions elsewhere. I should feel,
in looking at those of America, like one who attempts to
scan the stars with the naked eye. My notices can only
be few, faint, and superficial ; they are but an introduc-
tion to what I have to say of the land of my birth. A
few sentences will dispose of them.
12. America, whose attitude towards England has
always been masculine and real, has no longer to anticipate
at our hands the frivolous and offensive criticisms which
were once in vogue among us. But neither nation prefers
(and it would be an ill sign if eitlier did prefer) the insti-
tutions of the other ; and we certainly do not contemplate
the great llepublic in the spirit of mere optimism. We
KIN BEYOND SEA. 213
see that it has a marvellous and unexampled adaptation
for its peculiar vocation; that it must be judged, not in
the abstract, but under the fore-ordered laws of its exist-
ence ; that it has purged away the blot with which we
brought it into the world ; that it bravely and vigorously
grapples with the problem of making a Continent into a
State ; and that it treasures with fondness the traditions
of British antiquity, which are in truth unconditionally
its own, as well, and as much as they are ours. The
thing that perhaps chiefly puzzles the inhabitants of the
old country is why the American people should permit
their entire existence to be continually disturbed by the
business of the Presidential elections ; and, still more,
why they should raise to its maximum the intensity of
this pertm-bation by providing, as we are told, for what
is termed a clean sweep of the entire Civil Service, in all
its ranks and departments, on each accession of a Chief
Magistrate. We do not perceive why this arrangement
is more rational than would be a corresponding usage in
this country on each change of Ministry. Our practice is
as different as possible. We limit to a few scores of
persons the removals and appointments on these occasions ;
although our Ministries seem to us, not unfrequently, to
be more shai-ply severed from one another in principle
and tendency than are the successive Presidents of the
great Union.
13. It would be out of place to discuss in this article
occasional phenomena of local comiption in the United
States, by which the nation at large can hardly be
touched : or the mysterious mauipulatlons of votes for the
Presidency, which are now understood to be under exami-
nation ; or the very curious influences which are shaping
the politics of the negroes and of the South. These last
214 KIN BEYOND SEA.
are corollaries to the great slave-question ; and it seems
very possible that after a few years we may see most
of the labourers, both in the Southern States and in
England, actively addicted to the political support of that
section of their countrymen who to the last had resisted
their emancipation.
14. But if there be those in this country who think that
American democracy means public levity and intemper-
ance, or a lack of skill and sagacity in politics, or the
absence of self-command and self-denial, let them bear in
mind a few of the most salient and recent facts of history
which may profitably be recommended to their reflections.
We emancipated a million of negroes by peaceful legisla-
tion ; America liberated four or five millions by a bloody
civil war : yet the industry and exports of the Southern
States are maintained, while those of our negro Colonies
have dwindled; the South enjoys all its franchises, but
we have, proh pudor ! found no better method of providing
for peace and order in Jamaica, the chief of our islands,
than by the hard and vulgar, even where needful, expe-
dient of abolishing entirely its I'epresentative institutions.
15. The Civil War compelled the States, both North and
South, to train and embody a million and a half of men,
and to present to view the greatest, instead of the smallest,
armed forces in the world. Here there was supposed to
arise a double danger. First that, on a sudden cessation
of the war, military life and habits could not be shaken
off, and, having become rudely and widely predominant,
would bias the country towards an aggressive policy,
or, still worse, would find vent in predatory or revolu-
tionary operations. Secondly, that a military caste would
grow up with its habits of exclusivencss and command,
and would influence the tone of politics in a direction
KIN T5KY0ND SEA.. 215
adverse to republican freedom. Eut "both apprehensions
proved to be wholly imaginary. The innumerable soldiery
was at once dissolved. Cineinnatus, no longer an unique
example, became the common])lacc of every day, the type
and mould of a nation. The whole enormous mass quietly
resumed the habits of social life. The generals of yester-
day were the editors, the secretaries, and the solicitors of
to-day. The just jealousy of the State gave life to the
now forgotten maxim of Judge Blackstonc, who denounced
as perilous the erection of a separate profession of arms in
a free country. The standing army, expanded by the
heat of civil contest to gigantic dimensions, settled down
again into the framework of a miniature with the returning
temperature of civil life, and became a power well nigh
invisible, from its minuteness, amidst the powers which
sway the movements of a society exceeding forty millions.
1 6. More remarkable still was the financial sequel to the
great conflict. The internal taxation for Federal purposes,
which before its commencement had been unknown, was
raised, in obedience to an exigency of life and death, so
as to exceed every present and every past example. It
pursued and worried all the transactions of life. The
interest of the American debt grew to be the highest in
the world, and the capital touched five hundred and sixty
millions sterling. Here was provided for the fiith and
patience of the people a touchstone of extreme severity.
In England, at the close of the great French war, the
propertied classes, who were supreme in Parliament, at
once rebelled against the Tory Government, and refused
to prolong the Income Tax even for a single year. We
talked big, both then and now, about the payment of our
National Debt ; but sixty-three years have since elapsed,
all of them except two called years of peace, and we have
216 nx BETOXD SEA.
reduced the huge total hy ahout one-ninth ; that is to
say, by little over one hundred millions, or scarcely more
than one million and a half a year. This is the conduct
of a State elaborately digested into orders and degrees,
famed for wisdom and forethought, and consolidated by a
long experience. But America continued long to bear,
on her unaccustomed and still smarting shoulders, the
burden of the war taxation. In twelve years she has
reduced her debt by one hundi*ed and fifty-eight millions
sterling, or at the rate of thirteen millions for every year.
In each twelve months she has done what we did in eight
years ; her self-command, self-denial, and wise forethought
for the future have been, to say the least, eightfold ours.
These are facts which redound greatly to her honour ;
and the historian will record with surprise that an enfran-
chised nation tolerated burdens which in this country a
selected class, possessed of the representation, did not
dare to face, and that the most unmitigated democracy
known to the annals of the world resolutely reduced at
its own cost prospective liabilities of the State, which the
aristocratic, and plutocratic, and Monarchical Government
of the United Kingdom has been contented ignobly to
hand over to posterity. And such facts should be told
out. It is our fashion so to tell them, against as well aa
for ourselves ; and the record of them may some day be
among the means of stirring us up to a policy more worthy
of the name and fame of England.
17. It is true, indeed, that we lie under some heavy
and, I fear, increasing disadvantages, which amount almost
to disabilities. Not, however, any disadvantage respecting
power, as power is commonly understood. But, while
America has a nearly homogeneous country, and an admir-
able division of political labour between the States iudi-
KXN BEYOND SEA. 217
vidually and the Federal Government, we are, in public
affairs, an overcharged and overweighted people.*
We have undertaken the cares of Empire upon a scale,
and with a diversity, unexampled in history ; and, as it
has not yet pleased Providence to endow us with brain-
force and animal strength in an equally abnormal pro-
portion, the consequence is that we perform the work of
government, as to many among its more important depart-
ments, in a very superficial and slovenly manner. The
affairs of the three associated Kingdoms, with their great
diversities of law, interest, and circumstance, make the
government of them, even if they stood alone, a business
more voluminous, so to speak, than that of any other
thirty-three millions of civilised men. To ligliten the
cares of the central legislature by judicious devolution, it
is probable that much might be done ; but nothing is
done, or even attempted to be done. The greater Colonies
have happily attained to a virtual self-government ; yet
the aggregate mass of business connected with our colonial
possessions continues to be very large. The Indian Empire
is of itself a charge so vast, and demanding so much
thought and care, that if it were the sole transmarine
appendage to the Crown, it would amply tax the best
ordinary stock of human energies. Notoriously, it obtains
from the Parliament only a small fraction of the attention
it deserves. Questions affecting intlividuals, again, or
small interests, or classes, excite here a gi-eater interest,
and occupy a larger share of time, than, perhaps, in any
other community. In no country, I may add, are the
* [This subject has boon more fiHly developed by me in an article
on ' £ni;lan<i's Mission,' contributed to The Nineteenth CmUurj lor
Soptember of the present year. — W. E. G., December 1878.]
218 KIN BEYOND SEA.
interests of persons or classes so favoured when they com-
pete with those of the public ; and in none are they more
exacting, or more wakeful to turn this advantage to the
best account. With the vast extension of our enterprise
and our trade, comes a breadth of Kability not less large,
to consider everything that is critical in the affairs of
foreign States ; and the real responsibilities, thus existing
for us, are unnaturally inflated by fast-growing tendencies
towards exaggeration of our concern in these matters, and
even towards sotting up fictitious interests in cases where
none can discern them except ourselves, and such Con-
tinental friends as practise upon our credulity and our
fears for purposes of their own. Last of all, it is not to
be denied that in what I have been saying, I do not repre-
sent the public sentiment. The nation is not at all con-
scious of being overdone. The people see that their
House of Commons is the hardest-working legislative
assembly in the world : and, this being so, they assume
it is all right. Nothing pays better, in point of popularity, .
than those gratuitous additions to obligations already be-
yond human strength, which look like accessions or asser-
tion of power ; such as the annexation of new territory,
or the silly transaction known as the purchase of shares
iu the Suez Canal.
1 8. All my life long I have seen this excess of work as
compared Avith the power to do it ; but the evil has in-
creased with the surfeit of wealth, and tliere is no sign
that the increase is near its end. The people of this
country are a very strong people ; but there is no strength
that can permanently endure, without provoking incon-
venient consequences, this kind of political debauch. It
may be hoped, but it cannot be predicted, that the mischief
will be encountered imd subdued at the point where it
KIN BEYOND SEA. 219
will have become sensibly troublesome, but will not have
grown to be quite irremediable.
19. The main and central point of interest, however, in
the institutions of a country is the manner in which it draws
together and compounds the public forces in the balanced
action of the State. It seems plain that the formal
arrangements for this purpose in America are very dif-
ferent from ours. It may even be a question whether
they are not, in certain respects, less popular; whether
our institutions do not give more rapid effect, than those
of the Union, to any formed opinion, and resolved inten-
tion, of the nation.
20. In the formation of the Federal Government we seem
to perceive three stages of distinct advancement. First,
the formation of the Confederation, under the pressure of
the War of Independence. Secondly, the Constitution,
■which placed the Federal Government in defined and
direct relation with the people inhabiting the several
States. Thirdly, the struggle with the South, which for
the first time, and definitely, decided that to the Union,
through its Federal organisation, and not to the State-
governments, were reserved all the questions not decided
and disposed of by the express provisions of the Constitu-
tion itself.* The great arcanum imperii, which with us
* [This is a proposition of £jro:it importance in a disputed suhject-
matler ; and consciiuentl)' I have not announced it in a dogmatic
manner, but as a ])ortion of what we "seem to perceive" in the [iro-
gress of the American Constitution. It ex})resses an opinion formed
bv" me upon an examination of the original documents, and with some
attention to the history, which I have always considered, and have
often recommended to others, as one of the most fruitlul studies of
modern politics. This is not the ])roper occasion to develop its j^rounds :
but i may say that 1 am not at all disposed to surrender it iu deference
to one or two rather contemptuous critics. — W. E. G., December 18G8.J
220 KIN BETOXD SEA.
belongs to the three branches of the legislature, and which
is expressed by the current phrase, " omnipotence of Par-
liament," thus became the acknowledged property of the
three branches of the Federal legislature ; and the old
and respectable doctrine of State Independence is now no
more than an archaeological relic, a piece of historical
antiquarianism. Yet the actual attributions of the State
authorities cover by far the largest part of the province of
Government ; and by this division of labour and authority,
the problem of fixing for the nation a political centre of
gravity is divested of a large part of its difficulty and
danger, in some proportions to the limitations of the
working precinct.
21. Within that precinct, the initiation as well as the
final sanction in the great business of finance is made over
to the popular branch of the Legislature, and a most
interesting question arises upon the comparative merits
of this arrangement, and of our own method, which
theoretically throws upon the Crown the responsibility of
initiating public charge, and under which, until a recent
period, our practice was in actual and even close corre-
spondence with this theory.
22. We next come to a diff'erence still more marked.
The Federal Executive is bom anew of the nation at the
end of each four years, and dies at the end. But, during
the course of those years, it is independent, in the person
both of the President and of his Ministers, alike of the
people, of their representatives, and of that remarkable
body, the most remarkable of all the inventions of modem
politics, the Senate of the United States. In this im-
portant matter, whatever be the relative e.xcellences and
defects of the British and American systems, it is most
certain that nothing would induce the people of this
KIN BKYOND SEA. 221
country, or even the Tory portion of them, to exchange
our own for theirs. It may, indeed, not be obvious to the
foreign eye ^vhat is the exact difference of tlie two. Both
the representative chambers hold the power of the purse.
But in America its conditions are such that it does not
operate in any way on behalf of the Chamber or of the
nation, as against the Executive. In England, on the
contrary, its efficiency has been such that it has worked
out for itself channels of effective operation, such as to
dispense with its direct use, and avoid the inconveniences
which might be attendant upon that use. A vote of the
House of Commons, declaring a withdrawal of its con-
fidence, has always sufficed for the purpose of displacing
a Ministry ; nay, persistent obstruction of its measures,
and even lighter causes, have conveyed the hint, which
has been obediently taken. But the people, how is it with
them '? Do not the people in England part with their
power, and make it over to the House of Commons, as
completely as the American people part Avith it to the
President ? They give it over for four years : we for a
period which on the average is somewhat more : they, to
resume it at a fixed time ; we, on an unfixed contingency,
and at a time which will finally be determined, not accord-
ing to the popular will, but according to the views which
a Ministry may entertain of its duty or convenii'uce.
23. All this is true ; but it is not the whole truth. In
the United Kingdom, the people as such cannot commonly
act upon the Ministry as such. But mediately, though not
immediately, they gain the end : for they can work upon
that which works upon the Ministry, namely, on the
House of Commons. Firstly, they have not renounced,
like the American people, the exercise of their power for
a given time ; and they are at all times free by speech,
222 KIN BEYOND SEA.
petition, public meeting, to endeavour to get it back in
full by bringing about a dissolution. Secondly, in a
Parliament with nearly 660 members, vacancies occur
with tolerable frequency; and, as they are commonly
filled up forthwith, they continually modify the colour of
the Parliament, comfortably, not to the past, but to the
present feeling of the nation ; or, at least, of the con-
stituency, which for practical purposes is different indeed,
yet not very different. But, besides exercising a limited
positive influence on the present, they supply a much less
limited indication of the future. Of the members who at
a given time sit in the House of Commons, the vast
majority, probably more than nine-tenths, have the desire
to sit there again, after a dissolution which may come at
any moment. They therefore study political weather-
wisdom, and in varying degrees adapt themselves to the
indications of the sky. It will now be readily perceived
how the popular sentiment in England, so far as it is
awake, is not meanly provided with the ways of making
itself respected, whether for the purpose of displacing and
replacing a Ministry, or of constraining it (as sometimes
ha]ipens) to alter or reverse its policy sufficiently, at
k'ast, to conjure down the gathering and muttering
storm.
24. It is true, indeed, that every nation is of necessity, to
a great extent, in the condition of the sluggard with regard
to public policy ; hard to rouse, harder to keep aroused,
sure after a little while to sink back into his slumber : —
" Pressitqiio jucontera,
Dulcis et alta quies, placidajque simillima iiioiti." — x'En.vi. 522.
The people hare a vast, but an encumbered power ; and,
in their struggles with overweening authoiity, or with pro-
EIN BKTOXD SKA. 223
perty, the excess of force, which they undoubtedly possess,
is more than counterbalanced by the constant wakefulness
of the adversary, by his knoAvledgc of their weakness, and
by his command of opportunity. But this is a fault lying
rather in the conditions of human life than in political
institutions. There is no known mode of making attention
and inattention equal in their results. It is enough to
say that in England, when the nation can attend, it can
prevail. So we may say, then, that in the American
Union the Federal Executive is independent for each four
years both of the Congress and of the people. But the
British Ministry is largely dependent on the people when-
ever the people firmly will it; and is always dependent on
the House of Commons, except of course when it cau
safely and effectually appeal to the people.
25. So far, so good. But if we wish really to understand
the manner in which the Queen's Government over the
British Empire is carried on, we must now prepare to
examine into some sharper contrasts than any which our
path has yet brought into view. The power of the Ame-
rican Executive resides in the person of the actual Pre-
sident, and passes from him to his successor. His ^Ministers,
grouped around him, are the servants, not only of his office,
but of his mind. The intelligence, which carries on the
Government, has i*s main seat in him. The responsi-
bility of failures is understood to fall on him ; and it is
round his head that success sheds its halo. The Americau
Government is described truly as a Government composed
of three members, of three powers distinct from one another.
The English Government is likewise so described, not truly,
but conventionally. For in the English Government tliere
has gradually formed itself a fourth power, entering into
and sharing the vitality of each of the other three, and
224 KIN BEYOND SEA.
charged with the business of holding them in harmony ag
they march.
26. This Fourth Power is the Ministiy, or more properly
the Cabinet. For the rest of the Ministry is subordinate and
ancillary ; and, though it largely shares in many depart-
ments the labours of the Cabinet, yet it has only a second-
ary and derivative share in the higher responsibilities.
No account of the present British Constitution is worth
having which does not take this Fourth Power largely
and carefully into view. And yet it is not a distinct
power, made up of elements unknown to the other three ;
any more than a sphere contains elements other than those
referable to the three co-ordinates, which determine the
position of every point in space. The Fourth Power is
parasitical to the three others ; and lives upon their life,
without any separate existence. One portion of it forms
a part, which may be termed an integral part, of the
House of Lords, another of the House of Commons ; and
the two conjointly, nestling within the precinct of
E-oyalty, form the inner Council of the Crown, assuming
the whole of its responsibilities, and in consequence
wielding, as a rule, its powers. The Cabinet is the three-
fold hinge that connects together for action the Eritish
Constitution of King or Queen, Lords, and Commons.
Upon it is concentrated the whole strain of the Govern-
ment, and it constitutes from day to day the true centre
of gravity for the working system of the State, although
the ultimate superiority of force resides in the representa-
tive chamber.
27. There is no statute or legal usage of this country
which requires that the Ministers of the Crown should hold
seats in the one or the other House of Parliament. It is
peihaps upon this account that, while most of my coun-
KTS BETOXD SEA. 225
trymen -would, as I suppose, declare it to be a becom-
ing and convenient custom, yet comparatively few are
aM'are how near the seat of life the observance lies, how
closely it is connected with the equipoise and unity of the
social forces. It is rarely departed from, even in an indi-
vidual case; never, as far as my knowledge goes, on a
wider scale. From accidental circumstances it happened
that I was a Secretary of State between December 1845
and July 1846, witliout a seat in the House of Commons.
This (which did not pass wholly without challenge) is, I
believe, by much the most notable instance for the last
fifty years ; and it is only within the last fifty years that
our Constitutional system has completely settled down,
before the reform of Parliament, it was always easy to
find a place for a Minister excluded from his seat ; as Sir
Robert Peel, for example, ejected from Oxford University,
at once found refuge and repose at Tamworth. I desire
to fix attention on the identification, in this country, of
the Minister with the member of a House of Parliament.
28. It is, as to the House of Commons especially, an in-
separable and vital part of our system. The associatiou of
the Ministers with the Parliament, and through the House
of Commons with the people, is the counterpart of their
association as Ministers with the Crown and the preroga-
tive. The decisions that they take are taken under the
competing pressure of a bias this way and a bias that way,
and strictly represent what is termed in mechanics the
composition of forces. Upon them, thus placed, it devolves
to provide that the Houses of Parliament shall loyally
counsel and serve the Crown, and that the Crown shall
act strictly in accordance with its obligations to the nation.
I will not presume to say whether the adoption of the
rule in America would or would not lay the foundation of
I. Q
226 Km BEYOND SEA.
a great change in the Federal Constitution ; but I am
quite sure that the abrogation of it in England would
either alter the form of government, or bring about a
crisis. That it conduces to the personal comfort of
Ministers, I will not undertake to say. The various
currents of political and social influences meet edgeways
in their persons, much like the conflicting tides in St.
George's Channel or the Straits of Dover ; for, while they
are the ultimate regulators of the relations between the
Crown on the one side, and the people through the Houses
of Parliament on the other, they have no authority vested
in them to coerce or censure either way. Their attitude
towards the Houses must always be that of deference ;
their language that of respect, if not submission. Still
more must their attitude and language towards the
Sovereign be the same in prii^ciple, and yet more marked
in form ; and this, though upon them lies the ultimate
responsibility of decidiug what shall be done in the
Crown's name in every branch of administration, and
every department of policy, coupled only with the alterna-
tive of ceasing to be Ministers, if what they may ad-
visedly deem the requisite power of action be denied
them.
29. In the ordinary administration of the government,
the Sovereign personally is, so to speak, behind the scenes ;
performing, indeed, many personal acts by the Sign-
manual, or otherwise, but, in each and all of them,
covered by the counter-signature or advice of Ministers,
who stand between the august Personage and the people.
T'here is, accordingly, no more yjower, under the form of
our Constitution, to assail the Monarch in his personal
capacity, or to assail through him, the line of succession
to the Crown, than there is at chess to put the king in
KFN 1?EY0ND SEA. 227
cTiock. In trTith, a p:oocl deal, thmis^h by no moans the
■whole, of the pliilosophy of the British Constitution is
represented in tliis central point of the wonderfnl fjame,
against which the only ri'proach — the reproach of Lord
Bacon — is that it is hardly a relaxation, but rather a
serious tax npon the brain.
30. The Sovereign in England is the symbol of the
nation's unity, and the apex of the social structure ; the
maker (with advice) of the laws ; the supreme governor of
the Church; the fountain of justice; tlie sole source of
honour ; the person to whom all military, all naval, all
civil service is rendered. The Sovereign owns very large
properties ; receives and holds, in law, the entire revenue
oi' the State ; appoints and dismisses Ministers ; makes
treaties ; pardons crime, or abates its punishment ; wages
war, or concludes peace ; summons and dissolves the Par-
liament ; exercises these vast powers for the most part
without any specified restraint of law ; and yet enjoys, in
regard to these and every other function, an absolute
immunitv from consequences. There is no provision in
the law of tlie United Empire, or in the machinery of the
Constitution, for calling the Sovereign to account ; and
only in one solitary and improbable, but perfectly defined
ease — that of his submitting to the jurisdiction of the
Pope — is he deprived by Statute of the Tlirone. Setting
aside that peculiar exception, the offspring of a necessity
still freshly felt when it was made, the Constitution might
seem to be founded on the belief of a real infallibility in
its head. Less, at any rate, cannot be said than this,
llegal right has, since the llevolution of 1688, been ex-
pressly founded upon contract ; and the breach of that
contract destroys the title to the all(>giance of the subject.
But no provision, other than the general rule of hei-editary
Q 2
228
KIN BEYOND SEA.
succession, is made to meet either tliis case, or any other
form of political miscarriage or misdeed. It seems as
tliough the Genius of the Nation would not stain its lips
by so much as the mere utterance of such a word; nor
can we put this state of facts into language more justly
than by saying that the Constitution would regard the
default of the Monarch, with his heirs, as the chaos of the
State, and would simply trust to the inherent energies of
the several orders of society for its legal reconstruction.
31. The original authorship of the representative system
is commonly accorded to the English race. More clear
and indisputable is its title to the great political discovery
of Constitutional Kingship. And a very great discovery it
is. ^^^lether it is destined, in any future day, to minister
in its integrity to the needs of the New World, it may be
hard to say. In that important branch of its iitility which
is negative, it completely serves the pui-poses of the many
strong and rising Colonies of Great ]3ritaiu, and saves them
all the perplexities and perils attendant upon successions
to the headship of the Executive. It presents to them,
as it does to us, the symbol of unity, and the object of
all our political veneration, which we love to find rather
in a person, than in an abstract entity, like the State.
But the Old World, at any rate, still is, and may long
continue, to constitute the living centre of civilisation,
and to hold the primacy of the race ; and of this great
society the several members approximate, in a rapidly
extending series, to the practice and idea of Constitutional
Kingship. The chief States of Christendofti, with only
two exceptions, have, with more or less distinctness,
adopted it. Many of them, both great and small, have
thoroughly assimilated it to their system. The autocracy
of llussia, and the Kepublic of France, each of them con-
KIX BErOXD SEA. 229
genial to the present wants of the respective countries,
may yet, hereafter, gravitate towards the principle, which
elsewhere has developed so large an attractive power.
Should the current, that has prevailed through the last
half-century, maintain its direction and its strength, an-
other fifty years may see all Europe adhering to the theory
and practice of this beneficent institution, and peaceably
sailing in the wake of Enghmd.
32. No doubt, if tried by an ideal standard, it is open
to criticism. Aristotle and Plato, nay, Eacon, and perliaps
Leibnitz, would have scouted it as a scientific abortion.
Some men would draw disparaging comparisons between
the mediaeval and the modern King. In the person of the
first was normally embodied the force paramount over all
others in the country, and on him was laid a weight of
responsibility and toil so tremendous, that his function
seems always to border upon the superhuman ; that his
life commonly wore out before the natural term; and tliat
an indescribable majesty, dignity, and interest surround
him in his misfortunes, nay, almost in his degradation ; as,
for instance, amidst
" The shrieks of death, through Berkeley's roof that ring,
Shrieks of an agouising King." *
33. Eor this concentration of power, toil, and liability,
milder realities have now been substituted ; and Minis-
terial responsibility comes between the Monarch and every
public trial and necessity, like armour between the flesh
and the spear that would seek to pierce it ; only this is an
armour itself also fleshy, at once living and impregnable.
It may be said, by an adverse critic, that the Constitu-
tional Monarch is only a depositary of power, as an
• Gray's « Bard.'
230 KIX BEYOND SEA.
armoury is a depository of arms ; but that those who
wield the arms, and those alone, constitute the true go-
verning authority. And no doubt this is so far true,
that the scheme aims at associating in the work of govern-
ment with the head of the State the persons best adajjted
to meet the wants and wishes of the people, under the
conditions that the several asf)ects of supreme power
shall be severally allotted ; dignity and visible authority
shall lie wholly with the wearer of the crown, but labour
mainly, and responsibility wholly, with its servants. From
hence, without doubt, it follows that should differences
arise, it is the will of those in whose minds the work of
government is elaborated, that in the last resort must
prevail. From mere labour, power may be severed ; but
not from labour joined with responsibility. This capital
and vital consequence flows out of the principle that the
political action of the Monarch shall everywhere be mediate
and conditional upon the concurrence of confidential ad-
visers. It is impossible to reconcile any, even the smallest,
abatement of this doctrine, with tlie perfect, absolute
immunity of the Sovereign from consequences. There can
be in England no disloyalty more gross, as to its effects,
than the superstition which affects to assign to the Sove-
reign a sei:)arate, and, so far as separate, transcendental
sphere of political action. Anonymous servility has, in-
deed, in these last days, hinted such a doctrine ; * but it is
no more practicable to make it thrive in England, than to
rear the jungles of Bengal on Salisbury Plain.
34. There is, indeed, one great and critical act, the re-
sponsibility for which falls momentarily or provisionally on
the Sovereign ; it is the dismissal of an existing Ministry,
* Quarterly lieciew, Apiil 1878. Art. I.
Kix hkyoxd sea. 231
and the appointment of a new one. This act is usually
performed with the aid drawn from authentic manifestations
of public opinion, mostly such as are obtained through the
votes or conduct of the House of Commons. Since the
reign of George III. there has been but one change of
Ministry in which the Monarch acted without the suppoi-t
of these indications. It was when William IV., in 1834,
dismissed the Government of Lord Melbourne, which was
known to be supported, though after a lukewarm fashion,
by a large majority of the existing House of Commons.
But the Iloyal responsibility was, according to the doctrine
of our Constitution, completely taken over, ex post fado,
by Sir Robert Peel, as the person who consented, on the
call of the King, to take Lord Melbourne's office. Thus,
though the act was rash, and hard to justify, the doctrine
of personal immunity was in no way endangered. And
here we may notice, that in theoiy an absolute personal
immunity implies a correlative limitation of power, greater
than is always found in practice. It can hardly be said
that the King's initiative left to Sir 11. Peel a freedom
perfectly unimpaired. And, most certainly, it was a very
real exercise of personal power. The power did not
suffice for its end, which was to overset the Liberal pre-
dominance ; but it very nearly sufficed. Unconditionally
entitled to dismiss the Ministers, the Sovereign can, of
course, choose his own opportunity. He may defy the
Parliament, if he can count upon the people. William IV.,
in the year 1834, had neither Parliament nor people with
him. His act was within the limits of the Constitution,
for it was covered by tlie responsibility of the acctdiug
Ministry. But it reduced the Liberal majority from a
number considerably beyond three hundred to about
thirty; and it constituted an exceptional, but very real
232 KIN BEYOND SEA.
and large action on the politics of the countiy, by the
direct will of the King. I speak of the immediate effects.
Its eventual result may have been different, for it con-
verted a large disjointed mass into a smaller but organised
and sufficient force, which held the fortress of power for
the six years 1835-41. On this view it may be said that,
if the Eoyal intervention anticipated and averted decay
from natural causes, then with all its immediate success,
it defeated its own real aim.
35. But this power of dismissing a Ministry at Avill, large
as it may be under given circumstances, is neither the
safest, nor the only power which, in the ordinary course
of things, falls Constitutionally to the personal share of
the wearer of the crown. He is entitled on all subjects
coming before the Ministiy, to knowledge and opportuni-
ties of discussion, unlimited save by the iron necessities of
business. Though decisions must ultimately conform to
the sense of those who are to be responsible for them, yet
their business is to inform and persuade the Sovereign,
not to overrule him. "Were it possible for him, within
the limits of human time and strength, to enter actively
into all public transactions, he would be fully entitled to
do so. What is actually submitted is supposed to be the
most fruitful and important part, the cream of affairs.
In the discussion of them, the Monarch has more than
one advantage over his advisors. He is permanent, they
are fugitive ; he speaks from the vantage-ground of a
station unapproachably higher; he takes a calm and
leisurely survey, while they are worried with the prepa-
ratory stages, and their force is often impaired by the
pressure of countless detail. He may bo, therefore, a
weighty factor in all deliberations of State. Every dis-
covery of a blot, that the studies of the Sovereign in the
KIN liEYOND SEA. 233
tlomain of business enable him to make, strengthens his
hands and enhances liis authority. It is plain, then, that
there is abundant scope for mental activity to be at work
under the gorgeous robes of Royalty.
3G. This power spontaneously takes the fonu of inllu-
ence ; and the amount of it depends on a variety of circum-
stances ; on talent, experience, tact, weight of character,
steady, untiring industry, and habitual presence at the
scat of government. In proportion as any of these might
fail, the real and legitimate influence of the Mouarch over
the course of affairs would diminish ; in proportion as they
attain to fuller action, it would increase. It is a moral,
not a coercive, influence. It operates through the will
and reason of the Ministry, not over or against them. It
would be an evil and a perilous day for the Monarchy, were
any prospective possessor of the Crown to assume or claim
for himself final, or preponderating, or even independent
power, in any one department of the State. The ideas
and practice of the time of George III., whose will in
certain matters limited the action of the Ministers, cannot
be revived, otherwise than by what would be, on their
part, nothing less than a base compliance, a shamehil
subserviency, dangerous to the public weal, and, in the
highest degree, disloyal to the dynasty. Because, in every
free State, for every public act, some one must be respon-
sible ; and the question is, Who shall it be ? The British
Constitution answers : The Minister, and the Minister
exclusively. That he may be responsible, all action must
bo fully shared by him. Sole action, for the Sovereign,
would mean undefended, unprotected action ; the armour
of irresponsibility would not cover the whole body against
sword or spear; a head would project beyond the awning,
aud would invite a sunstroke.
234 KIN BEYOXD SEA.
o7. The reader, then, will clearly see that there is no dis-
tinction more vital to the practice of the British Constitu-
tion, or to a right judgment upon it, than the distinction
between the Sovereign and the Crown. The Crown has
large prerogatives, endless functions essential to the daily
action, and even the life of the State. To place them in
the hands of persons who should be mere tools in a Koyal
will, would expose those powers to constant unsupported
collision with the living forces of the nation, and to a
certain and irremediable crash. They are therefore en-
trusted to men, who must be prepared to answer for the
use they make of them. This ring of responsible Minis-
terial agency forms a fence around the person of the
Sovereign, which has thus far proved impregnable to all
assaults. The august personage, who from time to time
may rest within it, and who may possess the art of turning
to the best account the countless resources of the position,
is no dumb and senseless idol ; but, together with real and
very large means of influence upon policy, enjoys the
undivided reverence which a great people feels for its
head ; and is likewise the first and by far the weightiest
among the forces, which greatly mould, by example and
legitimate authority, the manners, nay the morals, of a
powerful aristocracy and a wealthy and highly trained
society. The social influence of a Sovereign, even if it
stood alone, would be an enormous attribute. The English
people are not believers in equality ; they do not, with the
famous Declaration of July 4th, 1776, think it to be a self-
evident truth that all men are born equal. They hold
rather the reverse of that ])i'oposition. At any rate, in
practice, they are what I may call determined iue(piali-
tarians ; nay, in some cases, even without knowing it.
Tlicir natural tendency, from the very base of British
KIN BEYOXD SKA.. 23.')
society, tmd tliroiij;li all its strongly built p:radations, is to
look upwards: they are not apt to "untune degree."
The Sovereign is the highest height of the system ; is, in
that system, like Jupiter among the Roman gods, first
without a second.
" Neo viget quicquam simile aut secundum." *
Kot, like Mont Blanc, -with rivals in his neighbourhood;
but like Ararat or Etna, towering alone and unapproach-
able. The step downward from the King to the second
person in the realm is not like that from the second to the
third : it is more even than a stride, for it traverses a gulf.
It is the wisdom of the British Constitution to lodge the
personality of its chief so high, that none; shall under any
circumstances be tempted to vie, no, nor dream of vicing,
with it. The office, however, is not confused, though it
is associated, with the person ; and the elevation of
official dignity in the Monarch of these realms has now for
a testing period worked well, in conjunction with the
limitation of merely personal power.
38. In the face of the country, the Sovereign and the
Ministers are an absolute unity. The one may concede to
the other ; hut the limit of concessions by the Sovereign is
at the point where he becomes willing to try the experiment
of changing his Government; and the limit of concession by
the Ministers is at the point where they become unwilling
to bear, what in all circumstances they must bear while
they remain Ministers, the untlivided responsibility of all
that is done in the Crown's name. But it is not with the
Sovereign only that the Ministry must be welded into
identity. It has a relation to sustain to the House of
* Hor. OJ. I. xii. 18.
236 KIN BEYOXD SEA.
Lords ; ■vrhicli need not, however, be one of entire unity,
for the House of Lords, though a great power in the
State, and able to cause great embarrassment to an Ad-
ministration, is not able by a vote to doom it to capital
punishment. Only for fifteen years, out of the last fifty,
has the Ministry of the day possessed the confidence of
the House of Lords. On the confidence of the House of
Commons it is immediately and vitally dependent. This
confidence it must always possess, either absolutely from
identity of political colour, or relatively and conditionally.
This last case arises when an accidental dislocation of the
majority in the Chamber has piit the machine for the
moment out of gear, and the uiisafe experiment of a sort
of provisional government, doomed on the one hand to be
feeble, or tempted on the other to be dishonest, is tried ;
much as the Roman Conclave has sometimes been satisfied
with a provisional Pope, deemed likely to live for the time
necessary to reunite the fractions of the prevailing party.
39. I have said that the Cabinet is essentially the regu-
lator of the relations between King, Lords, and Commons ;
exercising functionally the powers of the first, and incor-
porated, in the persons of its members, with the second
and the third. It is, therefore, itself a great power.
But let no one suppose it is the greatest. In a balance
nicely poised, a small weight may turn the scale ; and the
helm that directs the ship is not stronger than the ship.
It is a cardinal axiom of the modern British Constitution,
that the House of Commons is the greatest of the powers
of the State. It might, by a base subserviency, fling itself
at the feet of a Monarch or a Minister ; it might, in a
season of exhaustion, allow the slow persistence of the
Lords, ever eyeing it as Lancelot Avas eyed by Modred, to
invade its just province by baffling its action at some time
KIN BEYOND SEA. 237
propitious for the purpose. But no Constitution can nny-
whcre keep either Sovereign, or Assembly, or nation, true
to its trust and to itself. All that can be done has been
done. The Commons are armed Avith ample powers of
self-defence. If they use their powers properly, they can
only be mastered by a recurrence to the people, and the
•way in which the appeal can succeed is by the choice of
another House of Commons more agreeable to the national
temper. Thus the sole appeal from the verdict of the
House is a rightful appeal to those from whom it received
its commission.
40. This superiority in power among the great State
forces was, in truth, established even before the House of
Commons became what it now is, representative of the
people throughout its entire area. In the early part of the
century, a large part of its members virtually received their
mandate from members of the Peerage, or from the Crown,
or by the direct action of money on a mere handful of
individuals, or, as in Scotland for example, from constitu-
encies whose limited numbers and upper-class sympatbies
usually shut out popular influences. A real supremacy
belonged to the House as a whole; but the forces of which
it was compounded were not all deiived from the people,
and the aristocratic power had found out the secret of
asserting itself within the walls of the popular chamber,
in the dress and through the voices of its members. Many
persons of gravity and weight saw great danger in a mea-
sure of change like the first Reform Act, which left it to
the Lords to assert themselves, thereafter, by an external
force, instead of through a share in the internal composi-
tion of a body so formidable. ]3ut the result proved that
they were sufficiently to exercise, through the popular
"will and choice, the power which they had formerly put
238 KIN BEYOND SEA.
in action without its sanction, though within its proper
precinct and Avith its title falsely inscribed.
41. The House of Commons is superior, and by far
superior, in the force of its political attributes, to any other
single power in the State. But it is watched ; it is criticised ;
it is hemmed in and about by a multitude of other forces ;
the force, first of all, of the House of Lords, the force of
opinion from day to day, particularly of the highly anti-
popular opinion of the leisured men of the metropolis, who,
seated close to the scene of action, wield an influence
greatly in excess of their just claims ; the force of the
classes and professions ; the just and useful force of the
local authorities in their various orders and places. Never
was the great problem more securely solved, wliich re-
cognises the necessity of a paramount power in the body
politic to enable it to move, but requires for it a depository
such that it shall be safe against invasion, and yet inhibited
from aggression.
42. The old theories of a mixed government, and of the
three powers, coming down from the age of Cicero, when
set by the side of the living British Constitution, are cold,
crude, and insufficient to a degi'ee that makes them decep-
tive. Take them, for example, as represented, fairly
enough, by Voltaire : the picture drawn by him is for us
nothing but a puzzle : —
" Aux niurs de Vestminster on voit paraitre ensemble
Trois ]iouvoirs etonne's dii numd qui los rassrmble,
Lt's depufes du poiiple, los grands, et le Rui,
Diviscs d'iiitcrct, reuiiis par la Loi." *
There is here lacking an amalgam, a reconciling power,
what may be called a clearing-house of political forces,
* Henriade, I,
KIN BETOXD SEA. 230
Trhich shall draw into itself eveiy thing, and shall balance
and adjust everything, and ascertaining the nett result,
let it pass on freely for the fulfilment of the pui-poscs
of the great social union. Like a stout buffer-spring, it
receives all shocks, and vrithin it their opposing elements
neutralise one another. This is the function of the British
Cabinet. It is perhaps the most curious formation in the
political world of modern times, not for its dignity, but
for its subtlety, its elasticity, and its many-sided diversity
of power. It is the complement of the entire sj'stem ; a
system which appears to want nothing but a thorough
loyalty in the persons composing its several parts, with a
reasonable intelligence, to insure its bearing, without fatal
damage, the wear and tear of ages yet to come.
43. It has taken more than a couple of centuries to bring
the British Cabinet to its present accuracy and fulness of
development; for the first rudiments of it may sufficiently
be discerned in the reign of Charles I. Under Charles II.
it had fairly started from its embryo ; and the name is
found both in Clarendon and in the Diary of Pepys.*' It
was for a long time without a ^Ministerial head ; the King
was the head. AVhile this arrangement suT)sisted, Consti-
tutional government could be but half established. Of the
numerous titles of the Kevolution of 1688 to respect, not
the least remarkable is this, that the great families of the
country, and great powers of the State, made no effort, as
they might have done, in the hour of its weakness, to
aggrandise themselves at the expense of the CroAvn.
Nevertheless, for various reasons, and among them because
of the foreign origin, and absences from time to time, of
several Sovereigns, the course of events tended to give
Vol. V. pp. 94, 95. Ed. London, 1877.
240 KIN^ BEYOND SEA.
force to the organs of Government actually on the spot,
and thus to consolidate, and also to uplift, this as yet novel
creation. So late, however, as the impeachment of Sir
Robert Walpole, his friends thought it expedient to urge
on his behalf, in the House of Lords, that he had never
presumed to constitute himself a Prime Minister.
44. The breaking down of the great offices of State by
throwing them into commission, and last among them of
the Lord High Treasurership aftjr the time of Harley,
Earl of Oxford, tended, and may probably have been
meant, to prevent or retard the formation of a recognised
Chiefship in the Ministry ; which even now we have not
learned to designate by a true English word, though the
use of the imported phrase " Premier" is at least as old
as the poetry of Burns. Nor can anything be more
curiously characteristic of the political genius of the
people, than the present position of this most important
official personage. Departmentally, he is no more than
the first named of five persons, by whom jointly the
powers of the Lord Treasurership are taken to be exercised ;
he is not their master, or, otherwise than by mere priority,
their head : and he has no special function or prerogative
under the formal constitution of the ofiice. He has no
official rank, except that of Privy Councillor. Eight
members of the Cabinet, including five Secretaries of
State, and several other members of the Government, take
official precedence of him. His rights and duties as head
of the Administration are nowhere recorded. He is almost,
if not altogether, unknown to the Statute Law.
45. Kor is the position of the body, over which he pre-
sides, less singular tlian his own. The Cabinet wields, with
partial exceptions, the powers of the Privy Council, besides
having a ritanding ground in relation to the personal will
KIN BEYOND SKA. 211
of the Sovereign, far beyond what the Privy Council ever
lield or chiimcd. Yet it has no connection Avith the Privy
Council, except that every one, on first becoming a member
of the Cabinet, is, if not belonging to it already, sworn a
member of that body. There are other sections of the
Privy Council, forming regular Committees for Education
and for Trade. But the Cabinet has not even this degree
of formal sanction, to sustain its existence. It lives and acts
simply by understanding, without a single line of written
law or constitution to determine its relations to the
Monarch, or to the Pazdiament, or to the nation ; or the
relations of its members to one another, or to their head.
It sits in the closest secrecy. There is no record of its
proceedings, nor is there any one to hear them, except
ixpon the very rare occasions when some important func-
tionary, for the most part military or legal, is introduced,
pro hac vice, for the purpose of giving to it necessary
information.
46. Every one of its members acts in no less than thi'ee
capacities : as administrator of a department of State ; as
member of a legislative chamber ; and as a confidential
adviser of the Crown. Two at least of them add to those
three characters a fourth ; for in each House of Parlia-
ment it is indispensable that one of the principal Ministers
should be what is termed its Leader. This is an office the
most indefinite of all, but not the least important. With
very little of defined prerogative, the Leader suggests,
and in a great degree fixes, the course of all principal
nuittcrs of business, supervises and keeps in harmony the
action of his colleagues, takes the initiative in matters of
leremonial procedure, and advises the House in every
difficulty as it arises. The first of these, which would be
of but secondary consequence where the assembly had
I. £
242 KIN BEYOND SEA.
time enough for all its duties, is of the utmost weight in
our overcharged House of Commons, where, notwith-
standing all its energy and all its diligence, for one thing
of consequence that is done, five or ten are despairingly-
postponed. The overweight, again, of the House of
Commons is apt, other things being equal, to bring its
Leader inconveniently near in power to a Prime Minister
who is a Peer. He can play ofi" the House of Commons
against his chief: and instances might be cited, though
they are happily most rare, when he has served him very
ugly tricks.
47. The nicest of all the adjustments involved in the
working of the British Government is that which deter-
mines, without formally defining, the internal relations of
the Cabinet. On the one hand, while each Minister is an
adviser of the Crown, the Cabinet is an unity, and none
of its members can advise as an individual, without, or in
opposition actual or presumed to, his colleagues. On the
other hand, the business of the State is a hundredfold
too great in volume to allow of the actual passing of the
whole under the view of the collected Ministry. It is
therefore a prime office of discretion for each Minister to
settle what are the departmental acts in which he can
presume the concurrence of his colleagues, and in what
more delicate, or weighty, or peculiar cases, he must
positively ascertain it. So much for the relation of each
Minister to the Cabinet; but here we touch the point
which involves another relation, perhaps the least known
of all, his relation to its head.
48. The head of the British Government is not a Grand
Vizier. He has no powers, properly so called, over his
colleagues : on the rare occasions, Avhen a Cabinet deter-
mines its course by the votes of its members, his vote
KIN BKYOXn SEA. 21:^
counts only as one of theirs. But they are appointed and
dismissed by the Sovereign on his advice. In a perfectly
organised administration, such for example as was that of
Sir Robci't Peel in 1841-6, nothing of groat importance
is matured, or would even be projected, in any depart-
ment without his personal cognisance ; and any weiglity
business would commonly go to him before being sub-
mitted to the Cabinet. He reports to the Sovereign its
proceedings, and lie also has many audiences of the august
occupant of tlie Throne. He is bound, in these reports
and audiences, not to counterwork the Cabinet ; not to
divide it ; not to undermine the position of any of his
coHeagucs in the Eoyal favour. If he departs in any
degree from strict adherence to these rules, and uses his
gi'eat opportunities to increase his own influence, or pur-
sue aims not shared by his colleagues, then, unless he is
prepared to advise their dismissal, he not only departs
from rule, but commits an act of treachery and baseness.
As the Cabinet stands between the Sovereign and the
Parliament, and is bound to be loyal to both, so he stands
between his colleagues and the Sovereign, and is bound
to be loyal to both.
49. As a rule, the resignation of the First Minister, as
if removing the bond of cohesion in the Cabinet, has the
effect of dissolving it. A conspicuous instance of this was
furnished by Sir llobert Peel in 1846 ; when the dissolu-
tion of the Administration, after it had carried the repeal
of the Com Laws, was understood to be due not so much
to a united deliberation and decision as to his initiative.
The resignation of any other Minister only creates a
vacancy. In certain circumstances, the balance of forces
may be so delicate and susceptible that a single resigna-
tion will break up the Government ; but what is the rule
E 2
244 KIN BKYOND SKX. '
in the one case is the rare exception in the other. Tlie
Prime Minister has no title to override any one of liis
colleagues in any one of the departments. So far as he
governs them, unless it is done by trick, which is not to
be supposed, he governs them by influence only. But
upon the whole, nowhere in the wide world does so great
a substance cast so small a shadow ; nowhere is there a
man who has so much power, with so little to show for it
in the way of formal title or prerogative.
50. The slight record that has here been traced may
convey but a faint idea of an unique creation. And, slight
as it is, I believe it tells more than, excc]it in the
school of British practice, is elsewhere to be learned of
a machine so subtly balanced, that it seems as though it
were m.oved by something not less delicate and slight
than the mainspring of a watch. It has not been the
oft'spring of the thought of man. The Cabinet, and all
the present relations of the Constitutional powers in this
country, have grown into their present dimensions, and
settled into their present places, not as the fruit of a
philosophy, not in the effort to give effect to an abstract
princi])le ; but by the silent action of forces, invisible and
insensible, the stz'ucture has come up into the view of all
the world. It is, perhaps, the most conspicuous object on
the Avide political horizon ; but it has thus risen, without
noise, like the temple of Jerusalem.
"No woikmnn steel, no ponderous hammers runir ;
lAkc soiiio tall pahu the stately fabric sprung." *
51. "When men repeat the proverb which teaches us that
" marriages are made in heaven," what they mean is that,
* Heber's ' Prtlestine.' Tho w.ord " stately " was in later pdiiious
altered by the author to " iioi.-.eli.'ss."
KIN ]ii:VnND SKA. 245
in tlio most I'uiuLuueutal of all social opei'atiuns, tlm
building up of the family, the issues involved in the
nuptial contract, lie beyond the best exercise of human
thought, and the unseen forces of providential government
make good the defect in our imperfect capacity. Even so
would it seem to have been in that curious marriage of
competing influences and powers, which brings about the
composite hannony of the British Constitution. More, it
must be admitted, than any other, it leaves open doors
which lead into blind alleys; for it presumes, more
boldly than any other, the good sense and good faith of
those who work it. If, unhappily, these personages meet
together, on the great arena of a nation's fortunes, as
jockeys meet upon a racecourse, each to urge to the utter-
most, as against the others, the power of the animal he
rides, or as counsel in a court, each to procure the victory
of his client, without respect to any other interest or
right ; then this boasted Constitution of ours is neitlier
more nor less than a heap of absurdities. The undoubted
couipetcucy of each reaches even to the paralysis or
destruction of the rest. The House of Commons is
entitled to refuse every shilling of the Supplies. That
House, and also the House of Lords, is entitled to refuse
its assent to every 13111 presented to it. The Crown is
entitled to make a thousand Peers to-day and as many-
to-morrow : it may dissolve all and every Parliament
before it proceeds to business; may pardon the most
atrocious crimes; rnay declare war against all the world;
may conclude treaties involving unlimited responsibilities,
and even vast expenditure, without the consent, nay
without the knowledge, of Parliament, and this not merely
in support or in development, but in reversal, of policy
already known to and sanctioned by the n.ition. 13ut
246 KIX BEYOND SEA,
the assumption is that tlie depositaries of power wili
all respect one another ; will evince a consciousness that
they are working in a common interest for a common
end ; that they will be possessed, together with not
less than an average intelligence, of not less than an
average sense of equity and of the public interest and
rights. When these reasonable expectations fail, then,
it must be admitted, the British Constitution will be in
danger.
52. Apart from such contingencies, the offspring only
of folly or of crime, this Constitution is peculiarly liable
to subtle change. Not only in the long-run, as mtm
changes between youth and age, but also, like the human
body, with a quotidian life, a periodical recurrence of
ebbing and flowing tides. Its old particles daily run
to waste, and give place to new. What is hoped among
us is, that which has usually been found, that evils
will become palpable before they have grown to be
intolerable.
53. There cannot, for example, be much doubt among
careful observers that the great conservator of liberty in
all former times, namely, the confinement of the power of
the purse to the popular chamber, has been lamentably
weakened in its efficiency of late years; weakened in
the House of Commons, and weakened by the House
of Commons. It might indeed be contended that the
House of Commons of the i^rcscnt epoch does far more to
increase the aggregate of public charge than to reduce
it. It might even be a question whether the public
would take benefit if the House were either eutrustcid
annually with a great part of the initiative, so as to be
really responsible to the people for the spending of their
money ; or else were excluded from part at least of its
KIN BEYOND SEA. 247
direct action upon expenditure, intrusting to the executive
the application of given sums which that executive should
have no legal power to exceed.
54. Meantime, we of this island are not great politiial
philosoj^hers ; and we contend with an earnest, but dis-
proportioned, vehemence about changes which are palpable,
Buch as the extension of the suffrage, or the redistribution
of Parliamentary seats, neglecting wholly other processes
of change which work beneath the surface, and in the dark,
but which are even more fertile of great organic results.
The modem English character reflects the English Con-
stitution in this, that it abounds in paradox ; that it pos-
sesses every strength, but holds it tainted with eveiy
weakness; that it seems alternately both to rise above
and to fall below the standard of average humanity ; that
there is no allegation of praise or blame which, in some
one of the aspects of its many-sided formation, it docs not
deserve ; that only in the midst of much default, and much
transgression, the people of this United Kingdom either
have heretofore established, or will hereafter establish,
their title to be reckoned among the children of men, for
the eldest born of an imperial race.
55. In this imperfect survey, I have carefully avoided aU
reference to the politics of the day and to particular topics,
recently opened, which may have undergone a great de-
velopment even before these lines appear in print on the
other side of the Atlantic. Such reference would, without
any countervailing advantage, have lowered the strain of
these remarks, and would have complicated with painful
considerations a statement essentially impartial and genera]
in its scope.
56. For the yet weightier reason of incompetency, I
have avoided the topics of chief present interest in America,
248 KIN BEYOJfn SEA.
incluclinG: tliat proposal to tamper with the true monetary
creed which (as we shoukl say) the Tem])ter lately pre-
sented to the nation in the Silver Bill. But I will not
close this paper without recording my conviction that the
great acts, and the great forbearances, which immediately
followed the close of the Civil War form a group which
wall ever be a noble object, in bis political retrospect, to
the impartial historian ; and tliat, proceeding as they did
from the free choice and conviction of the people, and
founded as they were on the very principles of which the
multitude is supposed to be least tolerant, they have,
in doing honour to the United States, also rendered a
splendid ser^Hce to the general cause of popular govern-
ment throughout the world. '^'
* [In reply to the intended work of ]\Ir. Adams on the Constitution of
the Uniteil States, Mr. Livingstone, under the title of a Colonist of New
Jersey, j)iil)iished an Exauiination of the British Constitution, and com-
pared it iinf.ivourably as it had been exhibited by Adams, and by
Dfeliilmo, with the institutions of his own country. In this work, of
which 1 have a Fremh translation (London and Paris, 1789), there is
not the smallest inkling of the action of our political mechanism, such
as I have endeavoured to describe it. On this subject I noi-il hardly
refer the reader to tlie valuable work of Mr. Bagehot, entitled 'The
En'j;lish Constitution,' or to the Constitutional History of Sir T
p:rskiue May.— W. E. G., December 187a.]
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES
THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below
JUL 13 1961
ttroro^a
973
^j^*
jmr^^'
2196
nvOWHVSfiDM
OME OF *EC§IH
RC
.^^1
K<ii-m L 9-ir>))|.ri ,'34
\?^
^ (,. ». WKU'H.
f okseller and Stat'^ner
lik Sflii JoNp. cm. m}
3 1158 00717 2
16
/
V
}
UC SOUTHERM REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY
*:!?
U
|k - -* A/
AA 000 378 126 7
r
>
«^
^f=