. . ...' i m i I THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. BY THE SAME AUTHOB. PHYSICS AND POLITICS: or. Thousrhfs on the Application of the Principles of " Natural Selection " and " Inlieritance " to Politu-a! Society. Ninth Edition. Crown Svo. Cloth, price 5* LOMBARD STREET. A Description of the Money Market Tenth Edition. Crown vo. Cloth, price Is. 6d. ESSAYS ON PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. Crown Svo. Cloth, price 5. SOME ARTICLES ON THE DEPRECIATION OP SILVER, and Topics connected with it. Deiny Svo. Price 5s. LONDON : KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TKUBNEK a (_o.| LrJJ THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. BY WALTER BAGEHOT. SEVENTH EDJIIOS. LONDON: KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., Li? 1894 {The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved-^ CONTENTS. tat INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION ..... vii No. L TUB CABINET . . 1 No. II. THE MONAECHY 83 No. III. THE MONABCHY (continued') 67 No. IV. THE HOUSE OF LORDS ........ 89 No. V. THE HOUSE OP COMMONS ........ 130 No. VI. ON CHANGES OF MINISTRY .** 176 VI CONTENTS. No. VII. ITS SUPPOSED CHECKS AND BALANCES . . . 21l No. VIII. THE PRE-REQUISITES OF CABINET GOVERNMENT, AND THE PECULIAR FORM WHICH THEY HAVE ASSUMED IN ENGLAND 254 No. IX. ITS HISTORY, AND THE EFFECTS OF THAT HISTORY. CON- CLUSION * 272 INTRODUCTION- EDITION. THERE is a great difficulty in the way of a vriter who attempts to sketch a living Constitution a Constitution that is in actual work and power. The difficulty is that the object is in constant change. An historical writer does not feel this difficulty : he deals only with the past ; he can say definitely, the Constitution worked in such and such a manner in the year at which he begins, and in a manner in such and such respects different in the year at which he ends ; he begins with a definite point of time and ends with one also. But a contemporary writer who tries to paint what is before him is puzzled and perplexed; what he sees is changing daily. He must paint it as it stood at some one time, or else he will be putting side by side in his representations things which never were con- temporaneous in reality. The difficulty is the greater because a writer who deals with a living government Vlll INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. naturally compares it with the most important other living governments, and these are changing too ; what he illustrates are altered in one way, and his sources of illustration are altered probably in a different way. This difficulty has been constantly in my way in preparing a second edition of this book. It describes the English Constitution as it stood in the years 1865 and 1866. Roughly speaking, it describes its working as it was in the time of Lord Palrnerston ; and since that time there have been many changes, some of spirit and some of detail In so short a period there have rarely been more changes. If I had given a sketch of the Palmerston time as a sketch of the present time, it would have been in many points untrue; and if I had tried to change the sketch of seven years since into a sketch of the present time. I should probably have blurred the picture and have given something equally unlike both. The best plan in such a case is, I think, to keep the original sketch in all essentials as it was at first written, and to describe shortly such changes either in the Consti- tution itself, or in the Constitutions compared with it, as seem material. There are in this book various ex- pressions which allude to persons who were living and to events which were happening when it first appeared ; and I have carefully preserved these. They will serve to warn the reader what time he is reading about, and to prevent his mistaking the date at which the likeness INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. ix was attempted to be taken. I proceed to speak of the changes which have taken place either in the Con- stitution itself or in the competing institutions which illustrate it. It is too soon as yet to attempt to estimate the effect of the Reform Act of 1867. The people enfranchised under it do not yet know their own power; a single election, so far from teaching us how they will use that power, has not been even enough to explain to them that they have such power. The Reform Act of 1832 did not for many years disclose its real consequences; a writer in 1836, whether he approved or disapproved of them, whether he thought too little of or whether he exagge- rated them, would have been sure to be mistaken in them. A new Constitution does not produce its full effect as long as all its subjects were reared under an old Constitution, as long as its statesmen were trained by that old Constitution. It is not really tested till it comes to be worked by statesmen and among a people neither of whom are guided by a different experience. In one respect we are indeed particularly likely to be mistaken as to the effect of the last Reform Bill. Un- deniably there has lately been a great change in our. politics. It is commonly said that " there is not a brick of the Palmerston House standing." The change since 1865 is a change not in one point but in a thousand points ; it is a change not of particular details but of per- X INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. vading spirit. We are now quarrelling as to the minor details of an Education Act ; in Lord Palmerston's time no such Act could have passed. In Lord Palmerston's time Sir George Grey said that the disestablishment of the Irish Church would be an "act of Revolution;" it has now been disestablished by great majorities, with Sir George Grey himself assenting. A new world has arisen which is not as the old world ; and we naturally ascribe the change to the Reform Act. But this is a complete mistake. If there had been no Reform Act at all there would, nevertheless, have been a great change in English politics. There has been a change of the sort which, above all, generates other changes a change of genera- tion. Generally one generation in politics succeeds another almost silently; at every moment men of all ages between thirty and seventy have considerable in- fluence; each year removes many old men, makes all others older, brings in many new. The transition is so gradual that we hardly perceive it. The board of directors of the political company has a few slight changes every year, and therefore the shareholders are conscious of no abrupt change. But sometimes there is an abrupt change. It occasionally happens that several ruling directors who are about the same age live on for many years, manage the company all through those years, and then go off the scene almost together. In that case the affairs of the company are INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. apt to alter much, for good or for evil; sometimes it becomes more successful, sometimes it is ruined, but it hardly ever stays as it was. Something like this happened before 1865. AIL through the period between 1832 and 1865, the pre-'32 statesmen if I may so call them Lord Derby, Lord Russell, Lord Palmerston, re- tained great power. Lord Palmerston to the last retained great prohibitive power. Though in some ways always young, he had not a particle of sympathy with the younger generation ; he brought forward no young men ; he obstructed all that young men wished. In con- sequence, at his death a new generation all at once started into life ; the pre-'32 all at once died out. Most of the new politicians were men who might well have been Lord Palme rston's grandchildren. He came into Parliament in 1806, they entered it after 1856. Such an enormous change in the age of the workers necessarily caused a great change in the kind of work attempted and the way in which it was done. What we call the " spirit " of politics is more surely changed by a change of generation in the men than by any other change whatever. Even if there had been no Reform Act, this single cause would have effected grave alterations. The mere settlement of the Reform question made a great change too. If it could have been settled by any other change, or even without any change, the instant effect of the settlement would still have been immense. b xii INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. New questions would have appeared at once. A political country is like an American forest : you have only to cut down the old trees, and immediately new trees come up to replace them ; the seeds were waiting in the ground, and they began to grow as soon as the withdrawal of the old ones brought in light and air. These new questions of themselves would have made a new atmosphere, new parties, new debates. Of course I am not arguing that so important an in- novation as the Reform Act of 1867 will not have very great effects. It must, in all likelihood, have many great ones. I am only saying that as yet we do not know what those effects are; that the great evident change since 1865 is certainly not strictly due to it ; probably is not even in a principal measure due to it ; that we have still to conjecture what it will cause and what it will not cause. The principal question arises most naturally from a main doctrine of these essays. I have said that cabinet government is possible in England because England was a deferential country. I meant that the nominal consti- tuency was not the real constituency ; that the mass of the " ten-pound " householders did not really form their own opinions, and did not exact of their representatives an obedience to those opinions ; that they were in fact guided in their judgment by the better educated classes ; that they preferred representatives from those classes, and gave those representatives much license. If a hundred INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. Xlii small shopkeepers had by miracle been added to any of the '32 Parliaments, they would have felt outcasts there. Nothing could be more unlike those Parliaments than the average mass of the constituency from which they were chosen. I do not of course mean that the ten-pound house- holders were great admirers of intellect or good judges of refinement. We all know that, for the most part, they were not so at all : very few Englishmen are. They were not influenced by ideas, but by facts; not by things palpable, but by things impalpable. Not to put too fine a point upon it, they were influenced by rank and wealth. No doubt the better sort of them believed that those who were superior to them in these indisputable respects were superior also in the more intangible quali- ties of sense and knowledge. But the mass of the old electors did not analyse very much : they liked to have one of their " betters " to represent them ; if he was rich, they respected him much; and if he was a lord, they liked him the better. The issue put before these electors was which of two rich people will you choose ? And each of those rich people was put forward by great parties whose notions were the notions of the rich whose plans were their plans. The electors only selected one or two wealthy men to carry out the schemes of one or two wealthy associations. So fully was this so, that the class to whom the great INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. body of the ten-pound householders belonged the lower" middle class was above all classes the one most hardly treated in the imposition of the taxes, A small shop- keeper, or a clerk who just, and only just, was rich enough to pay income tax, was perhaps the only severely- taxed man in the country. He paid the rates, the tea, sugar, tobacco, malt, and spirit taxes, as well as the in- come tax, but his means were exceedingly small. Curiously enough the class which in theory was omnipotent, was the only class financially ill-treated. Throughout the history of our former Parliaments the constituency could no more have originated the policy which those Parliaments selected than they could have made the solar system. As I have endeavoured to show in this volume, the deference of the old electors to their betters was the only way in which our old system could be maintained. No doubt countries can be imagined in which the mass of the electors would be thoroughly competent to form good opinions; approximations to that state happily exist. But such was not the state of the minor English shopkeepers. They were just competent to make a selection between two sets of superior ideas ; or rather for the conceptions of such people are more personal than abstract between two opposing parties, each professing a creed of such ideas. But they could do no more. Their own notions, if they had been cross-examined upon them, would have been, found always most confused and often most foolish. INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. XV They were competent to decide an issue selected by the higher classes, but they were incompetent to do more. The grave question now is, How far will this peculiar old system continue and how far will it be altered ? I am afraid I must put aside at once the idea that it will be altered entirely and altered for the better. I cannot expect that the new class of voters will be at all more able to form sound opinions on complex questions than the old voters. There was indeed an idea a very prevalent idea when the first edition of this book was published that there then was an unrepresented class of skilled artizans who could form superior opinions on national matters, and ought to have the means of ex- pressing them. We used to frame elaborate schemes to give them such means. But the Keform Act of 1867 did not stop at skilled labour; it enfranchised unskilled labour too. And no one will contend that the ordinary working man who has no special skill, and who is only rated because he has a house, can judge much of intel- lectual matters. The messenger in an office is not more intelligent than the clerks, not better educated, but, worse ; and yet the messenger is probably a very superior specimen of the newly enfranchised classes. The average can only earn very scanty wages by coarse labour. They have no time to improve themselves, for they are labour- ing the whole day through; and their early education was so small that in most cases it is dubious whether INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. even if they had much time, they could use it to good purpose. We have not enfranchised a class less needing to be guided by their betters than the old class ; on the contrary, the new class need it more than the old. The real question is, Will they submit to it, will they defer in the same way to wealth and rank, and to the higher qualities of which these are the rough symbols and the common accompaniments ? There is a peculiar difficulty in answering this ques- tion. Generally, the debates upon the passing of an Act contain much valuable instruction as to what may be ex- pected of it. But the debates on the Reform Act of 1867 hardly tell anything. They are taken up with techni- calities as to the ratepayers and the compound house- holder. Nobody in the country knew what was being done. I happened at the time to visit a purely agricul- tural and conservative county, and I asked the local Tories, " Do you understand this Reform Bill ? Do you know that your Conservative Government has brought in a Bill far more Radical than any former Bill, and that it is very likely to be passed ? " The answer I got was, " What stuff you talk ! How can it be a Radical Reform Bill ? Why, Bright opposes it 1 " There was no answering that in a way which a " common jury " could understand. The Bill was supported by the Times and opposed by Mr. Bright; and therefore the mass of the Conservatives and of common moderate people, without INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. XVU distinction of party, had no conception of the effect. They said it was "London nonsense" if you tried to explain it to them. The nation indeed generally looks to the discussions in Parliament to enlighten it as to the effect of Bills. But in this case neither party, as a party, could speak out. Many, perhaps most of the intelligent Conservatives, were fearful of the consequences of the proposal ; but as it was made by the heads of their own party, they did not like to oppose it, and the discipline of party carried them with it. On the other side, many, probably most of the intelligent Liberals, were in conster- nation at the Bill ; they had been in the habit for years of proposing Reform Bills ; they knew the points of difference between each Bill, and perceived that this was by far the most sweeping which had ever been proposed by any Ministry. But they were almost all unwilling to say so. They would have offended a large section in their constituencies if they had resisted a Tory Bill because it was too democratic ; the extreme partizans of democracy would have said, " The enemies of the people have confidence enough in the people to entrust them with this power, but you, a 'Liberal,' and a professed friend of the people, have not that confidence ; if that is so, we will never vote for you again." Many Radical members who had been asking for years for household suffrage were much more surprised than pleased at the near chance of obtaining it; they had asked for it as XV111 INTKODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. bargainers ask for the highest possible price, but they never expected to get it. Altogether the Liberals, or at least the extreme Liberals, were much like a man who has been pushing hard against an opposing door, till, on a sudden, the door opens, the resistance ceases, and he is thrown violently forward. Persons in such an un- pleasant predicament can scarcely criticise effectually, and certainly the Liberals did not so criticise. We have had no such previous discussions as should guide our expectations from the Reform Bill, nor such as under ordinary circumstances we should have had. Nor does the experience of the last election much help us. The circumstances were too exceptional In the first place, Mr. Gladstone's personal popularity was such as has not been seen since the time of Mr. Pitt, and such as may never be seen again. Certainly it will very rarely be seen. A bad speaker is said to have been asked how he got on as a candidate. " Oh," he answered, " when I do not know what to say, I say 'Gladstone/ and then they are sure to cheer, and I have time to think." In fact, that popularity acted as a guide both to consti- tuencies and to members. The candidates only said they would vote with Mr. Gladstone, and the constituencies only chose those who said so. Even the minority could only be described as anti-Gladstone, just as the majority could only be described as pro-Gladstone. The remains, too, of the old electoral organisation were exceedingly INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. xix powerful ; the old voters voted as they had been told, and the new voters mostly voted with them. In extremely few cases was there any new and contrary organisation. At the last election, the trial of the new system hardly began, and, as far as it did begin, it was favoured by a peculiar guidance. In the mean time our statesmen have the greatest opportunities they have had for many years, and likewise the greatest duty. They have to guide the new voters in the exercise of the franchise ; to guide them quietly, and without saying what they are doing, but still to guide them. The leading statesmen in a free country have great momentary power. They settle the conversation of mankind. It is they who, by a great speech or two, determine what shall be said and what shall be written for long after. They, in conjunction with their coun- sellors, settle the programme of their party the "plat- form," as the Americans call it, on which they and those associated with them are to take their stand for the political campaign. It is by that programme, by a com- parison of the programmes of different statesmen, that the world forms its judgment. The common ordinary mind is quite unfit to fix for itself what political ques- tion it shall attend to ; it is as much as it can do to judge decently of the questions which drift down to it, and are brought before it; it almost never settles its topics ; it can only decide upon the issues of those topics. XX INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. And in settling what these questions shall be, statesmen have now especially a great responsibility if they raise questions which will excite the lower orders of mankind , if they raise questions on which those orders are likely to be wrong ; if they raise questions on which the interest of those orders is not identical with, or is antagonistic to, the whole interest of the State, they will have done the greatest harm they can do. The future of this country depends on the happy working of a delicate experiment, and they will have done all they could to vitiate that experiment. Just when it is desirable that ignorant men, new to politics, should have good issues, and only good issues, put before them, these statesmen will have suggested bad issues. They will have suggested topics which will bind the poor as a class together; topics which will excite them against the rich ; topics the dis- cussion of which in the only form in which that discus- sion reaches their ear will be to make them think that some new law can make them comfortable that it is the present law which makes them uncomfortable that Government has at its disposal an inexhaustible fund out of which it can give to those who now want without also creating elsewhere other and greater wants. If the first work of the poor voters is to try to create a " poor man's paradise," as poor men are apt to fancy that Paradise, and as they are apt to think they can create it, the great political trial now beginning will simply fail. The wide INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. gift of the elective franchise will be a great calamity to the whole nation, and to those who gain it as great a calamity as to any. I do not of course mean that statesmen can choose with absolute freedom what topics they will deal with and what they will not. I am of course aware that they choose under stringent conditions. In excited states of the public mind they have scarcely a discretion at all; the tendency of the public perturbation determines what shall and what shall not be dealt with. But, upon the other hand, in quiet times statesmen have great power ; when there is no fire lighted, they can settle what fire shall be lit. And as the new suffrage is happily to be tried in a quiet time, the responsibility of our statesmen is great because their power is great too. And the mode in which the questions dealt with are discussed is almost as important as the selection of these questions. It is for our principal statesmen to lead the public, and not to let the public lead them. No doubt when statesmen live by public favour, as ours do, this is a hard saying, and it requires to be carefully limited. I do not mean that our statesmen should assume a pedantic and doctrinaire tone with the English people ; if there is anything which English people thoroughly detest, it is that tone exactly. And they are right in detesting it ; if a man cannot give guidance and communicate instruc- tion formally without telling his audience " I am better XX11 INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. than you ; I have studied this as you have not," then he is not fit for a guide or an instructor. A statesman who should show that gauchei^ie would exhibit a defect of imagination, and expose an incapacity for dealing with men which would be a great hindrance to him in his calling. But much argument is not required to guide the public, still less a formal exposition of that argument. What is mostly needed is the manly utterance of clear conclusions ; if a statesman gives these in a felicitous way (and if with a few light and humorous illustrations, so much the better), he has done his part. He will have given the text, the scribes in the newspapers will write the sermon. A statesman ought to show his own nature, and talk in a palpable way what is to him important truth. And so he will both guide and benefit the nation. But if, especially at a time when great ignorance has an unusual power in public affairs, he chooses to accept and reiterate the decisions of that ignorance, he is only the hireling of the nation, and does little save hurt it. I shall be told that this is very obvious, and that everybody knows that 2 and 2 make 4, and that there is no use in inculcating it. But I answer that the lesson is not observed in fact; people do not do their political sums so. Of all our political dangers, the greatest I conceive is that they will neglect the lesson. In plain English, what I fear is that both our political parties will bid for the support of the working man ; that both INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. XX111 of them -will promise to do as lie likes if he will only tell them what it is ; that, as he now holds the casting vote in our affairs, both parties will beg and pray him to give that vote to them. I can conceive of nothing more corrupting or worse for a set of poor ignorant people than that two combinations of well-taught and rich men should constantly offer to defer to their decision, and compete for the office of executing it Vox populi will be Vox didboli if it is worked in that manner. And, on the other hand, my imagination conjures up a contrary danger. I can conceive that questions being raised which, if continually agitated, would combine the working men as a class together, the higher orders might have to consider whether they would concede the measure that would settle such questions, or whether they would risk the effect of the working men's combination. No doubt the question cannot be easily discussed in the abstract; much must depend on the nature of the measures in each particular case ; on the evil they would cause if conceded ; on the attractiveness of their idea to the working classes if refused. But in all cases it must be remembered that a political combination of the lower classes, as such and for their own objects, is an evil of the first magnitude; that a permanent combination of them would make them (now that so many of them have the suffrage) supreme in the country; and that their supremacy, in the state they now are means the su^re- Xxiv INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. macy of ignorance over instruction and of numbers over knowledge. So long as they are not taught to act together, there is a chance of this being averted, and it can only be averted by the greatest wisdom and the greatest foresight in the higher classes. They must avoid, not only every evil, but every appearance of evil ; while they have still the power they must remove, not only every actual grievance, but, where it is possible, every seeming grievance too ; they must willingly concede every claim which they can safely concede, in order that they may not have to concede unwillingly some claim which would impair the safety of the country. This advice, too, will be said to be obvious; but I have the greatest fear that, when the time comes, it will be cast aside as timid and cowardly. So strong are the combative propensities of man that he would rather fight a losing battle than not fight at all It is most difficult to persuade people that by fighting they may strengthen the enemy, yet that would be so here; since a losing battle especially a long and well-fought one would have thoroughly taught the lower orders to combine, and would have left the higher orders face to face with an irritated, organized, and superior voting power. The courage which strengthens an enemy and which so loses, not only the present battle, but many after battles, is a heavy curse to men and nations. In one minor respect, indeed, I think we may see INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. XXV with distinctness the effect of the Reform Bill of 1867. I think it has completed one change which the Act of 1832 began; it has completed the change which that Act made in the relation of the House of Lords to the House of Commons. As I have endeavoured in this book to explain, the literary theory of the English Constitu- tion is on this point quite wrong as usual According to that theory, the two Houses are two branches of the Legislature, perfectly equal and perfectly distinct. But before the Act of 1832 they were not so distinct; there was a very large and a very strong common element. By their commanding influence in many boroughs and counties the Lords nominated a considerable part of the Commons ; the majority of the other part were the richer gentry men in most respects like the Lords, and sympa- thising with the Lords. Under the Constitution as it then was the two Houses were not in their essence distinct ; they were in their essence similar ; they were, in the main, not Houses of contrasted origin, but Houses of like origin. The predominant part of both was taken from the same class from the English gentry, titled and tintitled. By the Act of 1832 this was much altered. The aristocracy and the gentry lost their predominance in the House of Commons ; that predominance passed to the middle class. The two Houses then became distinct, but then they ceased to be co-equal. The Duke of Wellington, in a most remarkable paper, has explained INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. what pains he took to induce the Lords to submit to their new position, and to submit, time after time, their will to the will of the Commons. The Reform Act of 1867 has, I think, unmistakably completed the effect which the Act of 1832 began, but left unfinished. The middle class element has gained greatly by the second change, and the aristocratic element has lost greatly. If you examine carefully the lists of members, especially of the most prominent members, of either side of the House, you will not find that they are in general aristocratic names. Considering the power and position of the titled aristocracy, you will perhaps be astonished at the small degree in which it contributes to the active part of our governing assembly. The spirit of our present House of Commons is plutocratic, not aristocratic ; its most prominent statesmen are not men of ancient descent or of great hereditary estate; they are men mostly of substantial means, but they are mostly, too, connected more or less closely with the new trading wealth. The spirit of the two Assemblies has become far more contrasted than it ever was. The full effect of the Reform Act of 1832 was indeed postponed by the cause which I mentioned just now. The statesmen who worked the system which was put up had themselves been educated under the system which was pulled down. Strangely enough, their predominant guidance lasted as long as the system which they created. INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. XXvii Lord Palmerston, Lord Russell, Lord Derby, died or else lost their influence within a year or two of 1867. The complete consequences of the Act of 1832 upon the House of Lords could not be seen while the Commons were subject to such aristocratic guidance. Much of the change which might have been expected from the Act of 1832 was held in suspense, and did not begin till that measure had been followed by another of similar and greater power. The work which the Duke of Wellington in part performed has now, therefore, to be completed also. He met the half difficulty; we have to surmount the whole one. We have to frame such tacit rules, to establish such ruling but unenacted customs, as will make the House of Lords yield to the Commons when and as often as our new Constitution requires that it should yield. I shall be asked, How often is that, and what is the test by which you know it ? I answer that the House of Lords must yield when- ever the opinion of the Commons is also the opinion of the nation, and when it is clear that the nation has made up its mind. Whether or not the nation has made up its mind is a question to be decided by all the circumstances of the case, and in the common way in which all practical questions are decided. There are some people who lay down a sort of mechanical test : they say the House of Lords should be at liberty to reject a measure passed by XXV111 INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. the Commons once or more, and then if the Commons send it up again and again, infer that the nation is determined. But no important practical question in real life can be uniformly settled by a fixed and formal rule in this way. This rule would prove that the Lords might have rejected the Reform Act of 1832. Whenever the nation was both excited and determined, such a rule would be an acute and dangerous political poison. It would teach the House of Lords that it might shut its eyes to all the facts of real life and decide simply by an abstract formula. If in 1832 the Lords had so acted, there would have been a revolution. Undoubtedly there is a general truth in the rule. Whether a Bill has come up once only, or whether it has coxie up several times, is one important fact in judging whether the nation is determined to have that measure enacted; it is an indication, but it is only one of the indications. There are others equally decisive. The unanimous voice of the people may be so strong, and may be conveyed through so many organs, that it may be assumed to be lasting. Englishmen are so very miscellaneous, that that which has really convinced a great and varied majority of them for the present may fairly be assumed to be likely to continue permanently to convince them. One sort might easily fall into a temporary and erroneous fanaticism, but all sorts simultaneously are very unlikely to do so. T should venture so far as to lay down, for an approxi- INTKODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. XXIX mate rule, that the House of Lords ought, on a first-class subject, to be slow very slow in rejecting a Bill passed even once by a large majority of the House of Commons. I would not of course lay this down as an unvarying rule; as I have said, I have for practical purposes no belief in unvarying rules. Majorities may be either genuine or fictitious, and if they are not genuine, if they do not embody the opinion of the representative as well as the opinion of the constituency, no one would wish to have any attention paid to them. But if the opinion of the nation be strong and be universal, if it be really believed by members of Parliament, as well as by those who send them to Parliament, in my judgment the Lords should yield at once, and should not resist it. My main reason is one which has not been much urged. As a theoretical writer I can venture to say, what no elected member of Parliament, Conservative or Liberal, can venture to say, that I am exceedingly afraid of the ignorant multitude of the new constituencies. I wish to have as great and as compact a power as possible to resist it. But a dissension between the Lords and Commons divides that resisting power; as I have ex- plained, the House of Commons still mainly represents the plutocracy, the Lords represent the aristocracy. The main interest of both these classes is now identical, which is to prevent or to mitigate the rule of une Jucatea members. But to prevent it effectually, they must not XXX INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION". quarrel among themselves; they must not bid one against the other for the aid of their common opponent. And this is precisely the effect of a division between Lords and Commons. The two great bodies of the educated rich go to the constituencies to decide between them, and the majority of the constituencies now consist of the uneducated poor. This cannot be for the advan- tage of any one. In doing so besides the aristocracy forfeit their natural position that by which they would gain most power, and in which they would do most good. They ought to be the heads of the plutocracy. In all countries new wealth is ready to worship old wealth, if old wealth will only let it, and I need not say that in England new wealth is eager in its worship. Satirist after satirist has told us how quick, how willing, how anxious are the newly-made rich to associate with the ancient rich. Rank probably in no country whatever has so much "market" value as it has in England just now. Of course there have been many countries in which certain old families, whether rich or poor, were worshipped by whole populations with a more intense and poetic homage; but I doubt if there has ever been any in which all old families and all titled families received more ready observance from those who were their equals, perhaps their superiors, in wealth, their equals in culture, and their inferiors only in descent and rank. The INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. XXxi possessors of the " material " distinctions of life, as a poli- tical economist would class them, rush to worship those who possess the immaterial distinctions. Nothing can be more politically useful than such homage, if it be skil- fully used ; no folly can be idler than to repel and reject it. The worship is the more politically important because it is the worship of the political superior for the political inferior. At an election the non-titled are much more powerful than the titled. Certain individual peers have, from their great possessions, great electioneering in fluence, but, as a whole, the House of Peers is not a principal electioneering force. It has so many poor men inside it, and so many rich men outside it, that its electioneering value is impaired. Besides, it is in the nature of the curious influence of rank to work much more on men singly than on men collectively; it is an influence which most men at least most Englishmen feel very much, but of which most Englishmen are somewhat ashamed. Accordingly, when any number of men are collected together, each of whom worships rank in his heart, the whole body will patiently hear in many cases will cheer and approve some rather strong speeches against rank. Each man is a little afraid that his " sneaking kindness for a lord," as Mr. Gladstone put it, be found out ; he is not sure how far that weakness is shared by those around him. And thus Englishmen easily find themselves committed to anti-aristocratic XXX11 INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. sentiments which are the direct opposite of their real feeling, and their collective action may be bitterly hostile to rank while the secret sentiment of each separately is especially favourable to rank. In 1 832 the close boroughs, which were largely held by peers, and were still more largely supposed to be held by them, were swept away with a tumult of delight; and in another similar time of great excitement, the Lords themselves, if they deserve it, might pass away. The democratic passions gain by fomenting a diffused excite- ment, and by massing men in concourses ; the aristocratic sentiments gain by calm and quiet, and act most on men by themselves, in their families, and when female in- fluence is not absent. The overt electioneering power of the Lords does not at all equal its real social power. The English plutocracy, as is often said of something yet coarser, must be "humoured, not drove;" they may easily be impelled against the aristocracy, though they respect it very much; and as they are much stronger than the aristocracy, they might, if angered, even destroy it; though in order to destroy it, they must help to arouse a wild excitement among the ignorant poor, which, if once roused, may not be easily calmed, and which may be fatal to far more than its beginners intend. This is the explanation of the anomaly which puzzles many clever lords. They think, if they do not say, " Why are we pinned up here ? Wnv are we not in the INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. XXX111 Commons where we could have so much more power ? Why is this nominal rank given us, at the price of substantial influence? If we prefer real weight to unreal prestige, why may we not have it ? " The reply is, that the whole body of the Lords have an incalculably greater influence over society while there is still a House of Lords, than they would have if the House of Lords were abolished ; and that though one or two clever young peers might do better in the Commons, the old order of peers, young and old, clever and not clever, is much better where it is. The selfish instinct of the mass of peers on this point is a keener and more exact judge of the real world than the fine intelligence of one or two of them. If the House of Peers ever goes, it will go in a storm, and the storm will not leave all else as it is. It will not destroy the House of Peers and leave the rich young peers, with their wealth and their titles, to sit in the Commons. It would probably sweep all titles before it at least all legal titles and somehow or other it would break up the curious system by which the estates of great families all go to the eldest son. That system is a very artificial one; you may make a fine argument for it, but you cannot make a loud argument, an argument which would reach and rule the multitude. The thing looks like injustice, and in a time of popular passion it would not stand. Much short of the compulsory equal division of the Code Napoleon, stringent clauses might XXXIV INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. be provided to obstruct and prevent these great aggrega- tions of property. Few things certainly are less likely than a violent tempest like this to destroy large and hereditary estates. But then, too, few things are less likely than an outbreak to destroy the House of Lords' my point is, that a catastrophe which levels one will not spare the other. I conceive, therefore, that the great power of the House of Lords should be exercised very timidly and very cautiously. For the sake of keeping the headship of the plutocracy, and through that of the nation, they should not offend the plutocracy ; the points upon which they have to yield are mostly very minor ones, and they should yield many great points rather than risk the bottom of their power. They should give large donations out of income, if by so doing they keep, as they would keep, their capital intact. The Duke of Wellington guided the House of Lords in this manner for years, and nothing could prosper better for them or for the country, and the Lords have only to go back to the good path in which he directed them. The events of 1870 caused much discussion upon life peerages, and we have gained this great step, that whereas the former leader of the Tory party in the Lords Lord Lyndhurst defeated the last proposal to make life peers, Lord Derby, when leader of that party, desired to create them. As I have given in this book INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. XXXV what seemed to me good reasons for making them, I need not repeat those reasons here ; I need only say how the notion stands in my judgment now. I cannot look on life peerages in the way in which some of their strongest advocates regard them ; I cannot think of them as a mode in which a permanent opposi- tion or a contrast between the Houses of Lords and Commons is to be remedied. To be effectual in that way, life peerages must be very numerous. Now the House of Lords will never consent to a very numerous life peerage without a storm ; they must be in terror to do it, or they will not do it. And if the storm blows strongly enough to do so much, in all likelihood it will blow strongly enough to do much more. If the revolution is powerful enough and eager enough to make an immense number of life peers, probably it will sweep away the hereditary principle in the Upper Chamber entirely. Of course one may fancy it to be otherwise; we may conceive of a political storm just going to a life peerage limit, and then stopping suddenly. But in politics we must not trouble ourselves with exceedingly exceptional accidents; it is quite difficult enough to count on and provide for the regular and plain probabilities. To speak mathemati- cally, we may easily miss the permanent course of the political curve if we engross our minds with its cusps and conjugate points. Nor, on the other hand, can I sympathise with the XXXVI 1NTKODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. objection to life peerages which some of the Radical party take and feeL They think it will strengthen the Lords, and so make them better able to oppose the Commons ; they think, if they do not say, " The House of Lords is our enemy and that of all Liberals ; happily the mass of it is not intellectual; a few clever men are born there which we cannot help, but we will not ' vaccinate ' it with genius ; we will not put in a set of clever men for their lives who may as likely as not turn against us." This objection assumes that clever peers are just as likely to oppose the Commons as stupid peers. But this I deny. Most clever men who are in such a good place as the House of Lords plainly is, will be very unwilling to lose it if they can help it ; at the clear call of a great duty they might lose it, but only at such a call. And it does not take a clever man to see that systematic opposition of the Commons is the only thing which can endanger the Lords, or which will make an individual peer cease to be a peer. The greater you make the sense of the Lords, the more they will see that their plain interest is to make friends of the plutocracy, and to be the chiefs of it, and not to wish to oppose the Commons where that plutocracy rules. It is true that a completely new House of Lords, mainly composed of men of ability, selected because they were able, might very likely attempt to make ability the predominant power in the State, and to rival, if not con- INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. XXXV11 quer, the House of Commons, where the standard of intelligence is not much above the common English average. But in the present English world such a House of Lords would soon lose all influence. People would say, " it was too clever by half," and in an Englishman's mouth that means a very severe censure. The English people would think it grossly anomalous if their elected assembly of rich men were thwarted by a nominated assembly of talkers and writers. Sensible men of sub- stantial means are what we wish to be ruled by, and a peerage of genius would not compare with it in power. It is true, too, that at present some of the cleverest peers are not so ready as some others to agree with the Commons. But it is not unnatural that persons of high rank and of great ability should be unwilling to bend to persons of lower rank, and of certainly not greater ability. A few of such peers (for they are very few) might say, " We had rather not have our peerage if we are to buy it at the price of yielding." But a life peer who had fought his way up to the peers, would never think so. Young men who are born to rank may risk it, not middle-aged or old men who have earned their rank. A moderate number of life peers would almost always counsel moderation to the Lords, and would almost always be right in counselling it. Recent discussions have also brought into curious prominence another part of the Constitution. I said in XXXviii INTKODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. this book that it would very much surprise people if they were only told how many things the Queen could do without consulting Parliament, and it certainly has so proved, for when the Queen abolished Purchase in the Army by an act of prerogative (after the Lords had rejected the bill for doing so), there was a great and general astonishment. But this is nothing to what the Queen can by law do without consulting Parliament. Not to mention other things, she could disband the army (by law she cannot engage more than a certain number of men, but she is not obliged to engage any men); she could dismiss all the officers, from the General Comrnanding-in-Chief downwards; she could dismiss all the sailors too; she could sell off all our ships of war and all our naval stores ; she could make a peace by the sacrifice of Corn- wall, and begin a war for the conquest of Brittany. She could make every citizen in the United Kingdom, male or female, a peer; she could make every parish in the United Kingdom a " university ; " she could dismiss most of the civil servants ; she could pardon all offenders. In a word, the Queen could by prerogative upset all the action of civil government within the government, could disgrace the nation by a bad war or peace, and could, by disbanding our forces, whether land or sea, leave us defenceless against foreign nations. Why do we not fear that she would do this, or any approach to it ? INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. XXXIX, Because there are two checks one ancient and coarse, the other modern and delicate. The first is the check of impeachment. Any Minister who advised the Queen so to use her prerogative as to endanger the safety of the realm, might be impeached for high treason, and would be so. Such a minister would, in our technical law, be said to have levied, or aided to levy, " war against the Queen." This counsel to her so to use her prerogative would by the Judge be declared to be an act of violence against herself, and in that peculiar but effectual way the offender could be condemned and executed. Against all gross excesses of the prerogative this is a sufficient protection. But it would be no protection against minor mistakes ; any error of judgment committed bond fide, and only entailing consequences which one person might say were good, and another say were bad, could not be so punished. It would be possible to impeach any Minister who disbanded the Queen's army, and it would be done for certain. But suppose a Minister were to reduce the army or the navy much below the con- templated strength suppose he were only to spend upon them one-third of the amount which Parliament had per- mitted him to spend suppose a Minister of Lord Palmer- ston's principles were suddenly and while in office con- verted to the principles of Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden, and were to act on those principles, he could not be im- peached. The law of treason neither could nor ought to xl INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. be enforced against an act which was an error of judg- ment not of intention which was in good faith intended not to impair the well-being of the State, but to promote and augment it. Against such misuses of the prerogative our remedy is a change of Ministry. And in general this works very well. Every Minister looks long before he incurs that penalty, and no one incurs it wantonly. But, nevertheless, there are two defects in it. The first is that it may not be a remedy at all ; it may be only a punish- ment. A Minister may risk his dismissal; he may do some act difficult to undo, and then all which may be left will be to remove and censure him. And the second is that it is only one House of Parliament which has much to say to this remedy, such as it is; the House of Commons only can remove a Minister by a vote of censure. Most of the Ministries for thirty years have never possessed the confidence of the Lords, and in such cases a vote of censure by the Lords could therefore have but little weight; it would be simply the particular expression of a general political disapproval. It would be like a vote of censure on a Liberal Government by the Carlton, or on a Tory Government by the Keform Club. Aoid in no case has an adverse vote by the Lords the same decisive effect as a vote of the Commons ; the Lower House is the ruling and the choosing House, and if a Government really possesses that, it thoroughly pos- sesses nine-tenths of what it requires. The support of INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. xli the Lords is an aid and a luxury ; that of the Commons is a strict and indispensable necessary. These difficulties are particularly raised by questions of foreign policy. On most domestic subjects, either custom or legislation has limited the use of the pre- rogative. The mode of governing the country, according to the existing laws, is mostly worn into a rut, and most Administrations move in it because it is easier to move there than anywhere else. Most political crises the decisive votes, which determine the fate of Government are generally either on questions of foreign policy or of new laws; and the questions of foreign policy come out generally in this way, that the Government has already done something, and that it is for the one part of the Legislature alone for the House of Commons, and not for the House of Lords to say whether they have or have not forfeited their place by the treaty they have made. I think every one must admit that this is not an ar- rangement which seems right on the face of it. Treaties are quite as important as most laws, and to require the elaborate assent of representative assemblies to every word of the law, and not to consult them even as to the essence of the treaty, is primd facie ludicrous. In the older forms of the English Constitution, this may have been quite right ; the power was then really lodged in the Crown, and because Parliament met very seldom, xlii INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. arid for other reasons, it was then necessary that, on a multitude of points, the Crown should have much more power than is amply sufficient for it at present. But now the real power is not in the Sovereign, it is in the Prime Minister and in the Cabinet that is, in the hands of a committee appointed by Parliament, and of the chairman of that committee. Now, beforehand, no one would have ventured to suggest that a committee of Parliament on Foreign relations should be able to commit the country to the greatest international obligations without consulting either Parliament or the country. No other select committee has any comparable power; and considering how carefully we have fettered and limited the powers of all other subordinate authorities, our allowing so much discretionary power on matters peculiarly dangerous and peculiarly delicate to rest in the sole charge of one secret committee is exceedingly strange. No doubt it may be beneficial ; many seeming anomalies are so, but at first sight it does not look right. I confess that I should see no advantage in it if our two Chambers were sufficiently homogeneous and suffi- ciently harmonious. On the contrary, if those two Chambers were as they ought to be, I should believe it to be a great defect. If the Administration had in both Houses a majority not a mechanical majority ready to accept anything, but a fair and reasonable one, predis- posed to think the Government right, but not ready to INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. xliii find it to be so in the face of facts and in opposition to whatever might occur; if a good Government were thus placed, I should think it decidedly better that the agreements of the Administration with foreign powers should be submitted to Parliament. They would then receive that which is best for all arrangements of business, an understanding and sympathising criticism but still a criticism. The majority of the Legislature being well disposed to the Government, would not " find " against it except it had really committed some big and plain mistake. But if the Government had made such a mistake, certainly the majority of the Legislature would find against it. In a country fit for Parliamentary institutions, the partizanship of members of the Legisla- ture never comes in manifest opposition to the plain interest of the nation ; if it did, the nation being (as are all nations capable of Parliamentary institutions) con- stantly attentive to public affairs, would inflict on them the maximum Parliamentary penalty at the next election and at many future elections. It would break their career. No English majority dare vote for an exceedingly bad treaty ; it would rather desert its own leader than ensure its own ruin. And an English minority, in- heriting a long experience of Parliamentary affairs, would not be exceedingly ready to reject a treaty made with a foreign Government. The leaders of an English Opposition are very conversant with the school-boy d xliv INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION". maxim, " Two can play at that fun." They know that the next time they are in office the same sort of sharp practice may be used against them, and therefore they will not use it. So strong is this predisposition, that not- long since a subordinate member of the Opposition declared that the " front benches " of the two sides of the House that is, the leaders of the Government and the leaders of the Opposition were in constant tacit league to suppress the objections of independent members. And what he said is often quite true. There are often seeming objections which are not real objections; at least, which are, in the particular cases, outweighed by counter-considerations; and these "independent mem- bers," having no real responsibility, not being likely to be hurt themselves if they make a mistake, are sure to blurt out, and to want to act upon. But the responsible heads of the party who may have to decide similar things, or even the same things, themselves will not permit it. They refuse, out of interest as well as out of patriotism, to engage the country in a permanent foreign scrape, to secure for themselves and their party a momentary home advantage. Accordingly, a Government which negotiated a treaty would feel that its treaty would be subject certainly to a scrutiny, but still to a candid and lenient scrutiny; that it would go before judges, of whom the majority were favourable, and among whom the most influential part of the minority were in this case much INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. opposed to excessive antagonism. And this seems to be the best position in which negotiators can be placed, namely, that they should be sure to have to account to considerate and fair persons, but not to have to account to inconsiderate and unfair ones. At present the Government which negotiates a treaty can hardly be said to be accountable to any one. It is sure to be subjected to vague censure. Benjamin Franklin said, " I have never known a peace made, even the most advantageous, that was not censured as inadequate, and the makers condemned as injudicious or corrupt. ' Blessed are the peace-makers' is, I suppose, to be understood in the other world, for in this they are frequently cursed." And this is very often the view taken now in England of treaties. There being nothing practical in the Opposition nothing likely to hamper them hereafter the leaders of Opposition are nearly sure to suggest every objection. The thing is done and cannot be undone, and the most natural wish of the Opposition leaders is to prove that if they had been in office, and it therefore had been theirs to do it, they could have done it much better. On the other hand, it is quite possible that there may be no real criticism on a treaty at all ; or the treaty has been made by the Government, and as it cannot be unmade by any one, the Opposition may not think it worth while to say much about it. The Government, therefore, is never certain of any criticism ; on the contrary, it has a good Xlvi INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. chance of escaping criticism ; but if there be any criticism the Government must expect it to be bitter, sharp, and captious made as an irresponsible objector would make it, and not as a responsible statesman, who may have to deal with a difficulty if he make it, and therefore will be cautious how he says anything which may make it. This is what happens in common cases ; and in the uncommon the ninety-ninth case in a hundred in which the Opposition hoped to turn out the Government because of the alleged badness of the treaty they have made, the criticism is sure to be of the most undesirable character, and to say what is most offensive to foreign nations. All the practised acumen of anti-Government writers and speakers is sure to be engaged in proving that England has been imposed upon that, as was said in one case, " The moral and the intellectual qualities have been divided; that our negotiation had the moral, and the negotiation on the other side the intellectual," and so on. The whole pitch of party malice is then expended, because there is nothing to check the party VQ opposition. The treaty has been made, and though it may be censured, and the party which made it ousted yet the difficulty it was meant to cure is cured, and the opposing party, if it takes office, will not have that difficulty to deal with. In abstract theory these defects in our present practice would seem exceedingly great, but in practice they are INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. xlvii not so. English statesmen and English parties have really a great patriotism ; they can rarely be persuaded even by their passions or their interest to do anything contrary to the real interest of England, or anything Avhich would lower England in the eyes of foreign nations. And they would , seriously hurt themselves if they did. But still these are the real tendencies of our present practice, and these are only prevented by qualities in the nation and qualities in our statesmen, which will just as much exist if we change our practice. It certainly would be in many ways advantageous to change it. If we require that in some form the assent of Parliament shall be given to such treaties, we should have a real discussion prior to the making of such treaties. We should have the reasons for the treaty plainly stated, and also the reasons against it. At present, as we have seen, the discussion is unreal. The thing is done and cannot be altered ; and what is said often ought not to be said because it is captious, and what is not said ought as often to be said because it is material. We should have a manlier and plainer way of dealing with foreign policy, if Ministers were obliged to explain clearly their foreign contracts before they were valid, just as they have to explain their domestic proposals before they can become laws. The objections to this are, as far as I know, three, and three only. xlviii INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. First. That it would not be always desirable for Ministers to state clearly the motives which induced them to agree to foreign compacts. " Treaties," it is said, " are in one great respect different from laws, they concern not only the Government which binds, the nation so bound, but a third party too a foreign country and the feelings of that country are to be considered as well as our own. And that foreign country will, probably, in the present state of the world be a despotic one, where discussion is not practised, where it is not understood, where the expressions of different speakers are not accurately weighed, where undue offence may easily be given." This objection might be easily avoided by requiring that the discussion upon treaties in Parlia- ment like that discussion in the American Senate should be "in secret session," and that no report shoidd bo published of it. But I should, for my own part, be rather disposed to risk a public debate. Despotic nations now cannot understand England; it is to them an anomaly "chartered by Providence;" they have been time out of mind puzzled by its institutions, vexed at its statesmen, and angry at its newspapers. A little more of such perplexity and such vexation does not seem to me a great eviL And if it be meant, as it often is meant, that the whole truth as to treaties cannot be spoken out, I answer, that neither can the whole truth as to laws. All important laws affect large "vested INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. interests ; " they touch great sources of political strength ; and these great interests require to be treated as delicately, and with as nice a manipulation of language, as the feelings of any foreign country. A Parliamentary Minister is a man trained by elaborate practice not to blurt out crude things, and an English Parliament is an assembly -which particularly dislikes anything gauche or anything imprudent. They would still more dislike it if it hurt themselves and the country as well as the speaker. I am, too, disposed to deny entirely that there can be any treaty for which adequate reasons cannot be given to the English people, which the English people ought to make. A great deal of the reticence of diplomacy had, I think history shows, much better be spoken out. The worst families are those in which the members never really speak their minds to one another ; they maintain an atmosphere of unreality, and every one always lives in an atmosphere of suppressed ill-feeling. It is the same with nations. The parties concerned would almost always be better for hearing the substantial reasons which induced the negotiators to make the treaty, and the negotiators would do their work much better, for half the ambiguities in treaties are caused by the nego- tiators not liking the fact or not taking the pains to put their own meaning distinctly before their own minds. And they would be obliged to make it plain if they had to defend it and argue on it before a great assembly. I INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. Secondly, it may be objected to the change suggested that Parliament is not always sitting, and that if treaties required its assent, it might have to be sometimes sum- moned out of season, or the treaties would have to be delayed. And this is as far as it goes a just objection, but I do not imagine that it goes far. The great bulk of treaties could wait a little without harm, and in the very- few cases when urgent haste is necessary, an Autumn session of Parliament could well be justified, for the occasion must be of grave and critical importance. Thirdly, it may be said that if we required the con- sent of both Houses of Parliament to foreign treaties before they were valid we should much augment the power of the House of Lords. And this is also, I think, a just objection as far as it goes. The House of Lords, as it cannot turn out the Ministry for making treaties, has in no case a decisive weight in foreign policy, though its debates on them are often excellent ; and there is a real danger at present in giving it such weight. They are not under the same guidance as the House of Com- mons. In the House of Commons, of necessity, the Ministry has a majority, and the majority will agree to the treaties the leaders have made if they fairly can. They will not be anxious to disagree with them. But the majority of the House of Lords may always be, and has lately been generally an opposition majority, and therefore the treaty may be submitted to critics exactly INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. li pledged to opposite views. It might be like submitting the design of an architect known to hold " mediaeval prin- ciples " to a committee wedded to " classical principles." Still, upon the whole, I think the augmentation of the power of the Peers might be risked without real fear of serious harm. Our present practice, as has been ex- plained, only works because of the good sense of those by whom it is worked, and the new practice would have to rely on a similar good sense and practicality too. The House of Lords must deal with the assent to treaties as they do with the assent to laws ; they must defer to the voice of the country and the authority of the Commons even in cases where their own judgment might guide them otherwise. In very vital treaties probably, being Englishmen, they would be of the same mind as the rest of Englishmen. If in such cases they showed a reluct- ance to act as the people wished, they would have the same lesson taught them as on vital and exciting questions of domestic legislation, and the case is not so likely to happen, for on these internal and organic questions the interest and the feeling of the Peers is often presumably opposed to that of other classes they may be anxious not to relinquish the very power which other classes are anxious to acquire; but in foreign policy there is no similar antagonism of interest a peer and a non-peer have presumably in that matter the same interest and the same wishes. Ill INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. Probably, if it were considered to be desirable to give to Parliament a more direct control over questions of foreign policy than it possesses now, the better way would be not to require a formal vote to the treaty clause by clause. This would entail too much time, and would lead to unnecessary changes in minor details. It would be enough to let the treaty be laid upon the table of both Houses, say for fourteen days, and to acquire validity unless objected to by one House or other before that interval had expired. II. This is all which I think I need say on the domestic events which have changed, or suggested changes, in the English Constitution since this book was written. But there are also some foreign events which have illustrated it, and of these I should like to say a few words. Naturally, the most striking of these illustrative changes comes from France. Since 1789 France has always been trying political experiments, from which others may profit much, though as yet she herself has profited little. She is now trying one singularly illus- trative of the English Constitution. When the first edition of this book was published I had great difficulty in persuading many people that it was possible for a non-monarchical state, for the real chief of the practical Executive the Premier as we should call him to be INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. Hii nominated and to be removable by the vote of the National Assembly. The United States and its copies were the only present and familial Repuolics, and in the3e the system wao exactly opposite. The Executive was there appointed by the people as the Legislative was too. No conspicuous example of any other sort of Republic then existed. But now France has given an example M. Thiers is (with one exception) just the chef du pouvoir executif that I endeavoured more than once in this book to describe. He is appointed by and is removable by the Assembly. He comes down and speaks in it just as our Premier does ; he is responsible for managing it just as our Premier is. No one can any longer doubt the possibility of a republic in which the Executive and the Legislative authorities were united and fixed; no one can assert such union to be the incommunicable attribute of a Constitutional Monarchy. But, unfortunately, we can as yet only infer from this experiment that such a constitution is possible ; we can- not as yet say whether it will be bad or good. The circumstances are very peculiar, and that in three ways. First, the trial of a specially Parliamentary Republic, of a Republic where Parliament appoints the Minister, is made in a nation which has, to say the least of it, no peculiar aptitude for Parliamentary Government; which has possibly a peculiar inaptitude for it. In the last but one of these essays I have tried to describe one of the liv INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. mental conditions of Parliamentary Government, which I call " rationality," by which I do not mean reasoning power, but rather the power of hearing the reasons of others, of comparing them quietly with one's own reasons, and then being guided by the result. But a French Assembly is not easy to reason with. Every assembly is divided into parties and into sections of parties, and in France each party, almost every section of a party, begins not to clamour but to scream, and to scream as only Frenchmen can, as soon as it hears anything which it particularly dislikes. With an Assembly in this temper, real discussion is impossible, and Parliamentary Government is impossible too, because the Parliament can neither choose men nor measures. The French assemblies under the Restored Monarchy seem to have been quieter, probably because being elected from a limited constituency they did not contain so many sec- tions of opinion; they had fewer irritants and fewer species of irritability. But the assemblies of the '48 Republic were disorderly in the extreme. I saw the last myself, and can certify that steady discussion upon a critical point was not possible in it. There was not an audience willing to hear. The Assembly now sitting at Versailles is undoubtedly also, at times, most tumultuous, and a Parliamentary Government in which it governs must be under a peculiar difficulty, because as a sove- reign it is unstable, capricious, and unruly. INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. Iv The difficulty is the greater because there is no check, or little, from the French nation upon the Assembly. The French, as a nation, do not care for or appreciate Parliamentary Government. I have endeavoured to ex- plain how difficult it is for inexperienced mankind to take to such a government; how much more natural, that is, how much more easy to uneducated men is loyalty to a monarch. A nation which does not expect good from a Parliament, cannot check or punish a Par- liament. France expects, I fear, too little from her Parliaments ever to get what she ought. Now that the suffrage is universal, the average intellect and the average culture of the constituent bodies are excessively low; and even such mind and culture as there is has long been enslaved to authority; the French peasant cares more for standing well with his present prefet than for anything else whatever ; he is far too ignorant to check and watch his Parliament, and far too timid to think of doing either if the executive authority nearest to him did not like it. The experiment of a strictly Parliamentary Republic of a Republic where the Par- liament appoints the Executive is being tried in France at an extreme disadvantage, because in France a Par- liament is unusually likely to be bad, and unusually likely also to be free enough to show its badness. Secondly, the present polity of France is not a copy of the whole effective part of the British Constitution, Ivi INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. but only a part of it By our Constitution nominally the Queen, but really the Prime Minister, has the power of dissolving the Assembly. But M. Thiers has no such power; and therefore, under ordinary circumstances, I believe, the policy would soon become unmanageable. The result would be, as I have tried to explain, that the Assembly would be always changing its Ministry, that having no reason to fear the penalty which that change so often brings in England, they would be ready to make it once a month. Caprice is the characteristic vice of miscellaneous assemblies, and without some check their selection would be unceasingly mutable. This peculiar danger of the present Constitution of France has how- ever been prevented by its peculiar circumstances. The Assembly have not been inclined to remove M. Thiers, because in their lamentable present position they could not replace M. Thiers. He has a monopoly of the necessary reputation. It is the Empire the Empire which he always opposed that has done him this kind- ness. For twenty years no great political reputation could arise in France. The Emperor governed and no one member could show a capacity for government. M. Rouher, though of vast real ability, was in the popular jdea only the Emperor's agent; and even had it been otherwise, M. Rouher, the one great man of Imperialism, could not have been selected as a head of the Govern- ment, at a moment of the greatest reaction against the INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. Ivii Empire. Of the chiefs before the twenty years' silence, of the eminent men known to be able to handle Parlia- ments and to govern Parliaments, M Thiers was the only one still physically able to begin again to do so. The miracle is, that at seventy-four even he should still be able. As no other great chief of the Parliament regime existed, M. Thiers is not only the best choice, but the only choice. If he were taken away, it would be most difficult to make any other choice, and that difficulty keeps him where he is. At every crisis the Assembly feels that after M. Thiers "the deluge," and he lives upon that feeling. A change of the President, though legally simple, is in practice all but impossible; because all know that such a change might be a change, not only of the President, but of much more too : that very probably it might be a change of the polity that it might bring in a Monarchy or an Empire. Lastly, by a natural consequence of the position, M. Thiers does not govern as a Parliamentary Premier governs. He is not, he boasts that he is not, the head of a party. On the contrary, being the one person essential to all parties, he selects Ministers from all parties, he constructs a cabinet in which no one Minister agrees with any other in anything, and with all the members of which he himself frequently disagrees. The selection is quite in his hand. Ordinarily a Parliamentary Premier cannot choose ; he is brought in by a party ; he is maintained in Iviii INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. office by a party ; and that party requires that as they aid him, he shall aid them ; that as they give him the very best thing in the State, he shall give them the next best things. But M. Thiers is under no such restriction. He can choose as he likes, and does choose. Neither in the selection of his Cabinet nor in the management of the Chamber, is M. Thiers guided as a similar person in common circumstances would have to be guided. He is the exception of a moment ; he is not the example of a lasting condition. For these reasons, though we may use the present Constitution of France as a useful aid to our imaginations, in conceiving of a purely Parliamentary republic, of a monarchy 'minus the monarch, we must not think of it as much more. It is too singular in its nature and too peculiar in its accidents to be a guide to anything except itself. In this essay I have made many remarks on the American Constitution, in comparison with the English ; and as to the American Constitution we have had a whole world of experience since I first wrote. My great object was to contrast the office of President as an executive officer and to compare it with that of a Prime Minister ; and I devoted much space to showing that in one prin- cipal respect the English system is by far the best. The English Premier being appointed by the selection, and being removable at the pleasure, of the preponderant INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. lix Legislative Assembly, is sure to be able to rely on that assembly. If he wants legislation to aid his policy he can obtain that legislation; he can carry out that policy. But the American President has no similar security. He is elected in one way, at one time, and Congress (no matter which House) is elected in another way, at another time. The two have nothing to bind them together, and in matter of fact, they continually disagree. This was written in the time of Mr. Lincoln, when Congress, the President, and all the North were united as one man in the war against the South. There was then no patent instance of mere disunion. But between the time when the essays were first written in the " Fort- nightly," and their subsequent junction into a book, Mr. Lincoln was assassinated, and Mr. Johnson, the Vice- President, became President, and so continued for nearly four years. At such a time the characteristic evils of the Presidential system were shown most conspicuously. The President and the Assembly, so far from being (as it is essential to good government that they should be) on terms of close union, were not on terms of common courtesy. So far from being capable of a continuous and concerted co-operation they were all the while trying to thwart one another. He had one plan for the paci- fication of the South and they another ; they would have nothing to say to his plans, and he vetoed their plans as long as the Constitution permitted, and when they were, e IX INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. in spite of him, carried, he, as far as he could (and this was very much), embarrassed them in action. The quarrel in most countries would have gone beyond the law, and come to blows ; even in America, the most law- loving of countries, it went as far as possible within the law. Mr. Johnson described the most popular branch of the legislature the House of Representatives as a body " hanging on the verge of government ; " and that House impeached him criminally, in the hope that in that way they might get rid of him civilly. Nothing could be so conclusive against the American Constitution, as a Constitution, as that incident. A hostile legislature and a hostile executive were so tied together, that the legislature tried, and tried in vain, to rid itself of the executive by accusing it of illegal practices. The legis- lature was so afraid of the President's legal power that it unfairly accused him of acting beyond the law. And the blame thus cast on the American Constitution is so much praise to be given to the American political character. Few nations, perhaps scarcely any nation, could have borne such a trial so easily and so perfectly. This was the most striking instance of disunion be- tween the President and the Congress that has ever yet occurred, and which probably will ever occur. Probably for very many years the United States will have great and painful reason to remember that at the moment of all their history, when it was most important to them to INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. Ixi collect and concentrate all the strength and wisdom of their policy on the pacification of the South, that policy- was divided by a strife in the last degree unseemly and degrading. But it will be for a competent historian hereafter to trace out this accurately and in detail ; the time is yet too recent, and I cannot pretend that I know enough to do so. I cannot venture myself to draw the full lessons from these events ; I can only predict that when they are drawn, those lessons will be most import- ant and most interesting. There is, however, one series of events which have happened in America since the beginning of the civil war, and since the first publication of these essays, on which I should wish to say something in detail I mean the financial events. These lie within the scope of my pecu- liar studies, and it is comparatively easy to judge of them, since whatever may be the case with refined statistical reasoning, the great results of money matters speak to and interest all mankind. And every incident in this part of American financial history exemplifies the con- trast between a Parliamentary and a Presidential Govern- ment. The distinguishing quality of Parliamentary Govern- ment is, that in each stage of a public transaction there is a discussion; that the public assist at this discussion; that it can, through Parliament, turn out an administration which is not f)oing as it likes, and can put in an adminis- Ixii INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. tration which will do as it likes. But the characteristic of a Presidential Government is, in a multitude of cases, that there is no such discussion ; that when there is a discussion the fate of Government does not turn upon it, and, therefore, the people do not attend to it ; that upon the whole the administration itself is pretty much doing as it likes, and neglecting as it likes, subject always to the check that it must not too much offend the mass of the nation. The nation commonly does not attend, but if by gigantic blunders you make it attend, it will remember it and turn you out when its time comes ; it will show you that your power is short, and so on the instant weaken that power; it will make your present life in office unbearable and uncomfortable by the hundred modes in which a free people can, without ceasing, act upon the rulers which it elected yesterday, and will have to reject or re-elect to-morrow. In finance the most striking effect in America has, on the first view of it, certainly been good. It has enabled the Government to obtain and to keep a vast surplus of revenue over expenditure. Even before the civil war it did this from 1837 to 1857. Mr. Wells tells us that, strange as it may seem, " There was not a single year in which the unexpended balance in the National Treasury derived from various sources at the end of the year, was not in excess of the total expenditure of the pre- ceding year; while in not a few years the unexpended INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. Ixiii balance was absolutely greater than the sum of the entire expenditure of the twelve months preceding." But this history before the war is nothing to what has happened since. The following are the surpluses of revenue over expenditure since the end of the civil war : - Surplus. Tear ending June 30. 1866 ...... 5,593,000 1867 21,586,000 1868 4,242,000 1869 7,418,000 1870 18,627,000 1871 16,712,000 No one who knows anything of the working of Par- liamentary Government, will for a moment imagine that any Parliament would have allowed any executive to keep a surplus of this magnitude. In England, after the French war, the Government of that day, which had brought it to a happy end, which had the glory of Waterloo, which was in consequence exceedingly strong, which had besides elements of strength from close boroughs and Treasury influence such as certainly no Government has ever had since, and such perhaps as no Government ever had before that Government proposed to keep a moderate surplus and to apply it to the re- duction of the debt, but even this the English Parliament would not endure. The administration with all its power derived both from good and evil had to yield; the income tax was abolished, with it went the surplus, and with the Ixiv INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. surplus all chance of any considerable reduction of the debt for that time. In truth taxation is so painful that in a sensitive community which has strong organs of ex- pression and action, the maintenance of a great surplus is excessively difficult. The opposition will always say that it is unnecessary, is uncalled for, is injudicious ; the cry will be echoed in every constituency ; there will be a series of large meetings in the great cities ; even in the smaller constituencies there will mostly be smaller meet- ings ; every member of Parliament will be pressed upon by those who elect him ; upon this point there will be no distinction between town and country, the country gentle- man and the farmer disliking high taxes as much as any in the towns. To maintain a great surplus by heavy taxes to pay off debt has never yet in this country been possible, and to maintain a surplus of the American magnitude would be plainly impossible. Some part of the difference between England and America arises undoubtedly not from political causes but from economical. America is not a country sensitive to taxes ; no great country has perhaps ever been so unseii- sitive in this respect ; certainly she is far less sensitive than England. In reality America is too rich, daily industry there is too common, too skilful, and too pro- ductive, for her to care much for fiscal burdens. She is applying all the resources of science and skill and trained labour, which have been in long ages painfully INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. acquired in old countries, to develop with great speed the richest soil and the richest mines of new countries ; and the result is untold wealth. Even under a Parliamentary Government such a community could and would bear taxation much more easily than Englishmen ever would. But difference of physical character in this respect is of little moment in comparison with difference of political constitution. If America was under a Parliamentary Government, she would soon be convinced that in main- taining this great surplus and in paying this high tax- ation she would be doing herself great harm. She is not performing a great duty, but perpetrating a great in- justice. She is injuring posterity by crippling and dis- placing industry, far more than she is aiding it by re- ducing the taxes it will have to pay. In the first place, the maintenance of the present high taxation compels the retention of many taxes which are contrary to the maxims of free trade. Enormous customs duties are necessary, and it would be all but impossible to impose equal excise duties even if the Americans desired it. In consequence, besides what the Americans pay to the Government, they are paying a great deal to some of their own citizens, and so are rearing a set of industries which never ought to have existed, which are bad specu- lations at present because other industries would have paid better, and which may cause a great loss out of pocket hereafter when the debt is paid off and the Ixvi INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. fostering tax withdrawn. Then probably industry will return to its natural channel, the artificial trade will be first depressed, then discontinued, and the fixed capital employed in the trade will all be depreciated and much of it be worthless. Secondly, all taxes on trade and manufacture are injurious in various ways to them. You cannot put on a great series of such duties without cramping trade in a hundred ways and without diminish- ing their productiveness exceedingly. America is now working in heavy fetters, and it would probably be better for her to lighten those fetters even though a generation or two should have to pay rather higher taxes. Those generations would really benefit, because they would be so much richer that the slightly increased cost of govern- ment would never be perceived. At any rate, under a Parliamentary Government this doctrine would have been incessantly inculcated ; a whole party would have made it their business to preach it, would have made incessant small motions in Parliament about it, which is the way to popularise their view. And in the end I do not doubt that they would have prevailed. They would have had to teach a lesson both pleasant and true, and such lessons are soon learned. On the whole, therefore, the result of the comparison is that a Presidential Govern- ment makes it much easier than the Parliamentary to maintain a great surplus of income over expenditure, but that it does not give the same facility for examining INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. Ixvii whether it is good or not good to maintain a surplus, and, therefore, that it works blindly, maintaining surpluses when they do extreme harm just as much as when they are very beneficial. In this point the contrast of Presidential with Parlia- mentary Government is mixed; one of the defects of Parliamentary Government probably is the difficulty under it of maintaining a surplus revenue to discharge debt, and this defect Presidential Government escapes, though at the cost of being likely to maintain that sur- plus upon inexpedient occasions as well as upon expedient. But in all other respects a Parliamentary Government has in finance an unmixed advantage over the Presiden- tial in the incessant discussion. Though in one single case it produces evil as well as good, in most cases it produces good only. And three of these cases are illus- trated by recent American experience. First, as Mr. Goldwin Smith no unfavourable judge of anything American justly said some years since, the capital error made by the United States Government was the " Legal Tender Act," as it is called, by which it made inconvertible paper notes issued by the Treasury the sole circulating medium of the country. The tempta- tion to do this was very great, because it gave at once a great war fund when it was needed, and with no pain to any one. If the notes of a Government supersede the metallic currency medium of a country to the extent of Ixviii INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. $80,000,000, this is equivalent to a recent loan of $80,000,000 to the Government for all purposes within the country. Whenever the precious metals are not required, and for domestic purposes in such a case they are not required, notes will buy what the Government want, and it can buy to the extent of its issue. But, like all easy expedients out of a great difficulty, it is accompanied by the greatest evils; if it had not been so, it would have been the regular device in such cases, and the difficulty would have been no difficulty at all ; there would have been a known easy way out of it. As is well known, inconvertible paper issued by Government is sure to be issued in great quantities, as the American currency soon was ; it is sure to be depreciated as against coin ; it is sure to disturb values and to derange markets ; it is certain to defraud the lender ; it is certain to give the borrower more than he 'ought to have. In the case of America there was a further evil. Being a new country, she ought in her times of financial want to borrow of old countries ; but the old countries were frightened by the probable issue of unlimited inconvertible paper, and they would not lend a shilling. Much more than the mercantile credit of America was thus lost. The great commercial houses in England are the most natural and most effectual conveyers of intelligence from other countries to Europe. If they had been financially interested in giving in a sound report as to the progress INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. of the war, a sound report we should have had. But as the Northern States raised no loans in Lombard Street (and could raise none because of their vicious paper money), Lombard Street did not care about them, and England was very imperfectly informed of the progress of the civil struggle, and on the whole matter, which was then new and very complex, England had to judge with- out having her usual materials for judgment, and (since the guidance of the " city " on political matter is very quietly and' imperceptibly given) without knowing she had not those materials. Of course, this error might have been committed, and perhaps would have been committed under a Parlia- mentary Government. But if it had, its effects would ere long have been thoroughly searched into and effect- ually frustrated. The whole force of the greatest in- quiring machine and the greatest discussing machine which the world has ever known would have been directed to this subject. In a year or two the American public would have had it forced upon them in every form till they must have comprehended it. But under the Presidential form of Government, and owing to the inferior power of generating discussion, the information given to the American people has been imperfect in the extreme. And in consequence, after nearly ten years of painful experience, they do not now understand how much they have suffered from their inconvertible currency. INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. But the mode in which the Presidential Government of America managed its taxation during the Civil War, is even a more striking example of its defects, Mr. Wells tells us : "In the outset all direct or internal taxation was avoided, there having been apparently an apprehension on the part of Congress, that inasmuch as the people had never been accustomed to it, and as all machinery for assessment and collection was wholly wanting, its adop- tion would create discontent, and thereby interfere with a vigorous prosecution of hostilities. Congress, therefore, confined itself at first to the enactment of measures looking to an increase of revenue from the increase of indirect taxes upon imports ; and it was not until four months after the actual outbreak of hostilities that a direct tax of % 20,000,000 per annum was apportioned among the States, and an income tax of 3 per cent, on the excess of all incomes over $800 was provided for ; the first being made to take effect practically eight, and the second ten months after date of enactment. Such laws of course took effect, and became immediately operative in the loyal States only, and produced but comparatively little revenue ; and although the range of taxation was soon extended, the whole receipts from all sources by the Government for the second year of the war, from excise, income, stamp, and all other interna' INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. Ixxi taxes were less than 542,000,000; and that, too, at a time when the expenditures were in excess $60,000,000 per month, or at the rate of over $700,000,000 per annum. And as showing how novel was this whole subject of direct and internal taxation to the people, and how com pletely the government officials were lacking in all ex- perience in respect to it, the following incident may be noted. The Secretary of the Treasury, in his report for 1863, stated that, with a view of determining his re- sources, he employed a very competent person, with the aid of practical men, to estimate the probable amount of revenue to be derived from each department of internal taxation for the previous year. The estimate arrived at was $85,000,000, but the actual receipts were only $37,000,000." Now, no doubt, this might have happened under a Parliamentary Government. But, then, many members of Parliament, the entire opposition in Parliament, would have been active to unravel the matter. AH the principles of finance would have been worked and propounded. The light would have come from above, not from below it would have come from Parliament to the nation instead of from the nation to Parliament. But exactly the reverse happened in America. Mr. Wells goes on to eay : " The people of the loyal States were, however, more Ixxii INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. determined and in earnest in respect to this matter of taxation than were their rulers; and before long the popular discontent at the existing state of things was openly manifest Everywhere the opinion was expressed that taxation in all possible forms should immediately, and to the largest extent, be made effective and impera- tive ; and Congress spurred up, and rightfully relying on public sentiment to sustain their action, at last took up the matter resolutely and in earnest, and devised and inaugurated a system of internal and direct taxation, which for its universality and peculiarities has probably no parallel in anything which has heretofore been recorded in civil history, or is likely to be experienced hereafter. The one necessity of the situation was revenue, and to obtain it speedily and in large amounts through taxation the only principle recognized if it can be called a prin- ciple was akin to that recommended to the traditionary Irishman on his visit to Donnybrook Fair, ' Wherever you see a head hit it/ Wherever you find an article, a product, a trade, a profession, or a source of income, tax it 1 And so an edict went forth to this effect, and the people cheerfully submitted. Incomes under #5,000 were taxed 5 per cent., with an exemption of #600 and house rent actually paid; these exemptions being allowed on this ground, that they represented an amount sufficient at the time to enable a small family to procure INTEODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. Ixxiii the bare necessaries of life, and thus take out from the operation of the law all those who were dependent upon each day's earnings to supply each day's needs. Incomes in excess of #5,000 and not in excess of $10,000 were taxed 2| per cent, in addition ; and incomes over $10,000 5 per cent, additional, without any abeyance or exemp- tions whatever." Now this is all contrary to and worse than what would have happened under a Parliamentary Government. The delay to tax would not have occurred under it: the movement by the country to get taxation would never have been necessary under it. The excessive taxation accordingly imposed would not have been permitted under it. The last point I think I need not labour at length. The evils of a bad tax are quite sure to be pressed upon the ears of Parliament in season and out of season; the few persons who have to pay it are thoroughly certain to make themselves heard. The sort of taxation tried in America, that of taxing everything, and seeing what everything would yield, could not have been tried under a Government delicately and quickly sensitive to public opinion. I do not apologise for dwelling at length upon these points, for the subject is one of transcendent importance. The practical choice of first-rate nations is between the Presidential Government and the Parliamentary ; no State INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. can be first-rate which has not a Government by dis- cussion, and those are the only two existing species of that Government. It is between them that a nation which has to choose its Government must choose. And nothing therefore can be more important than to compare the two, and to decide upon the testimony of experience and by facts, which of them is the better. THE POPLABS, WIMBLEDON i June 20, 1872. THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. No. I. THE CABINET. " ON all great subjects," says Mr. Mill, "much remains to be said," and of none is this more true than of the English Constitution. The literature which has accumulated upon it is huge. But an observer who looks at the living reality will wonder at the contrast to the paper descrip- tion. He will see in the life much which is not in the books ; and he will not find in the rough practice many refinements of the literary theory. It was natural perhaps inevitable that such an undergrowth of irrelevant ideas should gather round the British Constitution. Language is the tradition of nations ; each generation describes what it sees, but it uses words transmitted from the past. When a great entity like the British Constitution has continued in connected outward sameness, but hidden inner change, for many ages, every generation inherits a series of inapt words of maxims once true, but of which the truth is B 2 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. ceasing or has ceased. As a man's family go on mutter- ing in his maturity incorrect phrases derived from a just observation of his early youth, so, in the full activity of an historical constitution, its subjects repeat phrases true in the time of their fathers, and iaculcated by those fathers, but now true no longer. Or, if I may say so, an ancient and ever-altering constitution is like an old man who still wears with attached fondness clothes in the fashion of his youth : what you see of him is the same ; what you do not see is wholly altered. There are two descriptions of the English Constitution which have exercised immense influence, but which are erroneous. First, it is laid down as a principle of the English polity, that in it the legislative, the executive, and the judicial powers are quite divided that each is entrusted to a separate person or set of persons that no one of these can at all interfere with the work of the other. There has been much eloquence expended in ex- plaining how the rough genius of the English people, even in the middle ages, when it was especially rude, carried into life and practice that elaborate division of functions which philosophers had suggested on paper, but which they had hardly hoped to see except on paper. Secondly, it is insisted that the peculiar excellence of the British Constitution lies in a balanced union of three powers. It is said that the monarchical element, the aristocratic element, and the democratic element, have each a share in the supreme sovereignty, and that the assent of all three is necessary to the action of that sovereignty. Kings, lords, and commons, by this theory, THE CABINET. 3 are alleged to be not only the outward form, but the inner moving essence, the vitality of the constitution. A great theory, called the theory of "Checks and Balances," pervades an immense part of political litera- ture, and much of it is collected from or supported by English experience. Monarchy, it is said, has some faults, some bad tendencies, aristocracy Bothers, democracy, again, others ; but England has shown that a government can be constructed in which these evil tendencies exactly check, balance, and destroy one another in which a good whole is constructed not simply in spite of, but by means of, the counteracting defects of the constituent parts. Accordingly, it is believed that the principal cha- racteristics of the English Constitution are inapplicable in countries where the materials for a monarchy or an aristocracy do not exist. That constitution is conceived to be the best imaginable use of the political elements which the great majority of States in modern Europe inherited from the mediaeval period. It is believed that out of these materials nothing better can be made than the English Constitution ; but it is also believed that the essential parts of the English Constitution cannot be made except from these materials. Now these elements are the accidents of a period and a region ; they belong only to one or two centuries in human history, and to a few countries. The United States could not have become monarchical, even if the Constitutional Convention had decreed it, even if the component States had ratified it. The mystic reverence, the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are imaginative sentiments 4 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. that no legislature can manufacture in any people. These semi-filial feelings in government are inherited just as the true filial feelings in common life. You might as well adopt a father as make a monarchy: the special sentiment belonging to the one is as incapable of volun- tary creation as the peculiar affection belonging to the other. If the practical part of the English Constitution could only be made out of a curious accumulation of mediaeval materials, its interest would be half historical, and its imitability very confined. No one can approach to an understanding of the English institutions, or of others, which, being the growth of many centuries, exercise a wide sway over mixed populations, unless he divide them into two classes. In such constitutions there are two parts (not indeed separ- able with microscopic accuracy, for the genius of great affairs abhors nicety of division) : first, those which excite and preserve the reverence of the population the dignified parts, if I may so call them ; and next, the efficient parts those by which it, in fact, works and rules. There are two great obj ects which every consti- tution must attain to be successful, which every old and celebrated one must have wonderfully achieved : every constitution must first gain authority, and then use authority; it must first win the loyalty and confidence of mankind, and then employ that homage in the work of government. There are indeed practical men who reject the dig- nified parts of government. They say, we want only to attain results, to do business : a constitution is a collection THE CABINET. 6 of political means for political ends, and if you admit that any part of a constitution does no business, or that a simpler machine would do equally well what it does, you admit that this part of the constitution, however dignified or awful it may be, is nevertheless in truth use- less. And other reasoners, who distrust this bare philo- sophy, have propounded subtle arguments to prove that these dignified parts of old governments are cardinal opponents of the essential apparatus, great pivots of substantial utility ; and so they manufactured fallacies which the plainer school have well exposed. But both schools are in error. The dignified parts of government are those which bring it force which attract its motive power. The efficient parts only employ that power. The comely parts of a government have need, for they are those upon which its vital strength depends. They may not do anything definite that a simpler polity would not do better ; but they are the preliminaries, the need- ful pre-requisites of all work. They raise the army, though they do not win the battle. Doubtless, if all subjects of the same government only thought of what was useful to them, and if they all thought the same thing useful, and all thought that same thing could be attained in the same way, the efficient members of a constitution would suffice, and no impressive adjuncts would be needed. But the world in which we live is organised far otherwise. The most strange fact, though the most certain in nature, is the unequal development of the human race. If we look back to the early ages of mankind, such as we THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. seem in the faint distance to see them if we call up the image of those dismal tribes in lake villages, or on wretched beaches scarcely equal to the commonest material needs, cutting down trees slowly and painfully with stone tools, hardly resisting the attacks of huge, fierce animals without culture, without leisure, without poetry, almost without thought destitute of morality, with only a sort of magic for religion; and if we compare that imagined life with the actual life of Europe now, we are overwhelmed at the wide contrast we can scarcely conceive ourselves to be of the same race as those in the far distance. There used to be a notion not so much widely asserted as deeply implanted, rather pervadingly latent than commonly apparent in political philosophy that in a little while, perhaps ten years or so, all human beings might, without extraordinary appliances, be brought to the same level. But now, when we see by the painful history of mankind at what point we began, by what slow toil, what favourable circumstances, what accumulated achievements, civilised man has become at all worthy in any degree so to call himself when we realise the tedium of history and the painfulness of results our perceptions are sharpened as to the relative steps of our long and gradual progress. We have in a great community like England crowds of people scarcely more civilised than the majority of two thousand years ago ; we have others, even more numerous, such as the best people were a thou- sand years since. The lower orders, the middle orders, are still, when tried by what is the standard of the educated " ten thousand," narrow-minded, unintelligent, incurious. THE CABINET. 7 It is useless to pile up abstract words. Those who doubt should go out into their kitchens. Let an accomplished man try what seems to him most obvious, most certain, most palpable in intellectual matters, upon the housemaid and the footman, and he will find that what he says seems unintelligible, confused, and erroneous that his audience think him mad and wild when he is speaking what is in his own sphere of thought the dullest platitude of cautious soberness. Great communities are like great mountains they have in them the primary, secondary, and tertiary strata of human progress; the characteristics of the lower regions resemble the life of old times rather than the present life of the higher regions. And a philosophy which does not ceaselessly remember, which does not continually obtrude, the palpable differences of the various parts, will be a theory radically false, because it has omitted a capital reality will be a theory essentially misleading, because it will lead men to expect what does not exist, and not to anticipate that which they will find. Every one knows these plain facts, but by no means every one has traced their political importance. When a state is constituted thus, it is not true that the lower classes will be wholly absorbed in the useful ; on the con- trary, they do not like anything so poor. No orator ever made an impression by appealing to men as to their plainest physical wants, except when he could allege that those wants were caused by some one's tyranny. But thousands have made the greatest impression by appealing to some vague dream of glory, or empire, or nationality. The ruder sort of men that is, men at one stage of 8 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. rudeness will sacrifice all they hope for, all they have, themselves, for what is called an idea for some attraction which seems to transcend reality, which aspires to elevate men by an interest higher, deeper, wider than that of ordi- nary life. But this order of men are uninterested in the plain, palpable ends of government; they do not prize them; they do not in the least comprehend how they should be attained. It is very natural, therefore, that the most useful parts of the structure of government should by no means be those which excite the most reverence. The elements which excite the most easy reverence will be the theatrical elements those which appeal to the senses, which claim to be embodiments of the greatest human ideas, which boast in some cases of far more than human origin. That which is mystic in its claims ; that which is occult in its mode of action ; that which is brilliant to the eye; that which is seen vividly for a moment, and then is seen no more; that which is hidden and unhidden ; that which is specious, and yet interesting, palpable in its seeming, and yet professing to be more than palpable in its results; this, howsoever its form may change, or however we may define it or describe it, is the sort of thing the only sort which yet comes home to the mass of men. So far from the dignified parts of a constitution being necessarily the most useful, they are likely, according to outside pre- sumption, to be the least so; for they are likely to be adjusted to the lowest orders those likely to care least and judge worst about what is useful. There is another reason which, in an old constitution THE CABINET. 9 like that of England, is hardly less important. The most intellectual of men are moved quite as much by the cir- cumstances which they are used to as by their own will. The active voluntary part of a man is very small, and if it were not economised by a sleepy kind of habit, its results would be null. We could not do every day out of our own heads all we have to do. We should accomplish nothing, for all our energies would be frittered away in minor attempts at petty improvement. One man, too, would go off from the known track in one direction, and one in another; so that when a crisis came requiring massed combination, no two men would be near enough to act together. It is the dull traditional habit of mankind that guides most men's actions, and is the steady frame in which each new artist must set the picture that he paints. And all this traditional part of human nature is, ex vi termwii, most easily impressed and acted on by that which is handed down. Other things being equal, yesterday's institutions are by far the best for to-day ; they are the most ready, the most influential, the most easy to get obeyed, the most likely to retain the reverence which they alone inherit, and which every other must win. The most imposing institutions of mankind are the oldest; and yet so changing is the world, so fluctuating are its needs, so apt to lose inward force, though retaining out- ward strength, are its best instruments, that we must not expect the oldest institutions to be now the most efficient. We must expect what is venerable to acquire influence because of its inherent dignity ; but we must not expect it to use that influence so well as new creations apt for the 10 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. modern world, instinct with its spirit, and fitting closely to its life. The brief description of the characteristic merit of the English Constitution is, that its dignified parts are very complicated and somewhat imposing, very old and rather venerable ; while its efficient part, at least when in great and critical action, is decidedly simple and rather modern. We have made, or rather stumbled on, a constitution which though full of every species of incidental defect, though of the worst workmanship in all out-of-the-way matters of any constitution in the world yet has two capital merits : it contains a simple efficient part which, on occasion, and when wanted, can work more simply and easily, and better, than any instrument of government that has yet been tried ; and it contains likewise histori- cal, complex, august, theatrical parts, which it has in- herited from a long past which take the multitude which guide by an insensible but an omnipotent influence the associations of its subjects. Its essence is strong with the strength of modern simplicity ; its exterior is august with the Gothic grandeur of a more imposing age. Its simple essence may, mutatis mutandis, be trans- planted to many very various countries, but its august outside what most men think it is is narrowly confined to nations with an analogous history and similar political materials. The efficient secret of the English Constitution may be described as the close union, the nearly complete fusion, of the executive and legislative powers. No doubt by the traditional theory, as it exists in all the books, the THE CABINET. 11 goodness of our constitution consists in the entire sepa- ration of the legislative and executive authorities, but in truth its merit consists in their singular approximation. The connecting link is the cabinet. By that new word we mean a committee of the legislative body selected to be the executive body. The legislature has many com- mittees, but this is its greatest. It chooses for this, its main committee, the men in whom it has most confidence. It does not, it is true, choose them directly; but it is nearly omnipotent in choosing them indirectly. A cen- tury ago the Crown had a real choice of ministers, though it had no longer a choice in policy. During the long reign of Sir R. Walpole he was obliged not only to manage parliament but to manage the palace. He was obliged to take care that some court intrigue did not expel him from his place. The nation then selected the English policy, but the Crown chose the English ministers They were not only in name, as now, but in fact, the Queen's servants. Remnants, important remnants, of this great prerogative still remain. The discriminating favour of William IV. made Lord Melbourne head of the Whig party when he was only one of several rivals. At the death of Lord Palmerston it is very likely that the Queen may have the opportunity of fairly choosing between two, if not three statesmen. But, as a rule, the nominal prime minister is chosen by the legislature, and the real prime minister for most purposes the leader of the House of Commons almost without exception is so. There is nearly always some one man plainly selected by the voice of the predominant party in the predominant house of the 12 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. legislature to head that party, and consequently to rule the nation. We have in England an elective first magistrate as truly as the Americans have an elective first magis- trate. The Queen is only at the head of the dignified part of the constitution. The prime minister is at the head of the efficient part. The Crown is, according to the saying, the " fountain of honour ; " but the Treasury is the spring of business. Nevertheless, our first magis- trate differs from the American. He is not elected directly by the people ; he is elected by the represen- tatives of the people. He is an example of " double election." The legislature chosen, in name, to make laws, in fact finds its principal business in making and in keeping an executive. The leading minister so selected has to choose his associates, but he only chooses among a charmed circle. The position of most men in parliament forbids their being invited to the cabinet; the position of a few men ensures their being invited. Between the com- pulsory list whom he must take, and the impossible list whom he cannot take, a prime minister's inde- pendent choice in the formation of a cabinet is not very large ; it extends rather to the division of the cabinet offices than to the choice of cabinet ministers. Parliament and the nation have pretty well settled who shall have the first places; but they have not discriminated with the same accuracy which man shall have which place. The highest patronage of a prime minister is, of course, a considerable power, though it La exercised under close and imperative restrictions THE CABINET. 13 though it is far less than it seems to be when stated in theory, or looked at from a distance. The cabinet, in a word, is a board of control chosen by the legislature, out of persons whom it trusts and knows, to rule the nation. The particular mode in which the English ministers are selected ; the fiction that they are, in any political sense, the Queen's servants ; the rule which limits the choice of the cabinet to the members of the legislature are accidents unessential to its definition historical incidents separable from its nature. Its charac- teristic is that it should be chosen by the legislature out of persons agreeable to and trusted by the legislature. Naturally these are principally its own members but they need not be exclusively so. A cabinet which in- cluded persons not members of the legislative assembly might still perform all useful duties. Indeed the peers, who constitute a large element in modern cabinets, are members, now-a-days, only of a subordinate assembly. The House of Lords still exercises several useful func- tions ; but the ruling influence the deciding faculty has passed to what, using the language of old times, we still call the lower house to an assembly which, though inferior as a dignified institution, is superior as an efficient institution. A principal advantage of the House of Lords in the present age indeed consists in its thus acting as a reservoir of cabinet ministers. Unless the composition of the House of Commons were improved, or unless the rules requiring cabinet ministers to be members of the legislature were relaxed, it would undoubtedly be difficult to find, without the Lords, a sufficient supply of chief 14 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. ministers. But the detail of the composition of a cabinet, and the precise method of its choice, are not to the pur- pose now. The first and cardinal consideration is the definition of a cabinet. We must not bewilder ourselves with the inseparable accidents until we know the neces- sary essence. A cabinet is a combining committee a hyphen which joins, a buckle which fastens, the legis- lative part of the state to the executive part of the state. In its origin it belongs to the one, in its functions it belongs to the other. The most curious point about the cabinet is that so very little is known about it. The meetings are not only secret in theory, but secret in reality. By the present practice, no official minute in all ordinary cases is kept of them. Even a private note is discouraged and disliked. The House of Commons, even in its most inquisitive and turbulent moments, would scarcely permit a note of a cabinet meeting to be read. No minister who respected the fundamental usages of political practice would attempt to read such a note. The committee which unites the law-making power to the law-executing power which, by virtue of that combination, is, while it lasts and holds together, the most powerful body in the state is a committee wholly secret. No description of it, at once graphic and authentic, has ever been given. It is said to be sometimes like a rather disorderly board of direc- tors, where many speak and few listen though no one knows.* * It is said that at the end of the cabinet which agreed to propose a fixed duty on corn, Lord Melbourne put his back to the door and said, " Now ia THE CABINET. 15 But a cabinet, though it is a committee of the legis- lative assembly, is a committee with a power which no assembly would unless for historical accidents, and after happy experience have been persuaded to entrust to any committee. It is a committee which can dissolve the assembly which appointed it ; it is a committee with a suspensive veto a committee with a power of appeal. Though appointed by one parliament, it can appeal if it chooses to the next. Theoretically, indeed, the power to dissolve parliament is entrusted to the sovereign only ; and there are vestiges of doubt whether in all cases a sovereign is bound to dissolve parliament when the cabinet asks him to do so. But neglecting such small and dubious exceptions, the cabinet which was chosen by one House of Commons has an appeal to the next House of Commons. The chief committee of the legislature has the power of dissolving the predominant part of that legislature that which at a crisis is the supreme legis- lature. The English system, therefore, is not an absorp- tion of the executive power by the legislative power ; it is a fusion of the two. Either the cabinet legislates and acts, or else it can dissolve. It is a creature, but it has the power of destroying its creators. It is an executive which can annihilate the legislature, as well as an execu- tive which is the nominee of the legislature. It was made, but it can unmake ; it was derivative in its origin, but it is destructive in its action. it to lower the price of corn or isn't it ? It is not much matter which we say, but mind, we must all say the same." This is the most graphic story of a cabinet I ever heard, but I cannot vouch for its truth. Lord Mel- bourne's is a character about which men make stories. 1(6 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. This fusion of the legislative and executive functions may, to those who have not much considered it, seem but a dry and small matter to be the latent essence and effectual secret of the English constitution ; but we can only judge of its real importance by looking at a few of its principal effects, and contrasting it very shortly with its great competitor, which seems likely, unless care be taken, to outstrip it in the progress of the world. That competitor is the Presidential system. The characteristic of it is that the President is elected from the people by one process, and the House of Representatives by another. The independence of the legislative and executive powers is the specific quality of Presidential Government, just as their fusion and combination is the precise principle of Cabinet Government. First, compare the two in quiet times. The essence of a civilised age is, that administration requires the con- tinued aid of legislation. One principal and necessary kind of legislation is taxation. The expense of civilised government is continually varying. It must vary if the government does its duty. The miscellaneous estimates of the English Government contain an inevitable medley of changing items. Education, prison discipline, art, science, civil contingencies of a hundred kinds, require more money one year and less another. The expense of defence the naval and military estimates vary still more as the danger of attack seems more or less immi- nent, as the means of retarding such danger become more or less costly. If the persons who have to do the work are net the same as those who have to make the THE CABINET. 17 laws, there will be a controversy between the two sets of persons. The tax-imposers are sure to quarrel with the tax-requirers. The executive is crippled by not getting the laws it needs, and the legislature is spoiled by having to act without responsibility: the executive becomes unfit for its name, since it cannot execute what it decides on ; the legislature is demoralised by liberty, by taking decisions of which others (and not itself) will suffer the effects. In America so much has this difficulty been felt that a semi-connection has grown up between the legislature and the executive. When the Secretary of the Treasury of the Federal Government wants a tax he consults upon it with the Chairman of the Financial Committee of Congress. He cannot go down to Congress himself and propose what he wants ; he can only write a letter and send it. But he tries to get a chairman of the Finance Committee who likes his tax; through that chairman he tries to persuade the committee to recom- mend such tax ; by that committee he tries to induce the house to adopt that tax. But such a chain of communi- cations is liable to continual interruptions ; it may suffice for a single tax on a fortunate occasion, but will scarcely pass a complicated budget we do not say in a war or a rebellion we are now comparing the cabinet system and the presidential system in quiet times but in times of financial difficulty. Two clever men never exactly agreed about a budget. We have by present practice an Indian Chancellor of the Exchequer talking English finance at Calcutta, and an English one talking Indian finance in c 18 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. England. But the figures are never the same, and the views of policy are rarely the same. One most angry controversy has amused the world, and probably others scarcely less interesting are hidden in the copious stores of our Anglo-Indian correspondence. But relations something like these must subsist be- tween the head of a finance committee in the legislature, and a finance minister in the executive.* They are sure to quarrel, and the result is sure to satisfy neither. And when the taxes do not yield as they were expected to yield, who is responsible ? Very likely the secretary of the treasury could not persuade the chairman very likely the chairman could not persuade his committee very likely the committee could not persuade the assembly. Whom, then, can you punish whom can you abolish when your taxes run short ? There is nobody save the legislature, a vast miscellaneous body difficult to punish, and the very persons to inflict the punishment. Nor is the financial part of administration the only one which requires in a civilised age the constant support and accompaniment of facilitating legislation. All ad- ministration does so. In England, on a vital occasion, the cabinet can compel legislation by the threat of resignation, and the threat of dissolution ; but neither of these can be used in a presidential state. There the legislature cannot be dissolved by the executive govern- * It is worth observing that even during the short existence of the Con- federate Government these evils distinctly showed themselves. Almost the last incident at the Richmond Congress was an angry financial correspon- dence with Jefferson Davis. THE CABINET. 19 ment ; and it does not heed a resignation, for it has not to find the successor. Accordingly, when a difference of opinion arises, the legislature is forced to fight the exe- cutive, and the executive is forced to fight the legislative; and so very likely they contend to the conclusion of their respective terms.* There is, indeed, one condition of things in which this description, though still approxi- mately true, is, nevertheless, not exactly true ; and that is, when there is nothing to fight about. Before the rebellion in America, owing to the vast distance of other states, and the favourable economical condition of the country, there were very few considerable objects of contention ; but if that government had been tried by English legislation of the last thirty years, the discordant action of the two powers, whose constant co-operation is essential to the best government, would have shown itself much more distinctly. Nor is this the worst. Cabinet government educates the nation; the presidential does not educate it, and may corrupt it. It has been said that England invented the phrase, "Her Majesty's Opposition; " that it was the first government which made a criticism of administra- tion as much a part of the polity as administration itself. This critical opposition is the consequence of cabinet government. The great scene of debate, the great engine of popular instruction and political controversy, is the legislative assembly. A speech there by an eminent * I leave this passage to stand as it was written, just after the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, and when every one said Mr. Johnson would be very hostile to the South. 20 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. statesman, a party movement by a great political com- bination, are the best means yet known for arousing, enlivening, and teaching a people. The cabinet system ensures such debates, for it makes them the means by which statesmen advertise themselves for future and con- firm themselves in present governments. It brings for- ward men eager to speak, and gives them occasions to speak. The deciding catastrophes of cabinet govern- ments are critical divisions preceded by fine discussions. Everything which is worth saying, everything which ought to be said, most certainly will be said. Conscientious men think they ought to persuade others ; selfish men think they would like to obtrude themselves. The nation is forced to hear two sides all the sides, perhaps, of that which most concerns it. And it likes to hear it is eager to know. Human nature despises long arguments which come to nothing heavy speeches which precede no motion abstract disquisitions which leave visible things where they were. But all men heed great results, and a change of government is a great result. It has a hun- dred ramifications; it runs through society; it gives hope to many, and it takes away hope from many. It is one of those marked events which, by its magnitude and its melodrama, impress men even too much. And debates which have this catastrophe at the end of them or may so have it are sure to be listened to, and sure to sink deep into the national mind. Travellers even in the Northern States of America, the greatest and best of presidential countries, have noticed that the nation was " not specially addicted to THE CABINET. 21 politics ; " that they have not a public opinion finished and chastened as that of the English has been finished and chastened. A great many hasty writers have charged this defect on the " Yankee race," on the Anglo-American character ; but English people, if they had no motive to attend to politics, certainly would not attend to politics. At present there is business in their attention. They assist at the determining crisis ; they assist or help it. Whether the government will go out or remain is deter- mined by the debate, and by the division in parliament. And the opinion out of doors, the secret pervading disposition of society, has a great influence on that division. The nation feels that its judgment is im- portant, and it strives to judge. It succeeds in deciding because the debates and the discussions give it the facts and the arguments. But under a presidential govern- ment, a nation has, except at the electing moment, no influence ; it has not the ballot-box before it ; its virtue is gone, and it must wait till its instant of despotism again returns. It is not incited to form an opinion like a nation under a cabinet government; nor is it in- structed like such a nation. There are doubtless debates in the legislature, but they are prologues without a play. There is nothing of a catastrophe about them ; you can- not turn out the government. The prize of power is not in the gift of the legislature, and no one cares for the egislature. The executive, the great centre of power and place, sticks irremovable ; you cannot change it in any event. The teaching apparatus which has educated our public mind, which prepares our resolutions, which 22 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. shapes our opinions, does not exist. No presidential country needs to form daily, delicate opinions, or is helped in forming them. It might be thought that the discussions in the press would supply the deficiencies in the constitution ; that by a reading people especially, the conduct of their govern- ment would be as carefully watched, that their opinions about it would be as consistent, as accurate, as well con- sidered, under a presidential as under a cabinet polity. But the same difficulty oppresses the press which op- presses the legislature. It can do nothing. It cannot change the administration ; the executive was elected for such and such years, and for such and such years it must last. People wonder that so literary a people as the Americans a people who read more than any people who ever lived, who read so many newspapers should have such bad newspapers. The papers are not so good as the English, because they have not the same motive to be good as the English papers. At a political "crisis," as we say that is, when the fate of an ad- ministration is unfixed, when it depends on a few votes yet unsettled, upon a wavering and veering opinion effective articles in great journals become of essential moment. The Times has made many ministries. When, as of late, there has been a long continuance of divided parliaments, of governments which were without " brute voting power," and which depended on intellectual strength, the support of the most influential organ of English opinion has been of critical moment. If a Washington newspaper could have turned out Mr. THE CABINET. 23 Lincoln, there would have been good writing and fine argument in the Washington newspapers. But the Washington newspapers can no more remove a president during his term of place than the Times can remove a lord mayor during his year of office. Nobody cares for a debate in Congress which comes to nothing," and no one reads long articles which have no influence on events. The Americans glance at the heads of news, and through the paper. They do not enter upon a discussion. They do not think of entering upon a discussion which would be useless. After saying that the division of the legislature and the executive in presidential governments weakens the legislative power, it may seem a contradiction to say that it also weakens the executive power. But it is not a contradiction. The division weakens the whole aggre- gate force of government the entire imperial power; and therefore it weakens both its halves. The executive is weakened in a very plain way. In England a strong cabinet can obtain the concurrence of the legislature in all acts which facilitate its administration ; it is itself, so to say, the legislature. But a president may be hampered by the parliament, and is likely to be hampered. The natural tendency of the members of every legislature is to make themselves conspicuous. They wish to gratify an ambition laudable or blamable ; they wish to promote the measures they think best for the public welfare ; they wish to make their will felt in great affairs. All these mixed motives urge them to oppose the executive. They are embodying the purposes of others if they aid; they 24 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION". are advancing their own opinions if they defeat : they are first if they vanquish ; they are auxiliaries if they sup- port. The weakness of the American executive used to be the great theme of all critics before the Confederate rebellion. Congress and committees of Congress of course impeded the executive when there was no coercive public sentiment to check and rule them. But the presidential system not only gives the exe- cutive power an antagonist in the legislative power, and so makes it weaker ; it also enfeebles it by impairing its intrinsic quality. "A cabinet is elected by a legislature ; and when that legislature is composed of fit persons, that mode of electing the executive is the very best. It is a case of secondary election, under the only conditions in which secondary election is preferable to primary. Gene- rally speaking, in an electioneering country (I mean in a country full of political life, and used to the manipulation of popular institutions), the election of candidates to elect candidates is a farce. The Electoral College of America is so. It was intended that the deputies when assembled should exercise a real discretion, and by independent choice select the president. But the primary electors take too much interest. They only elect a deputy to vote for Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Breckenridge, and the deputy only takes a ticket, and drops that ticket in an urn. He never chooses or thinks of choosing. He is but a mes- senger a transmitter; the real decision is in those who choose him who chose him because they knew what he would do. It is true that the British House of Commons is sub- THE CABINET. 25 ject to the same influences. Members are mostly, per- haps, elected because they will vote for a particular ministry, rather than for purely legislative reasons. But and here is the capital distinction the functions of the House of Commons are important and continuous. It does not, like the Electoral College in the United States, separate when it has elected its ruler ; it watches, legislates, seats and unseats ministries, from day to day. Accordingly it is a real electoral body. The parliament of 1857, which, more than any other parliament of late years, was a parliament elected to support a particular premier which was chosen, as Americans might say, upon the "Palmerston ticket" before it had been in existence two years, dethroned Lord Palmerston. Though selected in the interest of a particular ministry, it in fact destroyed that ministry. A good parliament, too, is a capital choosing body. If it is fit to make laws for a country, its majority ought to represent the general average intelligence of that country; its various members ought to represent the various special interests, special opinions, special pre- judices, to be found in that community. There ought to be an advocate for every particular sect, and a vast neutral body of no sect homogeneous and judicial, like the nation itself. Such a body, when possible, is the best selecter of executives that can be imagined. It is full of political activity; it is close to political life; it feels the responsibility of affairs which are brought as it were to its threshold ; it has as much intelligence as the society in question chances to contain. It is, what 26 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. Washington and Hamilton strove to create, an electoral college of the picked men of the nation. The best mode of appreciating its advantages is to look at the alternative. The competing constituency is the nation itself, and this is, according to theory and ex- perience, in all but the rarest cases, a bad constituency. Mr. Lincoln, at his second election, being elected when all the Federal states had set their united hearts on one single object, was voluntarily re-elected by an actually choosing nation. He embodied the object in which every one was absorbed. But this is almost the only presidential election of which so much can be said. In almost all cases the President is chosen by a machinery of caucuses and combinations too complicated to be perfectly known, and too familiar to require de- scription. He is not the choice of the nation, he is the choice of the wire-pullers. A very large constituency in quiet times is the necessary, almost the legitimate, subject of electioneering management: a man cannot know that he does not throw his vote away except he votes as part of some great organisation ; and if he votes as a part, he abdicates his electoral function in favour of the managers of that association. The nation, even if it chose for itself, would, in some degree, be an unskilled body ; but when it does not choose for itself, but only as latent agitators wish, it is like a large, lazy man, with a small vicious mind, it moves slowly and heavily, but it moves at the bidding of a bad intention ; it " means little, but it means that little ill." And, as the nation is less able to choose than a par- THE CABINET. 27 liament, so it has worse people to choose out of. The American legislators of the last century have been much blamed for not permitting the ministers of the President to be members of the assembly ; but, with reference to the specific end which they had in view, they saw clearly and decided wisely. They wished to keep "the legis- lative branch absolutely distinct from the executive branch ; " they believed such a separation to be essential to a good constitution ; they believed such a separation to exist in the English, which the wisest of them thought the best constitution. And, to the effectual maintenance of such a separation, the exclusion of the President's ministers from the legislature is essential. If they are not excluded they become the executive, they eclipse the President himself. A legislative chamber is greedy and covetous; it acquires as much, it concedes as little as possible. The passions of its members are its rulers ; the law-making faculty, the most comprehensive of the im- perial faculties, is its instrument ; it will take the admin- istration if it can take it. Tried by their own aims, the founders of the United States were wise in excluding the ministers from Congress. But though this exclusion is essential to the pre- sidential system of government, it is not for that reason a small eviL It causes the degradation of public life. Unless a member of the legislature be sure of something more than speech, unless he is incited by the hope of action, and chastened by the chance of responsibility, a first-rate man will not care to take the place, and will not do much if he does take it. To belong to a debating 28 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. society adhering to an executive (and this is no inapt description of a congress under a presidential constitu- tion) is not an object to stir a noble ambition, and is a position to encourage idleness. The members of a parlia- ment excluded from office can never be comparable, much less equal, to those of a parliament, not excluded from office. The presidential government, by its nature, divides political life into two halves, an executive half and a legislative half; and, by so dividing it, makes neither half worth a man's having worth his making it a continuous career worthy to absorb, as cabinet govern- ment absorbs, his whole soul. The statesmen from whom a nation chooses under a presidential system are much inferior to those from whom it chooses under a cabinet system, while the selecting apparatus is also far less discerning. All these differences are more important at critical periods, because government itself is more important. A formed public opinion, a respectable, able, and disciplined legislature, a well-chosen executive, a parliament and an administration not thwarting each other, but co-operating with each other, are of greater consequence when great affairs are in progress than when small affairs are in pro- gress when there is much to do than when there is little to do. But in addition to this, a parliamentary or cabinet constitution possesses an additional and special advantage in very dangerous times. It has what we may call a re- serve of power fit for and needed by extreme exigencies. The principle of popular government is that the supreme power, the determining efficacy in matters political, resides THE CABINET. 29 in the people not necessarily or commonly in the whole people, in the numerical majority, but in a chosen people, a picked and selected people. It is so in England ; it is so in all free countries. Under a cabinet constitution at a sudden emergency this people can choose a ruler for the occasion. It is quite possible and even likely that he would not be ruler before the occasion. The great quali- ties, the imperious will, the rapid energy, the eager nature fit for a great crisis are not required are impediments in common times. A Lord Liverpool is better in every- day politics than a Chatham a Louis Philippe far better than a Napoleon. By the structure of the world we often want, at the sudden occurrence of a grave tempest, to change the helmsman to replace the pilot of the calm by the pilot of the storm. In England we have had so few catastrophes since our constitution attained maturity, that we hardly appreciate this latent excellence. We have not needed a Cavour to rule a revolution a representative man above all men fit for a great occasion, and by a natural legal mode brought in to rule. But even in England, at what was the nearest to a great sudden crisis which we have had of late years at the Crimean difficulty we used this inherent power. We abolished the Aberdeen cabinet, the ablest we have had, perhaps, since the Reform Act a cabinet not only adapted, but eminently adapted, for every sort of difficulty save the one it had to meet which abounded in pacific discretion, and was wanting only in the " daemonic element ; " we chose a statesman, who had the sort of merit then wanted, who, when he feels the steady power of England behind SO THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. him, will advance without reluctance, and will strike with- out restraint. As was said at the time, " We turned out the Quaker, and put in the pugilist." But under a presidential government you can do nothing of the kind. The American government calls itself a government of the supreme people; but at a quick crisis, the time when a sovereign power is most needed, you cannot find the supreme people. You have got a Congress elected for one fixed period, going out perhaps by fixed instalments, which cannot be accelerated or retarded you have a President chosen for a fixed period, and immovable during that period: all the ar- rangements are for stated times. There is no elastic element, everything is rigid, specified, dated. Come what may, you can quicken nothing, and can retard nothing. You have bespoken your government in advance, and whether it suits you or not, whether it works well or works ill, whether it is what you want or not, by law you must keep it. In a country of complex foreign relations it would mostly happen that the first and most critical year of every war would be managed by a peace premier, and the first and most critical years of peace by a war premier. In each case the period of transition would be irrevocably governed by a man selected not for what he was to introduce, but what he was to change for the policy he was to abandon, not for the policy he was to administer. The whole history of the American civil war a history which has thrown an intense light on the work- ing of a presidential government at the time when THE CABINET. 31 government is most important is but a vast continuous commentary on these reflections. It would, indeed, be absurd to press against presidential government as such the singular defect by which Vice-President Johnson has become President by which a man elected to a sinecure is fixed in what is for the moment the most important administrative part in the political world. This defect, though most characteristic of the expectations* of the framers of the constitution and of its working, is but an accident of this particular case of presidential govern- ment, and no necessary ingredient in that government itself. But the first election of Mr. Lincoln is liable to no such objection. It was a characteristic instance of the natural working of such a government upon a great occasion. And what was that working? It may be summed up it was government by an unknown quantity. Hardly any one in America had any living idea what Mr. Lincoln was like, or any definite notion what he would do. The leading statesmen under the system of cabinet government are not only household words, but household ideas. A conception, not, perhaps, in all respects a true but a most vivid conception of what Mr. Gladstone is like, or what Lord Palmerston is like, runs through society. We have simply no notion what it would be to be left with the visible sovereignty in the hands of an unknown man. The notion of employing a man of unknown smallness at a crisis of unknown great- * The framers of the constitution expected that the vice-president would be elected by the Electoral College as the second wisest man in the country. The vice-presidentship being a sinecure, a second-rate man agreeable to the wire-pullers is always smuggled in. The chance of sue- cession to the presidentship is too distant to be thought of. 32 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. ness is to our minds simply ludicrous. Mr. Lincoln, it is true, happened to be a man, if not of eminent ability, yet of eminent justness. There was an inner depth of Puritan nature which came out under suffering, and was very attrac- tive. But success in a lottery is no argument for lotteries. What were the chances against a person of Lincoln's ante- cedents, elected as he was, proving to be what he was ? Such an incident is, however, natural to a presidential government. The President is elected by processes which forbid the election of known men, except at peculiar conjunctures, and in moments when public opinion is excited and despotic ; and consequently if a crisis comes upon us soon after he is elected, inevitably we have government by an unknown quantity the superin- tendence of that crisis by what our great satirist would have called " Statesman X." Even in quiet times, government by a president is, for the several various reasons which have been stated, inferior to government by a cabinet ; but the difficulty of quiet times is nothing as compared with the difficulty of unquiet times. The comparative deficiencies of the regular, common operation of a presidential government are far less than the com- parative deficiencies in time of sudden trouble the want of elasticity, the impossibility of a dictatorship, the total absence of a revolutionary reserve. This contrast explains why the characteristic quality of cabinet governments the fusion of the executive power with the legislative power is of such cardinal importance. I shall proceed to show under what form and with what adjuncts it exists in England. 33 No. IL THE MONARCHY. THE use of the Queen, in a dignified capacity, is incal- culable. Without her in England, the present English Government would fail and pass away. Most people when they read that the Queen walked on the slopes at Windsor that the Prince of Wales went to the Derby have imagined that too much thought and prominence were given to little things. But they have been in error ; and it is nice to trace how the actions of a retired widow and an unemployed youth become of such importance. The best reason why Monarchy is a strong govern- ment is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other. It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations. The nature of a constitution, the action of an assembly, the play of parties, the unseen formation of a guiding opinion, are complex facts, difficult to know and easy to mistake. But the action of a single will, the fiat of a single mind, are easy ideas : anybody can make them out, and no one can ever forget them. When D 34 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. you put before the mass of mankind the question, " "Will you be governed by a king, or will you be governed by a constitution ? " the inquiry comes out thus " Will you be governed in a way you understand, or will you be governed in a way you do not understand ? " The issue was put to the French people ; they were asked, " Will you be governed by Louis Napoleon, or will you be governed by an assembly?" The French people said, " We will be governed by the one man we can imagine, and not by the many people we cannot imagine." The best mode of comprehending the nature of the two governments, is to look at a country in which the two have within a comparatively short space of years succeeded each other. "The political condition," says Mr. Grote, "which Grecian legend everywhere presents to us, is in its prin- cipal features strikingly different from that which had become universally prevalent among the Greeks in the time of the Peloponnesian war. Historical oligarchy, as well as democracy, agreed in requiring a certain established system of government, comprising the three elements of specialised functions, temporary functionaries, and ultimate responsibility (under some forms or other) to the mass of qualified citizens either a Senate or an Ecclesia, or both. There were, of course, many and capital distinctions between one government and another, in respect to the qualification of the citizen, the attributes and efficiency of the general assembly, the admissibility to power, &c. ; and men might often be dissatisfied with the way in which these questions were determined in their THE MONAECHY. 35 own city. But in the mind of every man, some deter- mining rule or system something like what in modern times is called a constitution was indispensable to any government entitled to be called legitimate, or capable of creating in the mind of a Greek a feeling of moral obli- gation to obey it. The functionaries who exercise autho- rity under it might be more or less competent or popular ; but his personal feelings towards them were commonly lost in his attachment or aversion to the general system. If any energetic man could by audacity or craft break down the constitution, and render himself permanent ruler according to his own will and pleasure, even though he might govern well, he could never inspire the people with any sentiment of duty towards him : his sceptre was illegitimate from the beginning, and even the taking of his life, far from being interdicted by that moral feeling which condemned the shedding of blood in other, cases, was considered meritorious : he could not even be mentioned in the language except by a name (rvpawog despot) which branded him as an object of mingled fear and dislike. " If we carry our eyes back from historical to legen- dary Greece, we find a picture the reverse of what has been here sketched. We discern a government in which there is little or no scheme or system, still less any idea of responsibility to the governed, but in which the main- spring of obedience on the part of the people consists in their personal feeling and reverence towards the chief. We remark, first and foremost, the King ; next, a limited number of subordinate kings or chiefs ; afterwards, the 36 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. mass of armed freemen, husbandmen, artisans, freebooters, &c. ; lowest of all, the free labourers for hire and the bought slaves. The King is not distinguished by any broad, or impassable boundary from the other chiefs, to each of whom the title Basileus is applicable as well as to himself: his supremacy has been inherited from his ancestors, and passes by inheritance, as a general rule, to his eldest son, having been conferred upon the family as a privilege by the favour of Zeus. In war, he is the leader, foremost in personal prowess, and directing all military movements ; in peace, he is the general protector of the injured and oppressed ; he offers up moreover those public prayers and sacrifices which are intended to obtain for the whole people the favour of the gods. An ample domain is assigned to him as an appurtenance of his lofty position, and the produce of his fields and his cattle is consecrated in part to an abundant, though rude hospi- tality. Moreover he receives frequent presents, to avert his enmity, to conciliate his favour, or to buy off his exactions ; and when plunder is taken from the enemy, a large previous share, comprising probably the most alluring female captive, is reserved for him apart from the general distribution. " Such is the position of the King in the heroic times of Greece the only person (if we except the herald, and priests, each both special and subordinate) who is then presented to us as clothed with any individual authority the person by whom all the executive functions, then few in number, which the society re- quires, are either performed or directed. His personal THE MONARCHY. 37 ascendancy derived from divine countenance bestowed both upon himself individually and upon his race, and probably from accredited divine descent is the salient feature in the picture : the people hearken to his voice, embrace his propositions, and obey his orders : not merely resistance, but even criticism upon his acts, is generally exhibited in an odious point of view, and is indeed never heard of except from some one or more of the subordinate princes." The characteristic of the English Monarchy is that it retains the feelings by which the heroic kings governed their rude age, and has added the feelings by which the constitutions of later Greece ruled in more refined ages We are a more mixed people than the Athenians, or pro- bably than any political Greeks. We have progressed more unequally. The slaves in ancient times were a separate order ; not ruled by the same laws, or thoughts, as other men. It was not necessary to think of them in making a constitution : it was not necessary to improve them in order to make a constitution possible. The Greek legislator had not to combine in his polity men like the labourers of Somersetshire, and men like Mr. Grote. He had not to deal with a community in which primitive barbarism lay as a recognised basis to acquired civilisation. We have. We have no slaves to keep down by special terrors and independent legislation. But we have whole classes unable to comprehend the idea of a constitution unable to feel the least attachment to impersonal laws. Most do indeed vaguely know that there are some other institutions besides the Queen, and 38 THE ENGLISH CONSTITt/TION. some rules by which she governs. But a vast number like their minds to dwell more upon her than upon anything else, and therefore she is inestimable. A re- public has only difficult ideas in government ; a Consti- tutional Monarchy has an easy idea too; it has a comprehensible element for the vacant many, as well as complex laws and notions for the inquiring few. A family on the throne is an interesting idea also. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life. No feeling could seem more childish than the enthusiasm of the English at the marriage of the Prince of Wales. They treated as a great political event, what, looked at as a matter of pure business, was very small indeed. But no feeling could be more like common human nature as it is, and as it is likely to be. The women one half the human race at least care fifty times more for a marriage than a ministry. All but a few cynics like to see a pretty novel touching for a moment the dry scenes of the grave world. A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind. We smile at the Court Circular; but remember how many people read the Court Circular ! Its use is not in what it says, but in those to whom it speaks. They say that the Americans were more pleased at the Queen's letter to Mrs. Lincoln, than at any act of the English Government. It was a spontaneous act of intelligible feeling in the midst of confused and tiresome business. Just so a royal family sweetens politics by the seasonable addition of nice and pretty events. It introduces irrelevant facts into the THE MONARCHY. 39 business of government, but they are facts which speak to "men's bosoms" and employ their thoughts. To state the matter shortly, Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. A Republic is a government in which that attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting actions. Ac- cordingly, so long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to the understanding. Secondly. The English Monarchy strengthens our government with the strength of religion. It is not easy to say why it should be so. Every instructed theologian would say that it was the duty of a person born under a Republic as much to obey that Republic as it is the duty of one born under a Monarchy to obey the monarch. But the mass of the English people do not think so; they agree with the oath of allegiance ; they say it is their duty to obey the "Queen," and they have but hazy notions as to obeying laws without a queen. In former times, when our constitution was incomplete, this notion of local holiness in one part was mischievous. All parts were struggling, and it was necessary each should have its full growth. But superstition said one should grow where it would, and no other part should grow without its leave. The whole cavalier party said it was their duty to obey the King, whatever the king did. There was to be " passive obedience " to him, and there was no religious obedience due to any one else. He was the 40 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. " Lord's anointed," and no one else had been anointed at all. The parliament, the laws, the press were human institutions ; but the Monarchy was a divine institution. An undue advantage was given to a part of the con- stitution, and therefore the progress of the whole was stayed. After the Revolution this mischievous sentiment was much weaker. The change of the line of sovereigns was at first conclusive. If there was a mystic right in any one, that right was plainly in James II. ; if it was an English duty to obey any one whatever he did, he was the person to be so obeyed: if there was an inherent inherited claim in any king, it was in the Stuart king tc whom the crown had come by descent, and not in the Revolution king to whom it had come by vote of Parlia- ment. All through the reign of William III. there was (in common speech) one king whom man had made, and another king whom God had made. The king who ruled had no consecrated loyalty to build upon ; although he ruled in fact, according to sacred theory there was a king in France who ought to rule. But it was very hard for the English people, with their plain sense and slow imagination, to keep up a strong sentiment of veneration for a foreign adventurer. He lived under the protection of a French king ; what he did was commonly stupid, and what he left undone was very often wise. As soon as Queen Anne began to reign there was a change of feeling ; the old sacred sentiment began to cohere about her. There were indeed difficulties which would have baffled most people ; but an Englishman whose heart is THE MONARCHY. 41 in a matter is not easily baffled. Queen Anne had a brother living and a father living, and by every rule of descent, their right was better than hers. But many people evaded both claims. They said James II. had " run away," and so abdicated, though he only ran away because he was in duresse and was frightened, and though he claimed the allegiance of his subjects day by day. The Pretender, it was said, was not legitimate, though the birth was proved by evidence which any Court of Justice would have accepted. The English people were "out of" a sacred monarch, and so they tried very hard to make a new one. Events, however, were too strong for them. They were ready and eager to take Queen Anne as the stock of a new dynasty ; they were ready to ignore the claims of her father and the claims of her brother, but they could not ignore the fact that at the critical period she had no children. She had once had thirteen, but they all died in her lifetime, and it was necessary either to revert to the Stuarts or to make a new king by Act of Parliament. According to the Act of Settlement passed by the Whigs, the crown was settled on the descendants of the " Princess Sophia " of Hanover, a younger daughter of a daughter of James I. There were before her James II., his son, the descendants of a daughter of Charles I., and elder children of her own mother. But the Whigs passed these over because they were Catholics, and selected the Princess Sophia, who, if she was anything, was a Protes- tant. Certainly this selection was statesmanlike, but it could not be very popular. It was quite impossible to say 42 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. that it was the duty of the English people to obey the House of Hanover upon any principles which do not concede the right of the people to choose their rulers, and which do not degrade monarchy from its solitary pinnacle of majestic reverence, and make it one only among many expedient institutions. If a king is a useful public func- tionary who may be changed, and in whose place you may make another, you cannot regard him with mystic awe and wonder : and if you are bound to worship him, of course you cannot change him. Accordingly, during the whole reigns of George I. and George II. the sentiment of religious loyalty altogether ceased to support the Crown. The prerogative of the king had no strong party to support it ; the Tories, who naturally would support it, disliked the actual king; and the Whigs, according to their creed, disliked the king's office. Until the accession of George III. the most vigorous opponents of the Crown were the country gentlemen, its natural friends, and the representatives of quite rural districts, where loyalty is mostly to be found, if anywhere. But after the accession of George III. the common feeling came back to the same point as in Queen Anne's time. The English were ready to take the new young prince as the beginning of a sacred line of sovereigns, just as they had been willing to take an old lady, who was the second cousin of his great-great- grandmother. So it is now. If you ask the immense majority of the Queen's subjects by what right she rules, they would never tell you that she rules by Parliamentary right, by virtue of 6 Anne, c. 7. They will say she rules by " God's Grace ; " they believe that they have a mystic THE MONARCHY. 43 obligation to obey her. When her family came to the Crown it was a sort of treason to maintain the inalien- able right of lineal sovereignty, for it was equivalent to saying that the claim of another family was better than hers : but now, in the strange course of human events, that very sentiment has become her surest and best support. But it would be a great mistake to believe that at the accession of George III. the instinctive sentiment of hereditary loyalty at once became as useful as now. It began to be powerful, but it hardly began to be useful There was so much harm done by it as well as so much good, that it is quite capable of being argued whether on the whole it was beneficial or hurtful. Throughout the greater part of his life George III. was a kind of " conse- crated obstruction." Whatever he did had a sanctity different from what any one else did, and it perversely happened that he was commonly wrong. He had as good intentions as any one need have, and he attended to the business of his country, as a clerk with his bread to get attends to the business of his office. But his mind was small, his education limited, and he lived in a changing time. Accordingly he was always resisting what ought to be, and prolonging what ought not to be. He was the sinister but sacred assailant of half his ministries ; and when the French revolution excited the horror of the world, and proved democracy to be " impious," the piety of England concentrated upon him, and gave him tenfold strength. The monarchy by its religious sanction now confirms all our political order; in George IIL's time it 44 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. confirmed little except itself. It gives now a vast strength to the entire constitution, by enlisting on its behalf the credulous obedience of enormous masses ; then it lived aloof, absorbed all the holiness into itself, and turned over all the rest of the polity to the coarse justification of bare expediency. A principal reason why the monarchy so well conse- crates our whole state is to be sought in the peculiarity many Americans and many utilitarians smile at. They laugh at this " extra," as the Yankee called it, at the solitary transcendent element. They quote Napoleon's saying, " that he did not wish to be fatted in idleness," when he refused to be grand elector in Sieyes' constitu- tion, which was an office copied, and M. Thiers says, well copied, from constitutional monarchy. But such objec- tions are wholly wrong. No doubt it was absurd enough in the Abbe Sieyes to propose that a new institution, inheriting no reverence, and made holy by no religion, should be created to fill the sort of post occupied by a constitutional king in nations of monarchical history. Such an institution, far from being so august as to spread reverence around it, is too novel and artificial to get reverence for itself; if, too, the absurdity could anyhow be augmented, it was so by offering an office of inactive uselessness and pretended sanctity to Napoleon, the most active man in France, with the greatest genius for busi- ness, only not sacred, and exclusively fit for action. But the blunder of Sieyes brings the excellence of real monarchy to the best light. When a monarch can bless, it is best that he should not be touched. It should be THE MONARCHY. 45 evident that he does no wrong. He should not be brought too closely to real measurement. He should be aloof and solitary. As the functions of English royalty are for the most part latent, it fulfils this condition. It seems to order, but it never seems to struggle. It is commonly hidden like a mystery, and sometimes paraded like a pageant, but in neither case is it contentious. The nation is divided into parties, but the crown is of no party. Its apparent separation from business is that which removes it both from enmities and from desecra- tion, which preserves its mystery, which enables it to combine the affection of conflicting parties to be a visible symbol of unity to those still so imperfectly educated as to need a symbol Thirdly. The Queen is the head of our society. If she did not exist the Prime Minister would be the first person in the country. He and his wife would have to receive foreign ministers, and occasionally foreign princes, to give the first parties in the country ; he and she would be at the head of the pageant of life ; they would repre- sent England in the eyes of foreign nations ; they would represent the Government of England in the eyes of the English. It is very easy to imagine a world in which this change would not be a great evil. In a country where people did not care for the outward show of life, where the genius of the people was untheatrical, and they exclu- sively regarded the substance of things, this matter would be trifling. Whether Lord and Lady Derby received the foreign ministers, or Lord and Lady Palmerston, would 46 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. be a matter of indifference; whether they gave the nicest parties would be important only to the persons at those parties. A nation of unimpressible philosophers would not care at all how the externals of life were managed. Who is the showman is not material unless you care about the show. But of all nations in the world the English are per- haps the least a nation of pure philosophers. It would be a very serious matter to us to change every four or five years the visible head of our world. We are not now remarkable for the highest sort of ambition ; but we are remarkable for having a great deal of the lower sort of ambition and envy. The House of Commons is thronged ! with people who get there merely for " social purposes," as the phrase goes ; that is, that they and their families may go to parties else impossible. Members of Parlia- ment are envied by thousands merely for this frivolous glory, as a thinker calls it. If the highest post in con- spicuous life were thrown open to public competition, this low sort of ambition and envy would be fearfully in- creased. Politics would offer a prize too dazzling for mankind ; clever base people would strive for it, and stupid base people would envy it. Even now a dangerous distinction is given by what is exclusively called public life. The newspapers describe daily and incessantly a certain conspicuous existence; they comment on its characters, recount its details, investigate its motives, anticipate its course. They give a precedent and a dignity to that world which they do not give to any other. The literary world, the scientific world, the philo- THE MONARCHY. 47 sophic world, not only are not comparable in dignity to the political world, but in comparison are hardly worlds at all. The newspaper makes no mention of them, and could not mention them. As are the papers, so are the readers; they, by irresistible sequence and association, believe that those people who constantly figure in the papers are cleverer, abler, or at any rate, somehow higher, than other people. " I wrote books," we heard of a man saying, " for twenty years, and I was nobody ; I got into Parliament, and before I had taken my seat I had become somebody." English politicians are the men who fill the thoughts of the English public : they are the actors on the scene, and it is hard for the admiring spectators not to believe that the admired actor is greater than them- selves. In this present age and country it would be very dangerous to give the slightest addition to a force already perilously great. If the highest social rank was to be scrambled for in the House of Commons, the number of social adventurers there would be incalculably more numerous, and indefinitely more eager. A very peculiar combination of causes has made this characteristic one of the most prominent in English society. The middle ages left all Europe with a social system headed by Courts. The government was made the head of all society, all intercourse, and all life ; every- thing paid allegiance to the sovereign, and everything ranged itself round the sovereign what was next to be greatest, and what was farthest least. The idea that the head of the government is the head of society is so fixed in the ideas of mankind that only a few philosophers 43 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. regard it as historical and accidental, though when the matter is examined, that conclusion is certain and even obvious. In the first place, society as society does not naturally need a head at all. Its constitution, if left to itself, is not monarchical, but aristocratical. Society, in the sense we are now talking of, is the union of people for amuse- ment and conversation. The making of marriages goes on in it, as it were, incidentally, but its common and main concern is talking and pleasure. There is nothing in this which needs a single supreme head ; it is a pursuit in which a single person does not of necessity dominate. By nature it creates an " upper ten thousand ; " a certain number of persons and families possessed of equal cul- ture, and equal faculties, and equal spirit, get to be on a level and that level a high level. By boldness, by culti- vation, by " social science " they raise themselves above others ; they become the " first families," and all the rest come to be below them. But they tend to be much about a level among one another ; no one is recognised by all or by many others as superior to them all. This is society as it grew up in Greece or Italy, as it grows up now in any American or colonial town. So far from the notion of a " head of society " being a necessary notion, in many ages it would scarcely have been an intelligible notion. You could not have made Socrates understand it. He would have said, "If you tell me that one of my fellows is chief magistrate, and that I am bound to obey him, I understand you, and you speak well; or that another is a priest, and that he ought to offer sacrifices to THE MONARCHY. 49 the gods which I or any one not a priest ought not to offer, again I understand and agree with you. But if you tell me that there is in some citizen a hidden charm by which his words become better than my words, and his house better than my house, I do not follow you, and should be pleased if you will explain yourself." And even if a head of society were a natural idea, it certainly would not follow that the head of the civil government should be that head. Society as such has no more to do with civil polity than with ecclesiastical. The organisation of men and women for the purpose of amuse- ment is not necessarily identical with their organisation f jr political purposes, any more than with their organisa- tion for religious purposes ; it has of itself no more to do with the State than it has with the Church. The facul- ties which fit a man to be a great ruler are not those of society ; some great rulers have been unintelligible like Cromwell, or brusque like Napoleon, or coarse and bar- barous like Sir Robert Walpole. The light nothings of the drawing-room and the grave things of office are as difierent from one another as two human occupations can be. There is no naturalness in uniting the two ; the end of it always is, that you put a man at the head of society who very likely is remarkable for social defects, and is not eminent for social merits. The best possible commentary on these remarks is the "History of English Royalty." It has not been sufficiently remarked that a change has taken place in the structure of our society exactly analogous to the change in our polity. A Republic has insinuated itself E 50 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. beneath the folds of a Monarchy. Charles II. was really the head of society ; Whitehall, in his time, was the centre of the best talk, the best fashion, and the most curious love affairs of the age. He did not contribute good morality to society, but he set an example of infinite agreeableness. He concentrated around him all the light part of the high world of London, and London concentrated around it all the light part of the high world of England. The Court was the focus where everything fascinating gathered, and where everything exciting centred. Whitehall was an unequalled club, with female society of a very clever and sharp sort superadded. All this, as we know, is now altered. Buckingham Palace is as unlike a club as any place is likely to be. The Court is a separate part, which stands aloof from the rest of the London world, and which has but slender relations 'with the more amusing part of it The first two Georges were men ignorant of English, and wholly unfit to guide and lead English society. They both preferred one or two German ladies of bad character to all else in London. George III. had no social vices, but he had no social pleasures. He was a family man, and a man of business, and sincerely preferred a leg of mutton and turnips after a good day's work, to the best fashion and the most exciting talk. In conse- quence, society in London, though still in form under the domination of a Court, assumed in fact its natural und oligarchical structure. It, too, has become an "upper ten thousand ; " it is no more monarchical in fact than the society of New York. Great ladies give the tone to THE MONARCHY. 51 it with little reference to the particular Court world. The peculiarly masculine world of the clubs and their neighbourhood has no more to do in daily life with Buckingham Palace than with the Tuileries. Formal O ceremonies of presentation and attendance are retained. The names of leve'e and drawing-room still sustain the memory of the time when the king's bed-chamber and the queen's " withdrawing room " were the centres of London life, but they no longer make a part of social enjoyment : they are a sort of ritual in which now-a-days almost every decent person can if he likes take part. Even Court balls, where pleasure is at least supposed to be possible, are lost in a London July. Careful observers have long perceived this, but it was made palpable to every one by the death of the Prince Consort. Since then the Court has been always in a state of suspended animation, and for a time it was quite annihilated. But everything went on as usual. A few people who had no daughters and little money made it an excuse to give fewer parties, and if very poor, stayed in the country, but upon the whole the difference was not perceptible. The queen bee was taken away, but the hive went on. Refined and original observers have of late objected to English royalty that it is not splendid enough. They have compared it with the French Court, which is better in show, which comes to the surface everywhere so that you cannot help seeing it, which is infinitely and beyond question the most splendid thing in France. They have said, "that in old times the English Court took too much of the nation's money, and spent it ill ; but now, 52 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. when it could be trusted to spend well, it does not take enough of the nation's money. There are arguments for not having a Court, and there are arguments for having a splendid Court ; but there are no arguments for having a mean Court. It is better to spend a million in dazzling when you wish to dazzle, than three-quarters of a million in trying to dazzle and yet not dazzling." There may be something in this theory ; it may be that the Court of England is not quite as gorgeous as we might wish to see it. But no comparison must ever be made between it and the French Court. The Emperor represents a different idea from the Queen. He is not the head of the State; he is the State. The theory of his govern- ment is that every one in France is equal, and that the Emperor embodies the principle of equality. The greater you make him, the less, and therefore the more equal, you make all othera He is magnified that others may be dwarfed. The very contrary is the principle of English royalty. As in politics it would lose its principal use if it came forward into the public arena, so in society if it advertised itself it would be pernicious. We have voluntary show enough already in London; we do not wish to have it encouraged and intensified, but quieted and mitigated. Our Court is but the head of an un- equal, competing, aristocratic society; its splendour would not keep others down, but incite others to come on. It is of use so long as it keeps others out of the first place, and is guarded and retired in that place. But it would do evil if it added a new example to our many examples of showy wealth if it gave the sanction of its dignity to the race of exoenditure. THE MONARCHY. 53 Fourthly. We have come to regard the Crown as the head of our morality. The virtues of Queen Victoria and the virtues of George III. have sunk deep into the popular heart. We have come to believe that it is natural to have a virtuous sovereign, and that the do- mestic virtues are as likely to be found on thrones as they are eminent when there. But a little experience and less thought show that royalty cannot take credit for domestic excellence. Neither George I., nor George IT., nor William IV. were patterns of family merit; George IV. was a model of family demerit. The plain fact is, that to the disposition of all others most likely to go wrong, to an excitable disposition, the place of a consti- tutional king has greater temptations than almost any other, and fewer suitable occupations than almost any other. All the world and all the glory of it, whatever is most attractive, whatever is most seductive, has always been offered to the Prince of Wales of the day, and always will be. It is not rational to expect the best virtue where temptation is applied in the most trying form at the frailest time of human life. The occupations of a constitutional monarch are grave, formal, important, but never exciting ; they have nothing to stir eager blood, awaken high imagination, work off wild thoughts. On men like George III., with a predominant taste for business occupations, the routine duties of constitutional royalty have doubtless a calm and chastening effect. The insanity with which he struggled, and in many cases struggled very successfully, during many years, would probably have burst out much oftener but for the 54 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. sedative effect of sedulous employment. But how few princes have ever felt the anomalous impulse for real work ; how uncommon is that impulse anywhere ; how little are the circumstances of princes calculated to foster it ; how little can it be relied on as an ordinary break- water to their habitual temptations 1 Grave and careful men may have domestic virtues on a constitutional throne, but even these fail sometimes, and to imagine that men of more eager temperaments will commonly produce them, is to expect grapes from thorns and figs from thistles. Lastly, Constitutional royalty has the function which I insisted on at length in my last essay, and which, though it is by far the greatest, I need not now enlarge upon again. It acts as a disguise. It enables our real rulers to change without heedless people knowing it. The masses of Englishmen are not fit for an elective government ; if they knew how near they were to it, they would be surprised, and almost tremble. Of a like nature is the value of constitutional royalty in times of transition. The greatest of all helps to the substitution of a cabinet government for a preceding absolute monarchy is the accession of a king favourable to such a government, and pledged to it. Cabinet government, when new, is weak in time of trouble. The prime minister the chief on whom everything depends, who must take responsibility if any one is to take it, who must use force if any one is to use it is not fixed in power. He holds his place, by the essence of the government, with some uncertainty. Among a THE MONARCHY. 55 people well-accustomed to such a government, such a functionary may be bold: he may rely, if not on the parliament, on the nation which understands and values him. But when that government has only recently been introduced, it is difficult for such a minister to be as bold as he ought to be. His power rests too much on human reason, and too little on human instinct. The traditional strength of the hereditary monarch is at these times of incalculable use. It would have been impossible for England to get through the first years after 1688 but for the singular ability of William III. It would have been impossible for Italy to have attained and kept her freedom without the help of Victor Emmanuel: neither the work of Cavour nor the work of Garibaldi were more necessary than his. But the failure of Louis Philippe to use his reserve power as constitutional monarch is the most instructive proof how great that reserve power is. In February, 1848, Guizot was weak because his tenure of office was insecure. Louis Philippe should have made that tenure certain. Parliamentary reform might afterwards have been conceded to instructed opinion, but nothing ought to have been conceded to the mob. The Parisian populace ought to have been put down, as Guizot wished. If Louis Phil ; ppe had been a fit king to introduce free government, he would have strengthened his ministers when they were the instru- ments of order, even if he afterwards discarded them when order was safe, and policy could be discussed. But he was one of the cautious men who are " noted " to fail in old age : though of the largest experience and of 56 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. great ability, he failed and lost his crown for want of petty and momentary energy, which at such a crisis a plain man would have at once put forth. Such are the principal modes in which the institution of royalty by its august aspect influences mankind, and in the English state of civilisation they are invaluable. Of the actual business of the sovereign the real work the Queen does I shall speak in my next paper. No. III. THE MONARCHY (continued). THE House of Commons has inquired into most things, but has never had a committee on " the Queen." There is no authentic blue-book to say what she does. Such an investigation cannot take place ; but if it could, it would probably save her much vexatious routine, and many toil- some and unnecessary hours. The popular theory of the English Constitution involves two errors as to the sovereign. First, in its oldest form at least, it considers him as an "Estate of the Realm," a separate co-ordinate authority with the House of Lords and the House of Commons. This and much else the sovereign once was, but this he is no longer. That authority could only be exercised by a monarch with a legislative veto. He should be able to reject bills, if not as the House of Commons rejects them, at least as the House of Peers rejects them. But the Queen has no such veto. She must sign her own death-warrant if the two Houses unanimously send it up to her. It is a fiction of the past to ascribe to her legislative power. She has long ceased to have any. Secondly, the ancient theory holds that the Queen is the executive. The American Consti- 58 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. tution was made upon a most careful argument, and most of that argument assumes the king to be the administratoi of the English Constitution, and an unhereditary substi- tute for him viz., a president to be peremptorily neces- sary. Living across the Atlantic, and misled by accepted doctrines, the acute framers of the Federal Constitution, even after the keenest attention, did not perceive the Prime Minister to be the principal executive of the British Con- stitution, and the sovereign a cog in the mechanism. There is, indeed, much excuse for the American legislators in the history of that time. They took their idea of our constitution from the time when they encountered it. But in the so-called government of Lord North, George III. was the government. Lord North was not only his appointee, but his agent. The minister carried on a war which he disapproved and hated, because it was a war which his sovereign approved and liked. Inevitably, therefore, the American Convention believed the king, from whom they had suffered, to be the real executive, and not the minister, from whom they had not suffered. If we leave literary theory, and look to our actual old law, it is wonderful how much the sovereign can do. A few years ago the Queen very wisely attempted to make life Peers, and the House of Lords very unwisely, and contrary to its own best interests, refused to admit her claim. They said her power had decayed into non- existence; she once had it, they allowed, but it had ceased by long disuse. If any one will run over the pages of Comyn's " Digest," or any other such book, title " Preroga- tive/' he will find the Queen has a hundred such powers THE MONARCHY. 59 which waver between reality and desuetude, and which would cause a protracted and very interesting legal argu- ment if she tried to exercise them. Some good lawyer ought to write a careful book to say which of these powers are really usable, and which are obsolete. There is no authentic explicit information as to what the Queen can do, any more than of what she does. In the bare superficial theory of free institutions this is undoubtedly a defect. Every power in a popular govern- ment ought to be known. The whole notion of such a government is that the political people the governing people rules as it thinks fit. All the acts of every administration are to be canvassed by it ; it is to watch if such acts seem good, and in some manner or other to interpose if they seem not good. But it cannot judge if it is to be kept in ignorance ; it cannot interpose if it does not know. A secret prerogative is an anomaly perhaps the greatest of anomalies. That secrecy is, however, essential to the utility of English royalty as it now is. Above all things our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it. When there is a select committee on the Queen, the charm of royalty will be gone. Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic. We must not bring the Queen into the combat of politics, or she will cease to be reverenced by all combatants ; she will become one combatant among many. The existence of this secret power is, according to abstract theory, a defect in our constitutional polity, but it is a defect incident to a civilisation such as ours, where august and therefore 60 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. unknown powers are needed, as well as known and ser- viceable powers. If we attempt to estimate the working of this inner power by the evidence of those, whether dead or living, who have been brought in contact with it, we shall find a singular difference. Both the courtiers of George III. and the courtiers of Queen Victoria are agreed as to the magnitude of the royal influence. It is with both an accepted secret doctrine that the Crown does more than it seems. But there is a wide discrepancy in opinion as to the quality of that action. Mr. Fox did not scruple to describe the hidden influence of George III. as the undetected agency of " an infernal spirit." The action of the Crown at that period was the dread and terror of Liberal politicians. But now the best Liberal politicians say, " We shall never know, but when history is written our children may know, what we owe to the Queen and Prince Albert." The mystery of the constitution, which used to be hated by our calmest, most thoughtful, and instructed statesmen, is now loved and reverenced by them. Before we try to account for this change, there is one part of the duties of the Queen which should be struck out of the discussion. I mean the formal part. The Queen has to assent to and sign countless formal docu- ments, which contain no matter of policy, of which the purport is insignificant, which any clerk could sign as well. One great class of documents George III. used to read before he signed them, till Lord Thurlow told him, " It was nonsense his looking at them, for he could not understand them." But the worst case is that of commis- THE MONARCHY. 61 sions in the army. Till an Act passed only three years since the Queen used to sign all military commissions, and she still signs all fresh commissions. The inevitable and natural consequence is that such commissions were, and to some extent still are, in arrears by thousands. Men have often been known to receive their commissions for the first time years after they have left the service. If the Queen had been an ordinary officer she would long since have complained, and long since have been relieved of this slavish labour. A cynical statesman is said to have defended it on the ground " that you 'may have a fool for a sovereign, and then it would be desirable he should have plenty of occupation in which he can do no harm." But it is in truth childish to heap formal duties of business upon a person who has of necessity so many formal duties of society. It is a remnant of the old days when George III. would know everything, however trivial and assent to everything, however insignificant. These labours of routine may be dismissed from the discussions. It is not by them that the sovereign acquires his authority either for evil or for good. The best mode of testing what we owe to the Queen is to make a vigorous effort of the imagination, and see how we should get on without her. Let us strip cabinet government of all its accessories, let us reduce it to its two necessary constituents a representative assembly (a House of Commons) and a cabinet appointed by that as- sembly and examine how we should manage with them only. We are so little accustomed to analyse the consti- tution ; we are so used to ascribe the whole effect of the 62 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. constitution to the whole constitution, that a great many people will imagine it to be impossible that a nation should thrive or even live with only these two simple elements. But it is upon that possibility that the general imitability of the English Government depends. A monarch that can be truly reverenced, a House of Peers that can be really respected, are historical accidents nearly peculiar to this one island, and entirely peculiar to Europe. A new country, if it is to be capable of a cabinet government, if it is not to degrade itself to presidential government, must create that cabinet out of its native resources must not rely on these old world debris. Many modes might be suggested by which a parlia- ment might do in appearance what our parliament does in reality, viz., appoint a premier. But I prefer to select the simplest of all modes. We shall then see the bare skeleton of this polity, perceive in what it differs from the royal form, and be quite free from the imputation of having selected an unduly charming and attractive substitute. Let us suppose the House of Commons existing alone and by itself -to appoint the premier quite simply, just as the shareholders of a railway choose a director. At each vacancy, whether caused by death or resignation, let any member or members have the right of nominating a successor ; after a proper interval, such as the time now commonly occupied by a ministerial crisis, ten days or a fortnight, let the members present vote for the candidate they prefer ; then let the Speaker count the votes, and the candidate with the greatest number be premier- THE MONARCHY. 63 This mode of election would throw the whole choice into the hands of party organisation, just as our present mode does, except in so far as the Crown interferes with it; no outsider would ever be appointed, because the immense number of votes which every great party brings into the field would far outnumber every casual and petty minority. The premier should not be appointed for a fixed time, but during good behaviour or the pleasure of parliament. Mutatis mutandis, subject to the differences now to be investigated, what goes on now would go on then. The premier then, as now, must resign upon a vote of want of confidence, but the volition of parliament would then be the overt and single force in the selection of a successor, whereas it is now the predominant though ^atent force. It will help the discussion very much if we divide it into three parts. The whole course of a representative government has three stages first, when a ministry is appointed; next, during its continuance; last, when it ends. Let us consider what is the exact use of the Queen at each of these stages, and how our present form of government differs in each, whether for good or for evil from that simpler form of cabinet government which might exist without her. At the beginning of an administration there would not be much difference between the royal and unroyal species of cabinet governments when there were only two great parties in the State, and when the greater of those parties was thoroughly agreed within itself who should be its parliamentary leader, and who therefore should be 64 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. its premier. The sovereign must now accept that re- cognised leader ; and if the choice were directly made by the House of Commons, the House must also choose him ; its supreme section, acting compactly and harmoniously, would sway its decisions without substantial resistance, and perhaps without even apparent competition. A pre- dominant party, rent by no intestine demarcation, would be despotic. In such a case cabinet government would go on without friction whether there was a Queen or whether there was no Queen. The best sovereign could then achieve no good, and the worst effect no harm. But the difficulties are far greater when the predo- minant party is not agreed who should be its leader. In the royal form of cabinet government the sovereign then has sometimes a substantial selection; in the un- royal, who would choose ? There must be a meeting at " Willis's Rooms ; " there must be that sort of interior despotism of the majority over the minority within the party, by which Lord John Russell in 1859 was made to resign his pretensions to the supreme government, and to be content to serve as a subordinate to Lord Palmer- ston. The tacit compression which a party anxious for office would exercise over leaders who divided its strength, would be used and must be used. Whether such a party would always choose precisely the best man may well be doubted. In a party once divided it is very difficult to secure unanimity in favour of the very person whom a disinterested bystander would recommend. All manner of jealousies and enmities are immediately awakened, and it is always difficult, often impossible, to get them THE MONARCHY. 65 to sleep again. But though such a party might not select the very best leader, they have the strongest mo- tives to select a very good leader. The maintenance of their rule depends on it. Under a presidential consti- tution the preliminary caucuses which choose the presi- dent need not care as to the ultimate fitness of the man they choose. They are solely concerned with his attractiveness as a candidate ; they need not regard his efficiency as a ruler. If they elect a man of weak judg- ment, he will reign his stated term; even though he show the best judgment, at the end of that term there will be by constitutional destiny another election. But tinder a ministerial government there is no such fixed destiny. The government is a removable government, its tenure depends upon its conduct. If a party in power were so foolish as to choose a weak man for its head, it would cease to be in power. Its judgment is its life. Suppose in 1859 that the Whig party had determined to set aside both Earl Russell and Lord Palmerston and to choose for its head an incapable nonentity, the Whig party would probably have been exiled from office at the Schleswig-Holstein difficulty. The nation would have deserted them, and Parliament would have deserted them, too ; neither would have endured to see a secret negotiation, on which depended the portentous alterna- tive of war or peace, in the hands of a person who was thought to be weak who had been promoted because of his mediocrity whom his own friends did not respect. A ministerial government, too, is carried on in the face of day. Its life is in debate. A president may be a F 66 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. weak man ; yet if he keep good ministers to the end of his administration, he may not be found out it may still be a dubious controversy whether he is wise or foolish. But a prime minister must show what he is. He must meet the House of Commons in debate ; he must be able to guide that assembly in the management of its business, to gain its ear in every emergency, to rule it in its hours of excitement. He is conspicuously submitted to a searching test, and if he fails he must resign. Nor would any party like to trust to a weak man the great power which a cabinet government commits to its premier. The premier, though elected by parliament can dissolve parliament. Members would be naturally anxious that the power which might destroy their coveted dignity should be lodged in fit hands. They dare not place in unfit hands a power which, besides hurting the nation, might altogether ruin them. We may be sure, therefore, that whenever the predominant party is divided, the U7i-royal form of cabinet government would secure for us a fair and able parliamentary leader that it would give us a good premier, if not the very best. Can it be said that the royal form does more ? In one case I think it may. If the constitutional monarch be a man of singular discernment, of unpreju- diced disposition, and great political knowledge, he may pick out from the ranks of the divided party its very best leader, even at a time when the party, if left to itself, would not nominate him. If the sovereign be able to play the part of that thoroughly intelligent but perfectly disinterested spectator who is so prominent in THE MONARCHY. 67 the works of certain moralists, he may be able to choose better for his subjects than they would choose for them- selves. But if the monarch be not so exempt from prejudice, and have not this nearly miraculous discern- ment, it is not likely that he will be able to make a wiser choice than the choice of the party itself. He certainly is not under the same motive to choose wisely. His place is fixed whatever happens, but the failure of an appointing party depends on the capacity of their appointee. There is great danger, too, that the judgment of the sovereign may be prejudiced. For more than forty years the personal antipathies of George III. materially impaired successive administrations. Almost at the beginning of his career he discarded Lord Chatham: almost at the end he would not permit Mr. Pitt to coalesce with Mr. Fox. He always preferred mediocrity ; he generally disliked high ability; he always disliked great ideas. If constitutional monarchs be ordinary men of restricted experience and common capacity (and we have no right to suppose that by miracle they will be more), the judgment of the sovereign will often be worse than the judgment of the party, and he will be very subject to the chronic danger of preferring a respectful common-place man, such as Addington, to an inde- pendent first-rate man, such as Pitt. "We shall arrive at the same sort of mixed conclusion if we examine the choice of a premier under both systems in the critical case of cabinet government the case of three parties. This is the case in which that species of government is most sure tQ exhibit its defects, and 68 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. least likely to exhibit its merits. The defining charac- teristic of that government is the choice of the executive ruler by the legislative assembly; but when there are three parties a satisfactory choice is impossible. A really good selection is a selection by a large majority which trusts those it chooses, but when there are three parties there is no such trust. The numerically weakest has the casting vote it can determine which candidate shall be chosen. But it does so under a penalty. It forfeits the right of voting for its own candidate. It settles which of other people's favourites shall be chosen, on condition of abandoning its own favourite. A choice based on such self-denial can never be a firm choice it is a choice at any moment liable to be revoked. The events of 1858, though not a perfect illustration of what I mean, are a sufficient illustration. The Radical party, acting apart from the moderate Liberal party, kept Lord Derby in power. The ultra-movement party thought it expedient to combine with the non-movement party. As one of them coarsely but clearly put it, " We get more of our way under these men than under the other men;" he meant that, in his judgment, the Tories would be more obedient to the Radicals than the Whigs. But it is obvious that a union of opposites so marked could not be durable. The Radicals bought it by choosing the men whose principles were most adverse to them ; the Conservatives bought it by agreeing to measures whose scope was most adverse to them. After a short interval the Radicals returned to their natural alliance and their natural discontent with the moderate Whigs. They THE MONARCHY. 69 used their determining vote first for a government of one opinion and then for a government of the contrary opinion. I am not blaming this policy. I am using it merely as an illustration. I say that if we imagine this sort of action greatly exaggerated and greatly prolonged parliamentary government becomes impossible. If there are three parties, no two of which will steadily combine for mutual action, but of which the weakest gives a rapidly oscillating preference to the two others, the primary condition of a cabinet polity is not satisfied. We have not a parliament fit to choose ; we cannot rely on the selection of a sufficiently permanent executive, because there is no fixity in the thoughts and feelings of the choosers. Under every species of cabinet government, whether , the royal or the unroyal, this defect can be cured in one way only. The moderate people of every party must combine to support the government which, on the whole, suits every party best. This is the mode in which Lord Palmerston's administration has been lately maintained ; a ministry in many ways defective, but more beneficially vigorous abroad, and more beneficially active at home, than the vast majority of English ministries. The mode- rate Conservatives and the moderate Radicals have main- tained a steady government by a sufficiently coherent union with the moderate Whigs. Whether there is a king or no king, this preservative self-denial is the main force on which we must rely for the satisfactory con- tinuance of a parliamentary government at this its 70 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. period of greatest trial. Will that moderation be aided or impaired by the addition of a sovereign ? Will it be more effectual under the royal sort of ministerial govern- ment, or will it be less effectual ? If the sovereign has a genius for discernment, the aid which he can give at such a crisis will be great. He will select for his minister, and if possible maintain as his minister, the statesman upon whom the moderate party will ultimately fix their choice, but for whom at the outset it is blindly searching ; being a man of sense, experience, and tact, he will discern which is the com- bination of equilibrium, which is the section with whom the milder members of the other sections will at last ally themselves. Amid the shifting transitions of confused parties, it is probable that he will have many opportu- nities of exercising a selection. It will rest with him to call either on A B to form an administration, or upon X Y, and either may have a chance of trial. A disturbed state of parties is inconsistent with fixity, but it abounds in momentary tolerance. Wanting something, but not knowing with precision what, parties will accept for a brief period anything, to see whether it may be that unknown something to see what it will do. During the long succession of weak governments which begins with the resignation of the Duke of Newcastle in 1762 and ends with the accession of Mr. Pitt in 1784, the vigorous will of George III. was an agency of the first magnitude. If at a period of complex and protracted division of parties, such as are sure to occur often and last long in every enduring parliamentary government, the extrinsic THE MONARCHY. 71 force of royal selection were always exercised discreetly, it would be a political benefit of incalculable value. But will it be so exercised ? A constitutional sove- reign must in the common course of government be a man of but common ability. I am afraid, looking to the early acquired feebleness of hereditary dynasties, that we must expect him to be a man of inferior ability. Theory and experience both teach that the education of a prince can be but a poor education, and that a royal family will generally have less ability than other families. What right have we then to expect the per- petual entail on any family of an exquisite discretion, which if it be not a sort of genius, is at least as rare as genius ? Probably in most cases the greatest wisdom of a con- stitutional king would show itself in well considered in- action. In the confused interval between 1857 and 1859 the Queen and Prince Albert were far too wise to obtrude any selection of their own. If they had chosen, perhaps they would not have chosen Lord Palmerston. But they saw, or may be believed to have seen, that the world was settling down without them, and that by interposing an extrinsic agency, they would but delay the beneficial crystallisation of intrinsic forces. There is, indeed, a permanent reason which would make the wisest king, and the king who feels most sure of his wisdom, very slow to use that wisdom. The responsibility of parliament should be felt by parliament. So long as parliament thinks it is the sovereign's business to find a government it will be sure not to find a government itself. The royal form of 72 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION". ministerial government is the worst of all forms if it erect the subsidiary apparatus into the principal force, if it induce the assembly which ought to perform para- mount duties to expect some one else to perform, them. It should be observed, too, in fairness to the unroyal species of cabinet government, that it is exempt from one of the greatest and most characteristic defects of the royal species. Where there is no court there can be no evil influence from a court. What these influences are every one knows ; though no one, hardly the best and closest observer, can say with confidence and precision how great their effect is. Sir Robert Walpole, in language too coarse for our modern, manners,. declared after the death of Queen Caroline, that he would pay no attention to the king's daughters (" those girls," as he called them), but would rely exclusively on Madame de Walmoden, the king's mistress. " The king," says a writer in G-eorge IV.'s time, " is in our favour, and what is more to the pur- pose, the Marchioness of Conyngham is so too." Every- body knows to what sort of influences several Italian changes of government since tike unity of Italy have been attributed. These sinister agencies are likely to be most effective just when everything else is. troubled, and when, therefore, they are particularly dangerous. The wildest and wickedest king's mistress would not plot against an invulnerable administration. But very many will intrigue when parliament is perplexed, when parties are divided, when alternatives are many, when many evil things are possible, when cabinet government must be difficult. THE MONARCHY. 7$ It is very important to see that a good administration can be started without a sovereign, because some colonial statesmen have doubted it. "I can conceive," it has been said, " that a ministry would go on well enough without a governor when it was launched, but I do not see how to launch it." It has even been suggested that a colony which broke away from England, and had to form its own government, might not unwisely choose a governor for life, and solely trusted with selected ministers, some- thing like the Abbs' Sieyes's grand elector. But the intro- duction of such an officer into such a colony would in fact be the voluntary erection of an artificial encumbrance to it. He would inevitably be a party man. The most dignified post in the State must bean object of contest to the great sections into which every active political com- munity is divided. These parties mix in everything and meddle in everything ; and they neither would nor could permit the most honoured and conspicuous of all stations to be filled, except at their pleasure. They know, too, that the grand elector, the great chooser of ministries, might be, at a sharp crisis, either a good friend or a bad enemy. The strongest party would select some one who would be on their side when he had to take a side, who would incline to them when he did incline, who should be a constant auxiliary to them and a constant impedi- ment to their adversaries. It is absurd to choose by con- tested party election an impartial chooser of ministers. But it is during the continuance of a ministry, rather than at its creation, that the functions of the sovereign will mainly interest most persons, and that most people- 74 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. will think them to be of the gravest importance. I own I am myself of that opinion. I think it may be shown that the post of sovereign over an intelligent and political people under a constitutional monarchy is the post which a wise man would choose above any other where he would find the intellectual impulses best stimulated and the worst intellectual impulses best controlled. On the duties of the Queen during an administration we have an invaluable fragment from her own hand. In 1851 Louis Napoleon had his coup d'etat; in 1852 Lord John Russell had his he expelled Lord Palmerston. By a most instructive breach of etiquette he read in the House a royal memorandum on the duties of his rival. It is as follows : " The Queen requires, first, that Lord Palmerston will distinctly state what he proposes in a given case, in order that the Queen may know as dis- tinctly to what she is giving her royal sanction. Secondly, having once given her sanction to such a measure that it be not arbitrarily altered or modified by the minister. Such an act she must consider as failing in sincerity towards the Crown, and justly to be visited by the exercise of her constitutional right of dismissing that minister. She expects to be kept informed of what passes between him and foreign ministers before important decisions are taken based upon that intercourse ; to re- ceive the foreign despatches in good time ; and to have the drafts for her approval sent to her in sufficient time to make herself acquainted with their contents before they must be sent off." In addition to the control over particular ministers THE MONARCHY. 75 and especially over the foreign minister, the Queen has a certain control over the Cabinet. The first minister, it is understood, transmits to her authentic information of all the most important decisions, together with what the newspapers would do equally well, the more impor- tant votes in Parliament. He is bound to take care that she knows everything which there is to know as to the passing politics of the nation. She has by rigid usage a right to complain if she does not know of every great act of her ministry, not only before it is done, but while there is yet time to consider it while it is still possible that it may not be done. To state the matter shortly, the sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king of great sense and sagacity would want no others. He would find that his having no others would enable him to use these with singular effect. He would say to his minister: "The responsi- bility of these measures is upon you. Whatever you think best must be done. Whatever you think best shall have my full and effectual support. But you will observe that for this reason and that reason what you propose to do is bad ; for this reason and that reason what you do not propose is better. I do not oppose, it is my duty not to oppose; but observe that I warn" Supposing the king to be right, and to have what kings often have, the gift of effectual expression, he could not help moving his minister. He might not always turn his course, but he would always trouble his mind. 76 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. In the course of a long reign a sagacious king would acquire an experience with which few ministers could contend. The king could say : " Have you referred to the transactions which happened during such and such an administration, I think about fourteen years ago ? They afford an instructive example of the bad results which are sure to attend the policy which you propose. You did not at that time take so prominent a part in public life as you now do, and it is possible you do not fully remember all the events. I should recommend you to recur to them, and to discuss them with your older colleagues who took part in them. It is unwise to recom- mence a policy which so lately worked so ill" The king would indeed have the advantage which a permanent under-secretary has over his superior the parliamentary secretary that of having shared in the proceedings of the previous parliamentary secretaries. These proceed- ings were part of his own life ; occupied the best of his thoughts, gave him perhaps anxiety, perhaps pleasure, were commenced in spite of his dissuasion, or were sanc- tioned by his approval. The parliamentary secretary vaguely remembers that something was done in the time of some of his predecessors, when he very likely did not know the least or care the least about that sort of public business. He has to begin by learning pain- fully and imperfectly what the permanent secretary knows by clear and instant memory. No doubt a par- liamentary secretary always can, and sometimes does, silence his subordinate by the tacit might of his superior dignity. He says : " I do not think there is much in all THE MONARCHY. 77 that. Many errors were committed at the time you refer to which we need not now discuss." A pompous man easily sweeps away the suggestions of those beneath him. But though a minister may so deal with his subordinate, he cannot so deal with his king. The social force of admitted superiority by which he overturned his under- secretary is now not with him but against him. He has no longer to regard the deferential hints of an acknow- ledged inferior, but to answer the arguments of a superior to whom he has himself to be respectful. George III. in fact knew the forms of public business as well or better than any statesman of his time. If, in addition to his capacity as a man of business and to' his industry, he had possessed the higher faculties of a discerning statesman, his influence would have been despotic. The old Consti- tution of England undoubtedly gave a sort of power to the Crown which our present Constitution does not give. While a majority in parliament was principally purchased by royal patronage, the king was a party to the bargain either with his minister or without his minister. But even under our present constitution a monarch like George III., with high abilities, would possess the greatest influence. It is known to all Europe that in Belgium King Leopold has exercised immense power by the use of such means as I have described. It is known, too, to every one conversant with the real course of the recent history of England, that Prince Albert really did gain great power in precisely the same way. He had the rare gifts of a constitutional monarch. If his life had been prolonged twenty years, his name 78 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. would have been known to Europe as that of King Leopold is known. While he lived he was at a disad- vantage. The statesmen who had most power in England were men of far greater experience than himself. He might, and no doubt did, exercise a great, if not a com- manding influence over Lord Malmesbury, but he could not rule Lord Palmerston. The old statesman who governed England, at an age when most men are unfit to govern their own families, remembered a whole generation of statesmen who were dead before Prince Albert was born. The two were of different ages and different natures. The elaborateness of the German prince an elaborateness which has been justly and happily compared with that of Goethe was wholly alien to the half-Irish, half-English, statesman. The somewhat boisterous cour- age in minor dangers, and the obtrusive use of an always effectual but not always refined, common-place, which are Lord Palmerston's defects, doubtless grated on Prince Albert, who had a scholar's caution and a scholar's courage. The facts will be known to our children's children, though not to us. Prince Albert did much, but he died ere he could have made his influence felt on a generation of statesmen less experienced than he was, and anxious to learn from him. It would be childish to suppose that a conference between a minister and his sovereign can ever be a con- ference of pure argument. " The divinity which doth hedge a king " may have less sanctity than it had, but it still has much sanctity. No one, or scarcely any one, can argue with a cabinet minister in his own room as well as THE MONARCHY. 79 he would argue with another man in another room. He cannot make his own points as well ; he cannot unmake as well the points presented to him. A monarch's room is worse. The best instance is Lord Chatham, the most dictatorial and imperious of English statesmen, and almost the first English statesman who was borne into power against the wishes of the king and against the wishes of the nobility the first popular minister. We might have expected a proud tribune of the people to be dictatorial to his sovereign to be to the king what he was to all others. On the contrary, he was the slave of his own imagination; there was a kind of mystic enchant- ment in vicinity to the monarch which divested him of his ordinary nature. " The least peep into the king's closet," said Mr. Burke, " intoxicates him, and will to the end of his life." A wit said that, even at the levde, he bowed so low that you could see the tip of his hooked nose between his legs. He was in the habit of kneeling at the bedside of George III. while transacting business. Now no man can argue on his knees. The same super- stitious feeling which keeps him in that physical attitude will keep him in a corresponding mental attitude. He will not refute the bad arguments of the king as he will refute another man's bad arguments. He will not state his own best arguments effectively and incisively when he knows that the king would not like to hear them. In a nearly balanced argument the king must always have the better, and in politics many most important argu- ments are nearly balanced. Whenever there was much to be said for the king's opinion it would have its full 80 THE ENGLISH 'CONSTITUTION. weight; whatever was said for the minister's opinion would only have a lessened and enfeebled weight. The king, too, possesses a power, according to theory, for extreme use on a critical occasion, but which he can in law use on any occasion. He can dissolve ; he can say to his minister, in fact, if not in words, " This parliament sent you here, but I will see if I cannot get another parliament to send some one else here." George III. well understood that it was best to take his stand at times and on points when it was perhaps likely, or at any rate not unlikely, the nation would support him. He always made a minister that he did not like tremble at the shadow of a possible successor. He had a cunning in such matters like the cunning of insanity. He had con- flicts with the ablest men of his time, and he was hardly ever baffled. He understood how to help a feeble argu- ment by a tacit threat, and how best to address it to an habitual deference. Perhaps such powers as these are what a wise man would most seek to exercise and least fear to possess. To wish to be a despot, "to hunger after tyranny," as the Greek phrase had it, marks in our day an uncultivated mind. A person who so wishes cannot have weighed what Butler calls the " doubtfulness things are involved in." To be sure you are right to impose your will, or to wish to impose it, with violence upon others; to see your own ideas vividly and fixedly, and to be tormented till you can apply them in life and practice, not to like to hear the opinions of others, to be unable to sit down and weigh the truth they have, are but crude states o*" THE MONARCHY. 81 intellect in our present civilisation. "We know, at least, that facts are many ; that progress is complicated ; that burning ideas (such as young men have) are mostly false and always incomplete. The notion of a far-seeing and despotic statesman, who can lay down plans for ages yet unborn, is a fancy generated by the pride of the human intellect to which facts give no support. The plans of Charlemagne died with him ; those of Richelieu were mistaken; those of Napoleon gigantesque and frantic. But a wise and great constitutional monarch attempts no such vanities. His career is not in the air; he labours in the world of sober fact ; he deals with schemes which can be effected schemes which are desirable schemes which are worth the cost. He says to the ministry his people send to him, to ministry after minis- try, " I think so and so ; do you see if there is anything in it. I have put down my reasons in a certain memo- randum, which I will give you. Probably it does not exhaust the subject, but it will suggest materials for your consideration." By years of discussion with minis- try after ministry, the best plans of the wisest king would certainly be adopted, and the inferior plans, the impracticable plans, rooted out and rejected. He could not be uselessly beyond his time, for he would have been obliged to convince the representatives, the characteristic men of his time. He would have the best means of proving that he was right on all new and strange matters, for he would have won to his side probably, after years of discussion, the chosen agents of the common-place world men who were where they were, o 82 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. because they had pleased the men of the existing age, who will never be much disposed to new conceptions or profound thoughts. A sagacious and original constitu- tional monarch might go to his grave in peace if any man could. He would know that his best laws were in harmony with his age ; that they suited the people who were to work them, the people who were to be benefited by them. And he would have passed a happy life. He would have passed a life in which he could always get his arguments heard, in which he could always make those who have the responsibility of action think of them before they acted in which he could know that the schemes which he had set at work in the world were not the casual accidents of an individual idiosyncrasy, which are mostly much wrong, but the likeliest of all things to be right the ideas of one very intelligent man at last accepted and acted on by the ordinary intelligent many. But can we expect such a king, or, for that is the material point, can we expect a lineal series of such kings ? Every one has heard the reply of the Emperor Alexander to Madame de Stael, who favoured him with a declamation in praise of beneficent despotism. u Yes, Madame, but it is only a happy accident." He well knew that the great abilities and the good intentions necessary to make an efficient and good despot never were con- tinuously combined in any line of rulers. He knew that they were far out of reach of hereditary human nature. Can it be said that the characteristic qualities of a con- stitutional monarch are more within its reach ? I am THE MONARCHY. 83 afraid it cannot. We found just now that the charac- teristic use of an hereditary constitutional monarch, at the outset of an administration, greatly surpassed the ordinary competence of hereditary faculties. I fear that an impartial investigation will establish the same con- clusion as to his uses during the continuance of an administration. If we look at history, we shall find that it is only during the period of the present reign that in England the duties of a constitutional sovereign have ever been well performed. The first two Georges were ignorant of English affairs, and wholly unable to guide them, whether well or ill ; for many years in their time the Prime Minister had, over and above the labour of managing parliament, to manage the woman sometimes the queen, sometimes the mistress who managed the sovereign; George III. interfered unceasingly, but he did harm unceasingly; George IV. and William IV. gave no steady continuing guidance, and were unfit to give it. On the Continent, in first-class countries, con- stitutional royalty has never lasted out of one generation. Louis Philippe, Victor Emmanuel, and Leopold are the founders of their dynasties ; we must not reckon in con- stitutional monarchy any more than in despotic monarchy on the permanence in the descendants of the peculiar genius which founded the race. As far as experience goes, there is no reason to expect an hereditary series of useful limited monarchs. If we look to theory, there is even less reason to expect it. A monarch is useful when he gives an effectual 84( THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. and beneficial guidance to his ministers. But these ministers are sure to be among the ablest men of their time. They will have had to conduct the business of parliament so as to satisfy it ; they will have to speak so as to satisfy it. The two together cannot be done save by a man of very great and varied ability. The exercise of the two gifts is sure to teach a man much of the world ; and if it did not, a parliamentary leader has to pass through a magnificent training before he becomes a leader. He has to gain a seat in parliament ; to gain the ear of parliament ; to gain the confidence of parliament ; to gain the confidence of his colleagues. No one can achieve these no one, still more, can both achieve them and retain them without a singular ability, nicely trained in the varied detail of life. What chance has an hereditary monarch such as nature forces him to be, such as history shows he is, against men so educated and so born ? He can but be an average man to begin with ; sometimes he will be clever, but sometimes he will be stupid; in the long run he will be neither clever nor stupid ; he will be the simple, common man who plods the plain routine of life from the cradle to the grave. His education will be that of one who has never had to struggle; who has always felt that he has nothing to gain ; who has had the first dignity given him ; who has never seen common life as in truth it is. It is idle to expect an ordinary man born in the purple to have greater genius than an extraordinary man born out of the purple; to expect a man whose place has always been fixed to have a better judgment than one who has THE MONARCHY. 85 lived by his judgment ; to expect a man whose career will be the same whether he is discreet or whether he is indiscreet to have the nice discretion of one who has risen by his wisdom, who will fall if he ceases to be wise. The characteristic advantage of a constitutional king is the permanence of his place. This gives him the opportunity of acquiring a consecutive knowledge of com- plex transactions, but it gives only an opportunity. The king must use it. There is no royal road to political affairs : their detail is vast, disagreeable, complicated, and miscellaneous. A king, to be the equal of his ministers in discussion, must work as they work ; he must be a man of business as they are men of business. Yet a con- stitutional prince is the man who is most tempted to pleasure, and the least forced to business. A despot must feel that he is the pivot of the State. The stress of his kingdom is upon him. As he is, so are his affairs. He may be seduced into pleasure ; he may neglect all else ; but the risk is evident. He will hurt himself; he may cause a revolution. If he becomes unfit to govern, some one else who is fit may conspire against him. But a constitutional king need fear nothing. He may neglect his duties, but he will not be injured. His place will be as fixed, his income as permanent, his opportunities of selfish enjoyment as full as ever. Why should he work ? It is true he will lose the quiet and secret influence which in the course of years industry would gain for him; but an eager young man, on whom the world is squandering its luxuries and its temptations, will not be much attracted by the distant prospect of a moderate 86 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. influence over dull matters. He may form good inten- tions ; he may say, " Next year I will read these papers ; I will try and ask more questions ; I will not let these women talk to me so." But they will talk to him. The most hopeless idleness is that most smoothed with ex- cellent plans. " The Lord Treasurer," says Swift, " pro- mised he will settle it to-night, and so he will say a hundred nights." We may depend upon it the ministry whose power will be lessened by the prince's attention will not be too eager to get him to attend. So it is if the prince come young to the throne ; but the case is worse when he comes to it old or middle-aged. He is then unfit to work. He will then have spent the whole of youth and the first part of manhood in idleness, and it is unnatural to expect him to labour. A pleasure- loving lounger in middle life will not begin to work as George III. worked, or as Prince Albert worked. The only fit material for a constitutional king is a prince who begins early to reign who in his youth is superior to pleasure who in his youth is willing to labour who has by nature a genius for discretion. Such kings are among God's greatest gifts, but they are also among His rarest. An ordinary idle king on a constitutional throne will leave no mark on his time : he will do little good and as little harm; the royal form of cabinet government will work in his time pretty much as the unroyal The addition of a cypher will not matter though it take pre- cedence of the significant figures. But corruptio optima pessima. The most evil case of the royal form is far THE MONARCHY. 87 worse than the most evil case of the unroyal. It is easy to imagine, upon a constitutional throne, an active and meddling fool who always acts when he should not, who never acts when he should, who warns his ministers against their judicious measures, who encourages them in their injudicious measures. It is easy to imagine that such a king should be the tool of others ; that favourites should guide him ; that mistresses should corrupt him ; that the atmosphere of a bad court should be used to degrade free government. We have had an awful instance of the dangers of con- stitutional royalty. We have had the case of a meddling maniac. During great part of his life George III.'s reason was half upset by every crisis. Throughout his life he had an obstinacy akin to that of insanity. He was an obstinate and an evil influence ; he could not be turned from what was inexpedient; by the aid of his station he turned truer but weaker men from what was expedient. He gave an excellent moral example to his contemporaries, but he is an instance of those whose good dies with them, while their evil lives after them. He prolonged the American war, perhaps he caused the American war, so we inherit the vestiges of an American hatred ; he forbad Mr. Pitt's wise plans, so we inherit an Irish difficulty. He would not let us do right in time, so now our attempts at right are out of time and fruitless. Constitutional royalty under an active and half-insane king is one of the worst of governments. There is in it a secret power which is always eager, which is generally obstinate, which is often wrong, which rules ministers 88 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. more than they know themselves, which overpowers them much more than the public believe, which is irresponsible because it is inscrutable, which cannot be prevented because it cannot be seen. The benefits of a good monarch are almost invaluable, but the evils of a bad monarch are almost irreparable. We shall find these conclusions confirmed if we ex- amine the powers and duties of an English monarch at the break-up of an administration. But the power of dissolution and the prerogative of creating peers, the cardinal powers of that moment are too important and involve too many complex matters to be sufficiently treated at the very end of a paper as long as this. 89 No. IV. THE HOUSE OF LORDS. IN my last essay I showed that it was possible for a con- stitutional monarch to be, when occasion served, of first- rate use both at the outset and during the continuance of an administration ; but that in matter of fact it was not likely that he would be useful The requisite ideas, habits, and faculties, far surpass the usual competence of an average man, educated in the common manner of sovereigns. The same arguments are entirely applicable at the close of an administration. But at that conjunc- ture the two most singular prerogatives of an English king the power of creating new peers and the power of dissolving the Commons come into play ; and we cannot duly criticise the use or misuse of these powers till we know what the peers are and what the House of Com- mons is. The use of the House of Lords or, rather, of the Lords, in its dignified capacity is very great. It does not attract so much reverence as the Queen, but it at- tracts very much. The office of an order of nobility is to impose on the common people not necessarily to impose on them what is untrue, yet less what is hurtful; but 90 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. still to impose on their quiescent imaginations what would not otherwise be there. The fancy of the mass of men is incredibly weak ; it can see nothing without a visible symbol, and there is much that it can scarcely make out with a symbol. Nobility is the symbol of mind. It has the marks from which the mass of men always used to infer mind, and often still infer it. A common clever man who goes into a country place will get no reverence ; but the " old squire " will get reverence. Even after he is insolvent, when every one knows that his ruin is but a question of time, he will get five times as much respect from the common peasantry as the newly-made rich man who sits beside him. The common peasantry will listen to his nonsense more submissively than to the new man's sense. An old lord will get infi- nite respect. His very existence is so far useful that it awakens the sensation of obedience to a sort of mind in the coarse, dull, contracted multitude, who could neither appreciate nor perceive any other. The order of nobility is of great use, too, not only in what it creates, but in what it prevents. It prevents the rule of wealth the religion of gold. This is the obvious and natural idol of the Anglo-Saxon. He is always trying to make money ; he reckons everything in coin ; he bows down before a great heap and sneers as he passes a little heap. He has a " natural instinctive admiration of wealth for its own sake." And within good limits the feeling is quite right. So long as we play the game of industry vigorously and eagerly (and I hope we shall long play it, for we must be very different from THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 91 what we are if we do anything better), we shall of neces- sity respect and admire those who play successfully, and a little despise those who play unsuccessfully. Whether this feeling be right or wrong, it is useless to discuss ; to a certain degree, it is involuntary ; it is not for mortals to settle whether we will have it or not ; nature settles for us that, within moderate limits, we must have it. But the admiration of wealth in many countries goes far beyond this ; it ceases to regard in any degree the skill of acquisition; it respects wealth in the hands of the inheritor just as much as in the hands of the maker ; it is a simple envy and love of a heap of gold as a heap of gold. From this our aristocracy preserves us. There is no country where a " poor devil of a millionnaire is so ill off as in England." The experiment is tried every day, and every day it is proved that money alone money pur et simple will not buy " London Society." Money is kept down, and, so to say, cowed by the predominant authority of a different power. But it may be said that this is no gain ; that worship for worship, the worship of money is as good as the worship of rank. Even granting that it were so, it is a great gain to society to have two idols : in the competi- tion of idolatries the true worship gets a chance. But it is not true that the reverence for rank at least, for here- ditary rank is as base as the reverence for money. As the world has gone, manner has been half -hereditary in certain castes, and manner is one of the fine arts. It is the style of society ; it is in the daily-spoken intercourse of human beings what the art of literary expression is 92 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. in their occasional written intercourse. In reverencing wealth we reverence not a man, but an appendix to a man ; in reverencing inherited nobility, we reverence the probable possession of a great faculty the faculty of bringing out what is in one. The unconscious grace of life may be in the middle classes : finely-mannered per- sons are born everywhere; but it ought to be in the aristocracy : and a man must be born with a hitch in his nerves if he has not some of it. It is a physiological possession of the race, though it is sometimes wanting in the individual. There is a third idolatry from which that of rank pre- ; serves us, and perhaps it is the worst of any that of office. The basest deity is a subordinate employe, and yet just now in civilised governments it is the commonest. In France and all the best of the Continent it rules like a superstition. It is to no purpose that you prove that the pay of petty officials is smaller than mercantile pay ; that their work is more monotonous than mercantile work; that their mind is less useful and their life more tame. They are still thought to be greater and better. They are decor es ; they have a little red on the left breast of their coat, and no argument will answer that. In England, by the odd course of our society, what a theorist would desire has in fact turned up. The great offices, whether per- manent or parliamentary, which require mind now give social prestige, and almost only those. An Under-Secretary of State with 2000 a-year is a much greater man than the director of a finance company with 5000, and the country saves the difference. But except in a few offices THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 93 like the Treasury, which were once filled with aristocratic people, and have an odour of nobility at second-hand, minor place is of no social use. A big grocer despises the exciseman ; and what in many countries would be thought impossible, the exciseman envies the grocer. Solid wealth tells where there is no artificial dignity given to petty public functions. A clerk in the public service is " no- body ; " and you could not make a common Englishman see why he should be anybody. But it must be owned that this turning of society into a political expedient has half spoiled it. A great part of the "best" English people keep their mind in a state of decorous dulness. They maintain their dignity ; they get obeyed; they are good and charitable to their de- pendants. But they have no notion of play of mind : no conception that the charm of society depends upon it. They think cleverness an antic, and have a constant though needless horror of being thought to have any of it. So much does this stiff dignity give the tone, that the few Englishmen capable of social brilliancy mostly secrete it. They reserve it for persons whom they can trust, and whom they know to be capable of appreciating its nuances. But a good government is well worth a great deal of social dulness. The dignified torpor of English society is inevitable if we give precedence, not to the cleverest classes, but to the oldest classes, and we have seen how useful that is. The social prestige of the aristocracy is, as every one knows, immensely less than it was a hundred years or even fifty years since. Two great movements the two greatest 94 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION.