Part 1 (2/2)
Others again have helped to build the walls of the national edifice until the Sovereign at the beginning of the twentieth century has become the pivot upon which turns the const.i.tutional unity of a great Empire and which forms the only possible centre for a common allegiance amongst its varied peoples.
At first this monarchical principle was embodied in the form of military power, was based upon feudal loyalty, and was a.s.sociated with the n.o.ble ideals, but somewhat reckless practices, of mediaeval chivalry. The victories of Egbert and Alfred the Great transformed the Heptarchy into a substantial English Kingdom. The military skill of William the Conqueror gave an opportunity to blend the graces of Norman chivalry, and a somewhat higher form of civilization, with the rougher virtues of the Saxon character. Henry II. personally ill.u.s.trated this combination, with his ruddy English face and strong physical powers, and impressed himself upon British history by the conquest of Ireland. Richard Coeur de Lion gave his country many famous pages of crusading in the East, and embodied in his life and character the adventurous and daring spirit of the age. Edward I. dominated events by his energy and ability, subdued Wales, and for a time conquered the Kingdom of Scotland. Edward III., in his long reign of fifty years, carried the British flag over the fields of France, and won immortality at the battles of Crecy and Poictiers.
Henry V. gained the victory of Agincourt, and won and wore the t.i.tle of King of France. Then came the Wars of the Roses and the turbulent termination to a period of six centuries during which the English Monarchs had represented the military spirit of their times, and had led in the rough process of struggle and conquest out of which was growing the United Kingdom of to-day.
With the reign of Henry VIII. commenced the period of religious change--the struggles for religious liberty against ecclesiastical dominance. Limited as were the achievements of Henry and Elizabeth, in this respect, by prevailing bigotry and narrowness of view as well as by diverse personal characteristics, they none the less did great service to the country and the people. The rule of Cromwell--who, in the exercise of Royal power and the possession of regal personal ability, may properly be included in such a connection--gave that liberty of wors.h.i.+p to a portion of the ma.s.ses with which previous Sovereigns had more especially endowed the cla.s.ses. During the reign of the Stuarts religious dissensions and ecclesiastical controversies and intermittent persecutions, ill.u.s.trated the predominant pa.s.sion of the period; and forced the weak or indifferent monarch of the moment to be an unconscious factor in the progress towards that general toleration which the Revolution of 1688 and the crowning of William and Mary finally accomplished. But, whether it was Henry persecuting the monks, or Elizabeth the Roman Catholics, or Mary the Protestants, or Cromwell the Episcopalians, or Charles II. the Dissenters, each ruler was being led, to a great degree, by the undercurrent of surrounding bigotry and was, in the main, representative of a strong, popular sentiment of the time.
Henry voiced the national uprising against Rome, just as the second Charles embodied popular reaction against the Puritans, and as William of Orange was enabled to lead a successful opposition to the gloomy and personal bigotry of the last of the Royal Stuarts.
The third period of British monarchical history in this connection was that marked by the growth toward const.i.tutional government under the sway of the House of Hanover. Coupled with this was the equally important foundation of a great Colonial empire, and the loss of a large portion of it in the reign of George III. But the development of const.i.tutional rule under the Georges should not be confounded with the growth of the popular and Imperial system which exists to-day. The latter is simply a progressive evolution out of the aristocratic and oligarchical government of the Hanoverian period, just as that system had been a step from the kingly power of the Tudors and the Stuarts, which, in turn, had arisen upon the ruins of feudalism and military monarchical power. It is this gradual growth, this ”gently broadening down from precedent to precedent,” which makes the British const.i.tution of to-day the more or less perfected result of centuries of experience and struggle. But that result has only been made possible by a peculiar series of national adjustments in which the power of the Monarchs has been modified from time to time to suit the will of the people, while the ability of individual Sovereigns has been at the same time given full scope in which to exercise wise kingcraft or p.r.o.nounced military skill. It has, in fact, been a most elastic system in its application and to that elasticity has been due its prolonged stability of form under a succession of dynastic or personal changes.
THE CONSt.i.tUTION AND THE MONARCHY
It is a common mistake to minimize the importance and value of the aristocratic rule by which the government of England was graded down from the high exercise of royal power under the Tudors and Stuarts to that beneficial exercise of royal influence which marks the opening of the present century period. To the aristocracy of those two centuries is mainly due the fact that the growth from paternal government and personal rule to direct popular administration was a gradual development, through only occasional scenes of storm and stress, instead of involving a succession of revolutions alternating with civil war.
Somers and G.o.dolphin, Walpole and Chatham, Pitt and Shelburne, Eldon and Canning, Grey and Liverpool, Wellington and Durham, Melbourne and Palmerston, were all of this aristocratic cla.s.s, though of varying degrees in rank and t.i.tle and with varied views of politics. They filled the chief places in the Government of the country during a period when the people were being slowly trained in the perception and practice of const.i.tutional and religious liberty. At the best such processes are difficult and often prove bitter tests of national endurance; and it was well for Great Britain that the two centuries under review produced a cla.s.s of able and cultured men who--though naturally aristocratic at heart--were upon the whole honestly bent upon furthering the best interests of the ma.s.ses. And this despite the mistakes of a Danby or a North.
Yet, even towards the close of this period of preparation, popular government, as now practised, was neither understood by the immediate predecessors of Queen Victoria, nor by the n.o.bles who presided over the changing administrations of the day. It was not clearly comprehended by Liberals like Russell and Grey; it was feared by Wellington and the Tories as being republican and revolutionary; it was dreaded by many who could hardly be called Tories and who, in the condition of things then prevalent, could scarcely even be termed Loyalists. Writing in 1812, Charles Knight, the historian, described the fierce national struggle of the previous twenty years with Napoleon and expressed a longing wish for the prop of a sincere and spontaneous loyalty to the throne in the critical times that were to follow. But such a sentiment of loyalty was not then expressed, and could hardly have been publicly evoked by a ruler of the type of George IV., whether governing as Prince-Regent or as King.
There is, however, no doubt of its having existed, and there seems to have been, even through those troubled years, an inborn spirit of loyalty to the Crown as being the symbol of the State and of public order. Its wearer might make mistakes and be personally unpopular, but he represented the nation as a whole and must consequently be respected.
This powerful feeling has often in English history made the bravest and strongest submit to slights from their Sovereign, and has won the most disinterested devotion and energetic action from men who have never even seen the Monarch in whose personal character there was sometimes little to evoke or deserve such faith and sacrifice. For ages this loyalty had been the preservative of society in England, and it is still indispensable to the tranquility and permanence of a state, whether given in its full degree to the Sovereign of Great Britain, or in a more divided sense to the elective and partisan head of a modern republic.
In the time of the Georges, as well as in the middle ages and at the present moment, loyalty was and is a sincere and honest patriotism, refining the instincts and elevating the actions of those who were willing to waive self-interest on any given occasion in order to guard what they believed to be the true basis of national stability and order.
Certainly, a Monarchy which could survive the wars and European revolutions, the internal discontents and personal deficiencies, of the period which commenced with the reign of George I. and closed with that of William IV., must have possessed some inherent strength greater than may be gathered from many of the superficial works which pa.s.s for history. But, whatever that influence was, it does not appear to have been personal. With the close of the reign of Queen Anne the brilliant _prestige_ of personal authority and power wielded by the Sovereign had pa.s.sed quietly away and, up to the death of William IV. and the accession of Victoria, had not been replaced by the personal influence of a const.i.tutional ruler.
PRESENT POSITION OF THE MONARCHY
Out of all these changing developments has come a military position in which the Sovereign no longer leads his forces in war but in which he commands a sentiment of loyalty as hearty, in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the Colonial soldiers ten thousand miles away from his home at Windsor, as ever did the personal presence of an Edward I., or a Richard the Lion-Hearted. Out of them has come a religious position in which the Sovereign is head of a particular Church and yet, as such, gives no serious offence to ma.s.ses of his subjects who belong to other faiths and who receive through his Governments around the world absolute freedom of religious wors.h.i.+p--almost as a matter of course. Out of the const.i.tutional evolution has come the adaptation of the Monarchy to not only new conditions but to countries separated by oceans and continents from the mother-state, and the evolution of a system which combines 420,000,000 people under one Crown and one flag. In August, 1884, the _Times_ spoke of a correspondent amongst the Khirgese of Central Asia who stated that the people of that region had not the remotest idea of where or what England was--but they had heard of Queen Victoria; and a few years later Mr. Henry Labouchere, the inconsistent and bitter Radical, told the _Forum_ of New York that ”were a Parliamentary candidate to address an electoral meeting on the advantages of a republic he would be deemed a tilter at a windmill.”
Such is a summary of the history and position of the British Monarchy. A thousand years ago it combined the seven little Kingdoms of England into one; to-day it combines the Kingdoms and Dominions and Commonwealths and Islands of a quarter of the earth's surface into one. The power of the Crown was once chiefly employed in making war and compelling peace by force of arms and military skill; to-day it is largely utilized in promoting peace and controlling diplomacy. The position of the Monarch was once that of the head of a cla.s.s, or the leader of some distinct manifestation of public feeling, or the military chief of a great faction; to-day it is that of embodying the power of a united people, giving dignified interpretation to the policy of a nation, and serving as the symbol of unity to the ma.s.ses of population in an extended empire.
One of the interesting features in the Crown's popularity and influence is the absence of serious criticism or controversy over the expense of its maintenance. Perhaps the only practical expression of disapproval affecting the Monarchy heard during Queen Victoria's long reign was an occasional grumbling as to the paucity of Court functions, the absence of Royal splendour and expenditures from the City of London, the sombreness and quiet which characterized the ordinary, everyday life of the Sovereign. The total financial cost of the Monarchy has been placed at a million pounds sterling per annum, but this total includes various large sums which could just as properly be charged to the ordinary governing requirements of the country without reference to the particular form of its inst.i.tutions. Against this sum may also be placed the proceeds of the Crown Lands which were surrendered to Parliament upon the accession of William and Mary and which had before that been recognized as a personal estate of the Sovereign over which Parliament had no control. In addition to these Crown Land revenues other sums were voted as required. Upon their surrender to the nation (during the life of each Sovereign) it has become the custom, since 1868, to vote a permanent Civil List for the ensuing reign and out of this sum the ordinary Court and personal expenses are supposed to be met. In the case of Queen Victoria the amount was 385,000 a year, supplemented, however, by other votes and special allowances to herself and the Royal family from time to time.
Upon her accession the Queen retained out of the old Crown Lands, or revenues, those of the Duchy of Lancaster and they have risen in value from 20,000 to 50,000 per annum. The Royal palaces are maintained apart from the Civil List and the building of Royal yachts and other similar expenses are considered as additional items. The revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall, which have always pertained to the Prince of Wales, and the incomes or special sums voted to the members of the Royal family, make up an amount nearly as large as the Civil List. But these apparently large sums have not in recent years created any feeling of dissatisfaction; nor has any been expressed save by certain individuals of the Labouchere type, who possess little influence and less sincerity.
Upon the whole the situation in this connection possesses considerable interest to the student of history, or of popular sentiment, as showing how a practical, business-loving, money-making people can become devoted to an inst.i.tution which must in the nature of things be expensive and which, in the ratio of its dignity and effectiveness as an embodiment of growing national power, must be increasingly so as the years roll on.
The reason for this condition of feeling is the combination which the Monarchy has during the past century come to present to the minds of the public. Tradition and history reaching down into the hearts and lives of the people may be considered the basic influence; a general belief in the superiority of British inst.i.tutions over all others may be stated as a powerful conservative force; while personality and character in the Sovereign may be described as the chief constructive element in this process of increasing loyalty to the Crown. Convenience, custom, love of ceremony, belief in stability and aversion to change, are lesser factors which may be mentioned. The result is that Mr. George W. Smalley, for so many years the American correspondent of the New York _Tribune_ in London, could write recently in the _Century_ the belief of a foreigner and a republican that ”England is a very democratic country, but there does not exist in England the vestige of a republican party.”
King Edward, therefore, came to the throne of Great Britain and its Empire at a time when the influence of the Sovereign was growing in proportion as the influence and popularity of Parliament appeared to be waning. Fifty years before his accession it was a truism to a.s.sert that power in England was being steadily concentrated in the House of Commons; to-day it may be said with equal truth that the position of the Crown is growing steadily in a power which is wielded by personal influence and popularity and which, while it touches no privilege, nor right, nor liberty of Parliament, increases in proportion as the latter body is relegated to the back-ground by public opinion and popular interest. Vast responsibility, therefore, rests to-day in the hands of a British Sovereign and the results for good or ill, depend largely upon his character, his training, his previous career and his present sense of duty. Alarm has even been expressed upon this point by historical theorists such as Professor Beesly and Dr. Goldwin Smith. Certain it is, however, that in the hands of King Edward this growing power was safe.
If prolonged experience and acquired statecraft and intimate knowledge of his people can be considered sufficient guarantees for its exercise, it is also safe in the hands of King George.
CHAPTER II.
Early Years and Education of the Prince
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