Page images
PDF
EPUB

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 govern

ment.

We have had an awful instance of the dangers of constitutional 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. 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 more than they know themselves, which overpowers them

much more than the public believe, which is irresponsible because it is inscrutable, which cannot be prevented because it cannot be seen. The benefits of a good monarch are almost invaluable, but the evils of a bad monarch are almost irreparable.

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

89

No. IV.

THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

IN my last essay I showed that it was possible for a constitutional monarch to be, when occasion served, of firstrate 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 conjuncture the two most singular prerogatives of an English king-the power of creating new peers and the power of dissolving the Commons-come into play; and we cannot duly criticise the use or misuse of these powers till we know what the peers are and what the House of 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 attracts 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

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 newlymade rich man who sits beside him. The common peasantry will listen to his nonsense more submissively than to the new man's sense. An old lord will get infinite respect. His very existence is so far useful that it awakens the sensation of obedience to a sort of mind in the coarse, dull, contracted multitude, who could neither appreciate or perceive any other.

It prevents

This is the

He is

The order of nobility is of great use, too, not only in what it creates, but in what it prevents. the rule of wealth-the religion of gold. obvious and natural idol of the Anglo-Saxon. 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 what we are if we do anything better), we shall of necessity respect and admire those who play successfully, and a little despise those who play unsuccessfully. Whether this feeling be right or wrong, it is useless to discuss; to a certain degree, it is involuntary: it is not for mortals to settle whether we will have it or not; nature settles for us that, within moderate limits, we must have it. But the admiration of wealth in many countries goes far beyond this; it ceases to regard in any degree the skill of acquisition; it respects wealth in the hands of the inheritor just as much as in the hands of the maker; it is a simple envy and love of a heap of gold as a heap of gold. From this our aristocracy preserves us. There is no country where a 66 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 competition of idolatries, the true worship gets a chance. But it is not true that the reverence for rank—at least, for hereditary rank-is as base as the reverence for money. As the world has gone, manner has been half-hereditary in certain castes, and manner is one of the fine arts. It is the

« PreviousContinue »