PERSONAL RULE: A REPLY.

THE reader of political reviews and magazines, and those insatiable politicians who devour the Long Vacation speeches of our public men, must have been conscious for some time past of a novel element creeping into the controversies of the day. When rival statesmen had abused each other to their hearts' content but a short time since, we might still have searched the most vehement of their diatribes in vain to find the name of the highest personage in the realm dragged into the quarrel. Within the last two years, however, and more particularly since the publication of the last two volumes of the Life of the Prince Consort, a whisper swelling by degrees into a distinct party cry has been raised against personal government,' which first Baron Stockmar, and secondly the present Prime Minister, are charged with attempting to revive. I confess I have never been able to understand what the charge means, and for a long time I thought very little about the matter. But when I observed no less an authority than Mr. Goldwin Smith writing as if he really believed that the alarm was a just one, and not a mere scarecrow invented for party purposes, I began to wonder; and as wonder is the parent of knowledge, I hoped I might sooner or later find out what this mystery may be. Mr. Goldwin Smith is not a man to be led astray by will o' the wisps, or to imperil his reputation by endorsing a puerility. There must be more, I thought, in this than meets the eye-something which is known only to those who are behind the scenes, and which simple outsiders like myself naturally fail to comprehend. When Mr. Dunckley's article on Personal Rule appeared in this Review, I turned to it at once for information. But I did not find myself much forwarder. I found, indeed, that

of late the nation has begun to feel that it has not the same control as it once had over what may truly be called its destinies-those decisions in matters of policy which tell upon the future with the combined force of logic and of fact. We are half aware of being led by unseen guides away from the beaten track. The helm of the State is governed by orders which we have not given and are not permitted to hear. In proportion as the consciousness of the nation becomes restricted and paralysed we seem to discern the growing expansion of a subtile political presence, 'vast if undefined,' which draws into itself the vitality we

are losing, and, in kindly consideration for our diminished powers, eases us of the trouble of volition.

But as I read this I felt myself in the position of Rasselas when he asked Imlac what might be the precise meaning of his advice to live according to nature. To live according to nature,' said the philosopher, is to act always with due regard to the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of causes and effects; to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme of universal felicity; to co-operate with the general disposition and tendency of the present system of things.' The Prince, adds Johnson, soon found that this was 'one of the sages whom he should understand less as he heard him longer.' Mr. Dunckley's explanation, if he will excuse me for saying so, still requires to be explained, if plain men are to understand him. I am still obliged to ask what is the precise meaning of personal government. It cannot mean merely the exercise of unquestioned prerogatives by Ministers responsible to Parliament; for personal government in that sense has never ceased to exist in this country, and cannot therefore be revived. It cannot mean the revival of the monarchical constitution which existed before 1688; for although Mr. Dunckley distinctly charges Lord Beaconsfield with 'seeking to restore the monarchy to the position it occupied in the days of Charles the First,' charity forbids us to suppose that he really means what he says.

What I have always understood by personal rule is the claim of the Sovereign to dictate the policy of the government, to require that his Ministers shall recommend it to Parliament with their united authority, and to dismiss them if they decline to do so. As in England it is useless to dismiss one Ministry unless another can be found possessing the confidence of the House of Commons, personal government further implies either some machinery for influencing or managing that assembly, or else that the King should always be sure of support if he appeals to the nation. By one means or the other George the Third did succeed in exercising this power for the greater part of his reign. He did so during Lord North's administration. He did so on Pitt's return to power in 1804. And again in the case of Lord Grenville in 1806. But it is not asserted to my knowledge that her Majesty has done anything of the kind. Does anybody pretend to say that on the Eastern question, for instance, or the Afghan question, the Queen took one view and Lord Beaconsfield another, and that the Premier, like Lord North, suppressed his own convictions in deference to the will of her Majesty? Personal government means government by the Sovereign in person. It has never yet been understood to mean simply the concurrence of the Crown and the Minister in any given course of policy distasteful to the country or otherwise. The expression was made use of by Lord North himself during the negotiations which preceded the formation

of the Coalition Ministry. There was to be nothing 'personal,' he agreed, in the new system. And at another time he described the system of George the Third from 1770 to 1782 as 'government by departments,' the King himself being chief minister, and directing the whole machine. But nobody called it personal government when her Majesty, through Mr. Gladstone, exercised her royal prerogative to override one branch of the Legislature.

Personal government is when the Sovereign acts by himself on his own personal convictions, and it does not imply that he is to have no convictions at all, or that on subjects with which he is specially well acquainted he is never to offer a suggestion. I mean that it has never been held to imply this; and that whenever the personal government of any of our own kings or of any Continental sovereign has been the subject of discussion, it has been held to mean a great deal more. I am not now concerned in defending Baron Stockmar, or the late Prince Consort, or King Leopold. But I think it will be found, that if during the administration of Lord John Russell and Lord Aberdeen, the Queen, as Mr. Dunckley says, 'actually took a side,' it was not so much due to the teaching of Baron Stockmar, who had recommended absolute neutrality,' as to the counsels of those friends of her youth who have generally been considered the special champions of the Constitution. This advice to the Crown to keep quite above and aloof from party, was called 'nonsense' by Lord Melbourne. This, however, by the way. I hope to say a few words presently on the attitude of the Crown towards political parties and politics. At present I return to the question of what is practically meant by personal government in Mr. Dunckley's essay.

The treaty-making power of the Crown, he says, only strains the Constitution, but does not violate it; and he will not therefore undertake to call the Anglo-Turkish convention an illustration of personal government. All I can say is, that if this prerogative is any real strain on the Constitution, the Constitution must be uncommonly tough: since it has borne the same strain without injury for nearly two hundred years. The employment of Indian troops, he says, can only be reconciled to the Constitution by special pleading.' If Mr. Dunckley calls the speech of Lord Cairns on that subject special pleading, he has of course the same right to do so as he has to charge Lord Beaconsfield with a deliberate attempt to restore the monarchy of the Stuarts. I think he has been unwise in exercising this right, just as all men are unwise who - seek to strengthen a serious argument by the use of hyperbole. But that is a matter of opinion. It is not likely that I should attempt to reproduce the fine historical argument of the Lord Chancellor in a short Review article. But allowing, under protest, that there is a great deal to be said on both sides, the public, I think, has pretty plainly manifested its opinion that the ministers who at a

critical emergency did not shrink from the responsibility of action should be allowed the benefit of the doubt. These are the only two approximations to any evidence in support of his charge which Mr. Dunckley has to offer. One is worthless, because he does not even pretend himself that in making treaties without consulting Parliament the Queen is usurping any new prerogative; and the other is worth very little, because in calling Indian troops to Malta the Government was, if not doing what had frequently been done before, only acting for the public good, on the maxim that salus populi suprema lex est, and in a manner which seems to have been directly contemplated by the India Bill of 1858. Mr. Dunckley does not seem to see to what lengths his own argument would carry him. If, says he, the Queen can summon 7000 Sepoys to Malta, she might land 70,000 at Southampton, and destroy our liberties. Supposing that she might, what then? Does not Mr. Dunckley see that his whole general argument rests on the very assumption which this particular argument destroys— the assumption, namely, that the Crown will not misuse to this extent the large powers which, as Mr. Gladstone so vividly points out, are still entrusted to it? It is assumed, says he, that the various depositaries of power will respect one another, and display not less than an average sense of equity and of the public interests and rights. Certainly. The Constitution works through a series of general understandings, and depends entirely on the moderation and good sense of all parties concerned in it. But then this is just the guarantee we have that the Crown will not bring 70,000 Sepoys to Southampton. We have no other guarantee that it may not equally misuse all its other great powers. Mr. Dunckley's argument is as good in principle against any standing army at all, as it is against this particular employment of our Indian standing army.

If Mr. Dunckley has nothing more to show than this, I maintain that his case breaks down. For it is really idle to point to such circumstances as those of 1868 in support of this charge. To say that Mr. Disraeli was bound to resign as soon as he was beaten on Mr. Gladstone's resolutions, and that the Queen had no right either to dissolve Parliament instead of accepting his resignation, or, supposing that she had, to put off the dissolution till she could appeal to the new constituencies, is to fly in the face of our whole Parliamentary history. However, let us take the testimony of two eminent Englishmen, to both of whom I suppose Mr. Dunckley will defer-Sir Robert Peel and Lord Macaulay. Writing of the ministerial transactions of 1834-5, Sir Robert Peel deliberately weighs the comparative expediency of the various courses then open to him, and justifies solely on grounds of convenience the one which he adopted. He thought that the King's dismissal of his Ministers was a premature and impolitic step; but he most distinctly maintained that in so doing his Majesty

was acting strictly not only within the limits of the Constitution, but according to the spirit in which it was to be administered after the Reform Bill of 1832. And he considered that he was himself, if he had chosen, perfectly at liberty to have tried conclusions with the existing Parliament, and to have endeavoured to wear out the adverse majority as Pitt had done in 1783. He was perfectly prepared, on constitutional grounds only, to take up a position in the House of Commons as the King's Minister, though only at the head of a minority, and to encounter successive defeats till he had either converted the House or had enlisted the sympathies of the nation in his own favour. He did not adopt this course-not, I repeat, because it was unconstitutional, but because he thought it would be unsuccessful.

Macaulay, writing of Mr. Pitt's behaviour in 1783-4, says that, instead of dissolving at once, Pitt wisely determined to give public opinion time to ripen. According to Mr. Dunckley's doctrine, Pitt should have resigned at once; or, supposing that he ought to have dissolved at once, then what appeared wisdom to Lord Macaulay was really a breach of the Constitution under the auspices of personal government. I return therefore to my original question. What has Lord Beaconsfield done, with the one very doubtful exception of the Indian troops, which has not been done by almost every Prime Minister in succession since the establishment of constitutional government; and what has her Majesty done during the last four years of her reign which she has not been in the habit of doing without question ever since she came to the throne?

I may be told, perhaps, that there is no necessity to insist on the word revival: that prerogatives, the exercise of which has not hitherto been disputed, have been gradually becoming inconsistent with the expanding powers of the House of Commons; that there must be a first time for all objections to be raised; and that nobody is cut off from protesting against powers now, because up to the present moment they have been cheerfully recognised. If this is what is meant: if the treatymaking power of the Crown, or the command of the army, is to be taken away from it; if the time has arrived when it is proper to make further changes in the Constitution, and to curtail the prerogatives which her Majesty has inherited from her ancestors-that is another question. If the real offence is not the revival of a dormant power, but the continued exercise of one which has never been suspended; and if, as would then be the case, Parliament, and not the Crown, is the aggressor and innovator, the controversy assumes a different complexion; and all abuse levelled at particular persons is beside the mark. If we are to have a new Revolution, so be it. But nobody has a right to reproach either the Queen or her Ministers with the exercise of powers of which she finds herself in possession, and which had been continuously exercised down to the formation of the present Government.