even more than his usual indiscretion, maintained that the House could not constitutionally be dissolved, and that if the king exerted his authority to dissolve Parliament he would violate constitutional precedent and bring about the enormity of a penal dissolution. Burke's doctrine had some plausibility. He could rely upon custom extending over seventy years (1714-1784). 'No Prince of the Hanoverian line' (writes Macaulay) 'had ventured to appeal from the representative body to the constituent body.' There were circumstances, further, of intrigue connected with the fall of the Coalition which all Whigs, and many moderate men who were not Whigs, condemned. But the king dared a dissolution. He appealed from a parliamentary majority to the sovereignty of the nation. The country responded to the call. Englishmen denied the supremacy of the House of Commons and practically affirmed the sovereignty of the people, and banished from power the Whigs of 1784 for well-nigh fifty years. Burke detested an appeal to the electors as much as Lord Morley, we regret to say, detests the Referendum. Burke denounced the dissolution with an imprudence of which Lord Morley could never be guilty, as a sort of coup d'état by which a 'Parliament had been sentenced, condemned, and executed.' The curiosity of the thing is that the most philosophical Radical of to-day falls back into the attitude of the Old Whig of 1783, and by his reference to a penal dissolution recalls, inadvertently, the two pregnant facts that, on the one great occasion when the House of Lords defied a majority of the House of Commons, the Peers were victorious, and that they gained their triumph because the people of England would not acknowledge the sovereignty of a parliamentary majority which defied the will of the nation. We do not, however, wish to lay too much stress on constitutional precedents however encouraging they may be by way of omens.

The second error of the Cabinet is of far more importance. Ministers have overlooked the fact, patent on every page of constitutional history, that the people of England are intensely influenced by moral considerations. The party which adheres, or even seems to adhere, to the plain maxims of public morals has always in the long run been victorious. Now the most notorious repre

sentatives of the Cabinet are those eminent demagogue the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Presiden of the Board of Trade. The lack of self-control, the violence, the passion, and the gross misrepresentations of the one, and the tergiversations of the other, are not to the taste of the English people. Nor does the plausibility, the suppleness, and the weakness of the Prime Minister please the country, which wants a leader, and looks with suspicion on an advocate. We are well assured that the moral feeling of an untold number of moderate men has been offended. Unionists suffer much and may suffer more by their honest division of opinion as to economical doctrines, but if they keep their heads cool, and keep clear of all discreditable political alliances, they will find a source of unbounded and ever-increasing strength in their respect for the authority of the nation, and in their adherence to the plain dictates of political morality and honesty. Let them with Burke proclaim that the principles of true politics are those of morality enlarged; let them so act as to be able with him to assert that the principles which guide us, as they are not of our devising, but moulded into the nature and essence of things, will endure with the sun and moon long, and very long, after the name of Whig and Tory'-or, we may surely add, of Unionist and Home-ruler, of Free-trader and Tariffreformer-' and all such miserable bubbles and playthings of the hour, are vanished from existence and from memory.'

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THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

No. 423.-APRIL, 1910.

Art. 1.-SOCIETY AND POLITICS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

1. The Correspondence of Priscilla, Countess of Westmorland, 1813-1870. London: Murray, 1909.

2. Memoirs of the Duchesse de Dino, 1831-1835. London: Heinemann, 1909.

3. Memories of Fifty Years. By Lady St Helier. London: Arnold, 1909.

If we examine the connexion between politics and Society in the nineteenth century, and consider how far the course of public events and the careers of public men were influenced by the life of country houses and drawing-rooms, we shall see at once that a great change had come over the spirit of the age since the days of the Stuarts and the first of the Hanoverian kings. Not so easy will it be to ascribe to these social influences their exact measure and right value. One shrinks from so obvious a platitude as the observation that the destinies of men and races have been affected by women for evil or for good since the days of Cleopatra; indeed since Eve walked in the Garden of Eden. George II, in one of his boastful moods, declared that Charles II had been governed by his mistresses, James II by his priests, William III by his ministers, Anne by her women. 'Who do they say governs now?' he asked; and the meek Queen, who ruled him, and through him ruled England, without his knowing it, encouraged his delusion. Frederick, Prince of Wales, was shrewd enough to appreciate his mother's ability in spite of their mutual hatred. He would never Vol. 212.-No. 423.

Y

make the ridiculous figure his father had done,' said he, in letting his wife govern him or meddle with business which no woman was fit for.' He did not live long enough to put this resolution to the proof. His wife was not without political aptitude, but she was forced to yield authority to her son. George IV was at the mercy of many women, but it may be premised that when the nineteenth century began, that system was extinct under which all men alike, courtiers, soldiers, and statesmen, were dependent for advancement and security upon the women who enjoyed the sovereign's favour. It must be admitted that this power was never more extensively exercised than when it was a woman that occupied the throne. George II spoke truly of Queen Anne, but his mistresses only lacked authority because the Queen herself wielded it, not openly, but none the less surely. More than one ambitious man, Chesterfield amongst them, made the mistake of courting the mistress instead of the wife. Walpole detected the reality, and through the Queen's confidence kept his own power firm. Caroline died in 1737, and power no doubt passed into the hands of Lady Yarmouth (Walmoden). Even the austere Pitt succumbed. cords that, on October 21, 1756,

Horace Walpole re

The Pages of the Backcrying, "Mr Pitt wants

'the palace had its solitude alarmed. stairs were seen hurrying about and my Lady Yarmouth." That great stranger made her an abrupt visit said he had come to explain himself, lest it should be thought he had not been sufficiently explicit.'

But the days of the mistresses were passing. Their sway had been great and undisguised. It was not through the unavowed persuasions or exertions of private life that they had governed; they were the recognised dispensers of patronage and agents for parties. They had to be courted assiduously, but with nothing of the delicacy of private life. Their reign, however, was now over; and it is noteworthy that no other kind of feminine influence immediately succeeded it. If one would observe how little the counsel of women was allowed to weigh in the management of their husbands' affairs, it may be taken as a sign that until the early years of the nineteenth century, bachelor parties were general. The men dined

fet

and drank and hunted and plotted together; they had no need of women to urge them, and encourage, and advise. There is a striking contrast between the habits of Ministers a century apart. In 1720 Secretary Craggs wrote to Lord Stanhope:

'There dined yesterday at Lord Sunderland's the dukes of
Devonshire and Newcastle, Lord Carlisle, Lord Townshend,
Lord Lumley, the Speaker, Walpole and I, and we got, some
very drunk, and others very merry. Lord Falmouth, whom
the publick nicknamed Lord Foulmouth . . .'

On November 13, 1834, Greville recorded that Lord
Sefton told him

'that Mrs Lane Fox's house was become the great rendezvous
of a considerable part of the Cabinet. The Chancellor, Mel-
bourne, Duncannon, and Mulgrave are there every day and
all day; they all dine with her, or meet her (the only woman)
at each other's houses, as often as they can.'

We may say then that the new century brought with it a new condition in the relations between politics and Society; henceforward the part to be played by women was to be of a very different character. The position of the King's mistress had been fully recognised and was almost official. The women of Society were not expected and did not aspire to meddle with public affairs. Passive obedience is a doctrine which should always be received amongst wives and daughters,' wrote the sprightly Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and the women of her day were usually content to restrict their energies to domestic duties and recreations.

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'You'll wonder, perhaps, to hear that Lord Gower is a topping courtier' (she wrote to Lady Mar); 'there is something extremely risible in these affairs, but not so proper to be communicated by letter; and so I will in an humble way return to my domestics.'

It is true that this rule had its exceptions. Long after es her days at Court were numbered, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, occupied herself eagerly with State affairs. It must be borne in mind that she was no ordinary woman; she had governed Queen Anne, and ruled a greater than she, the Duke himself. Power to her was indispensable; if not power, then to be defying power.