Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/69

Rh if our knowledge were increased, we should perhaps form a far different opinion. So it may well be with the questions which perplex us when we contemplate the short duration of the life-sustaining condition of each world and sun and galaxy compared with the whole existence of these several orders. The arrangement which seems so wasteful of space and time and matter and force, may in reality involve the most perfect possible use and employment of every portion of space, every instant of time, every particle of matter, every form of force.

 

 From The Spectator.

paper on the Court of Queen Victoria in the Contemporary Review for this month, if not so interesting as it was expected to be, has nevertheless a certain real importance. It is rumoured to be the work of Mr. Gladstone, the internal evidence of style is in favour of the rumour, and if it is written, or even inspired, by the late premier, it contains, amid much that must be accounted verbiage — we mean no disrespect by the phrase, great orators rarely can write concisely — a definite opinion by a statesman of unusual experience as to the precise position of the sovereign in our modern Constitution. This opinion is summed up in the statement quoted everywhere this week, that during the long reign of Queen Victoria the kingship has finally been transformed by the silent "substitution of influence for power." Not that the power in its more direct form has wholly departed. According to the essayist, "the whole power of the State periodically returns into the royal hands whenever a ministry is changed," the sovereign, though no longer able to reject a policy on which her counsellors have decided, as George III. and George IV. for many years rejected Catholic emancipation, being still able to delay, to prevent, or greatly to modify an impending change in the administration. This actually occurred in 1839, on the resignation of Lord Melbourne, when the queen, then a girl, did, says the essayist, by an exercise of will on what was known as the bedchamber question, delay the entrance of Sir Robert Peel to office for two and a half years. Of course Sir Robert Peel's position as premier, without a clear majority, was a special one; but still he might have formed a sufficiently stable ministry, but for the determined resistance of the queen, a resistance which on the point at issue was ultimately successful. It is rumoured also that a direct exercise of power was made when in 1858 the queen, by positively refusing to sign any more Indian commissions, forced the policy of amalgamation upon her advisers; and in 1851, when Lord Palmerston was so sharply expelled from place, the sovereign's displeasure was certainly the cause. As a rule, however, influence has been substituted for power, and the object of the essayist, apart from his eulogy on the Prince Consort which is just, but in this year of grace a little tiresome, is to show that this transformation, which is now, he believes, "matured," still leaves the throne a most important factor in the constitutional system.

There can be no doubt that the essayist is correct as to the fact, but the explanations he advances for the fact do not, we confess, content us. That Queen Victoria has great power in Great Britain, much greater power than she is popularly believed to have, is, we imagine, a statement which will be accepted or denied in exact proportion to the questioner's experience or ignorance of the inner political life of this country during the last thirty years; and this power is not derived entirely from either her history, which is only half remembered by the new generation, or her character, which is only partially understood. Any sovereign who would work must, while the throne endures, have in this country a considerable share of power. After all the changes and transformations which have taken place in the authority of the English kings, the occupant of the throne has still a right of secret supervision of the most effective kind. He must be told, often at an immense expenditure of energy, the secret history of everything that occurs. If he objects, he must be persuaded. If he remonstrates, he must be conciliated. If he argues, he must have a reason; and if he writes, he must have an intelligible and adequate reply. Moreover, all these necessities must be complied with in a deferential manner, by men who would lose power if considered to have treated the sovereign with disrespect, and by men who either feel for themselves or recognize that others feel that mystical influence of the