2014년 12월 28일 일요일

The English Constitution 5

The English Constitution 5

If the sovereign has a genius for discernment, the aid which he can
give at such a crisis will be great. He will select for his Minister,
and if possible maintain as his Minister, the statesman upon whom the
moderate party will ultimately fix their choice, but for whom at the
outset it is blindly searching; being a man of sense, experience, and
tact, he will discern which is the combination of equilibrium, which is
the section with whom the milder members of the other sections will at
last ally themselves. Amid the shifting transitions of confused
parties, it is probable that he will have many opportunities of
exercising a selection. It will rest with him to call either on A B to
form an administration, or upon X Y, and either may have a chance of
trial. A disturbed state of parties is inconsistent with fixity, but it
abounds in momentary tolerance. Wanting something, but not knowing with
precision what, parties will accept for a brief period anything, to see
whether it may be that unknown something--to see what it will do.
During the long succession of weak Governments which begins with the
resignation of the Duke of Newcastle in 1762 and ends with the
accession of Mr. Pitt in 1784, the vigorous will of George III. was an
agency of the first magnitude. If at a period of complex and protracted
division of parties, such as are sure to occur often and last long in
every enduring Parliamentary government, the extrinsic force of royal
selection were always exercised discreetly, it would be a political
benefit of incalculable value.

But will it be so exercised? A constitutional sovereign must in the
common course of government be a man of but common ability. I am
afraid, looking to the early acquired feebleness of hereditary
dynasties, that we must expect him to be a man of inferior ability.
Theory and experience both teach that the education of a prince can be
but a poor education, and that a royal family will generally have less
ability than other families. What right have we then to expect the
perpetual entail on any family of an exquisite discretion, which if it
be not a sort of genius, is at least as rare as genius?

Probably in most cases the greatest wisdom of a constitutional king
would show itself in well-considered inaction. In the confused interval
between 1857 and 1859 the Queen and Prince Albert were far too wise to
obtrude any selection of their own. If they had chosen, perhaps they
would not have chosen Lord Palmerston. But they saw, or may be believed
to have seen, that the world was settling down without them, and that
by interposing an extrinsic agency, they would but delay the beneficial
crystallisation of intrinsic forces. There is, indeed, a permanent
reason which would make the wisest king, and the king who feels most
sure of his wisdom, very slow to use that wisdom. The responsibility of
Parliament should be felt by Parliament. So long as Parliament thinks
it is the sovereign's business to find a Government it will be sure not
to find a Government itself. The royal form of Ministerial government
is the worst of all forms if it erect the subsidiary apparatus into the
principal force, if it induce the assembly which ought to perform
paramount duties to expect some one else to perform them.

It should be observed, too, in fairness to the unroyal species of
Cabinet government, that it is exempt from one of the greatest and most
characteristic defects of the royal species. Where there is no Court
there can be no evil influence from a Court. What these influences are
every one knows; though no one, hardly the best and closest observer,
can say with confidence and precision how great their effect is. Sir
Robert Walpole, in language too coarse for our modern manners, declared
after the death of Queen Caroline, that he would pay no attention to
the king's daughters ("those girls," as he called them), but would rely
exclusively on Madame de Walmoden, the king's mistress. "The king,"
says a writer in George IV.'s time, "is in our favour, and what is more
to the purpose, the Marchioness of Conyngham is so too." Everybody
knows to what sort of influences several Italian changes of Government
since the unity of Italy have been attributed. These sinister agencies
are likely to be most effective just when everything else is troubled,
and when, therefore, they are particularly dangerous. The wildest and
wickedest king's mistress would not plot against an invulnerable
administration. But very many will intrigue when Parliament is
perplexed, when parties are divided, when alternatives are many, when
many evil things are possible, when Cabinet government must be
difficult.

It is very important to see that a good administration can be started
without a sovereign, because some colonial statesmen have doubted it.
"I can conceive," it has been said, "that a Ministry would go on well
enough without a governor when it was launched, but I do not see how to
launch it." It has even been suggested that a colony which broke away
from England, and had to form its own Government, might not unwisely
choose a governor for life, and solely trusted with selecting
Ministers, something like the Abbe Sieyes's grand elector. But the
introduction of such an officer into such a colony would in fact be the
voluntary erection of an artificial encumbrance to it. He would
inevitably be a party man. The most dignified post in the State must be
an object of contest to the great sections into which every active
political community is divided. These parties mix in everything and
meddle in everything; and they neither would nor could permit the most
honoured and conspicuous of all stations to be filled, except at their
pleasure. They know, too, that the grand elector, the great chooser of
Ministries, might be, at a sharp crisis, either a good friend or a bad
enemy. The strongest party would select some one who would be on their
side when he had to take a side, who would incline to them when he did
incline, who should be a constant auxiliary to them and a constant
impediment to their adversaries. It is absurd to choose by contested
party election an impartial chooser of Ministers.

But it is during the continuance of a Ministry, rather than at its
creation, that the functions of the sovereign will mainly interest most
persons, and that most people will think them to be of the gravest
importance. I own I am myself of that opinion. I think it may be shown
that the post of sovereign over an intelligent and political people
under a constitutional monarchy is the post which a wise man would
choose above any other--where he would find the intellectual impulses
best stimulated and the worst intellectual impulses best controlled.

On the duties of the Queen during an administration we have an
invaluable fragment from her own hand. In 1851 Louis Napoleon had his
coup d'etat: in 1852 Lord John Russell had his--he expelled Lord
Palmerston. By a most instructive breach of etiquette he read in the
House a royal memorandum on the duties of his rival. It is as follows:
"The Queen requires, first, that Lord Palmerston will distinctly state
what he proposes in a given case, in order that the Queen may know as
distinctly to what she is giving her royal sanction. Secondly, having
once given her sanction to such a measure that it be not arbitrarily
altered or modified by the Minister. Such an act she must consider as
failing in sincerity towards the Crown, and justly to be visited by the
exercise of her constitutional right of dismissing that Minister. She
expects to be kept informed of what passes between him and Foreign
Ministers before important decisions are taken based upon that
intercourse; to receive the foreign despatches in good time; and to
have the drafts for her approval sent to her in sufficient time to make
herself acquainted with their contents before they must be sent off."

In addition to the control over particular Ministers, and especially
over the Foreign Minister, the Queen has a certain control over the
Cabinet. The first Minister, it is understood, transmits to her
authentic information of all the most important decisions, together
with, what the newspapers would do equally well, the more important
votes in Parliament. He is bound to take care that she knows everything
which there is to know as to the passing politics of the nation. She
has by rigid usage a right to complain if she does not know of every
great act of her Ministry, not only before it is done, but while there
is yet time to consider it--while it is still possible that it may not
be done.

To state the matter shortly, the sovereign has, under a constitutional
monarchy such as ours, three rights--the right to be consulted, the
right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king of great sense and
sagacity would want no others. He would find that his having no others
would enable him to use these with singular effect. He would say to his
Minister: "The responsibility of these measures is upon you. Whatever
you think best must be done. Whatever you think best shall have my full
and effectual support. BUT you will observe that for this reason and
that reason what you propose to do is bad; for this reason and that
reason what you do not propose is better. I do not oppose, it is my
duty not to oppose; but observe that I WARN." Supposing the king to be
right, and to have what kings often have, the gift of effectual
expression, he could not help moving his Minister. He might not always
turn his course, but he would always trouble his mind.

In the course of a long reign a sagacious king would acquire an
experience with which few Ministers could contend. The king could say:
"Have you referred to the transactions which happened during such and
such an administration, I think about fourteen years ago? They afford
an instructive example of the bad results which are sure to attend the
policy which you propose. You did not at that time take so prominent a
part in public life as you now do, and it is possible you do not fully
remember all the events. I should recommend you to recur to them, and
to discuss them with your older colleagues who took part in them. It is
unwise to recommence a policy which so lately worked so ill." The king
would indeed have the advantage which a permanent under-secretary has
over his superior the Parliamentary secretary--that of having shared in
the proceedings of the previous Parliamentary secretaries. These
proceedings were part of his own life; occupied the best of his
thoughts, gave him perhaps anxiety, perhaps pleasure, were commenced in
spite of his dissuasion, or were sanctioned by his approval. The
Parliamentary secretary vaguely remembers that something was done in
the time of some of his predecessors, when he very likely did not know
the least or care the least about that sort of public business. He has
to begin by learning painfully and imperfectly what the permanent
secretary knows by clear and instant memory. No doubt a Parliamentary
secretary always can, and sometimes does, silence his subordinate by
the tacit might of his superior dignity. He says: "I do not think there
is much in all that. Many errors were committed at the time you refer
to which we need not now discuss." A pompous man easily sweeps away the
suggestions of those beneath him. But though a minister may so deal
with his subordinate, he cannot so deal with his king. The social force
of admitted superiority by which he overturned his under-secretary is
now not with him but against him. He has no longer to regard the
deferential hints of an acknowledged inferior, but to answer the
arguments of a superior to whom he has himself to be respectful. George
III. in fact knew the forms of public business as well or better than
any statesman of his time. If, in addition to his capacity as a man of
business and to his industry, he had possessed the higher faculties of
a discerning states man, his influence would have been despotic. The
old Constitution of England undoubtedly gave a sort of power to the
Crown which our present Constitution does not give. While a majority in
Parliament was principally purchased by royal patronage, the king was a
party to the bargain either with his Minister or without his Minister.
But even under our present Constitution a monarch like George III.,
with high abilities, would possess the greatest influence. It is known
to all Europe that in Belgium King Leopold has exercised immense power
by the use of such means as I have described.

It is known, too, to every one conversant with the real course of the
recent history of England, that Prince Albert really did gain great
power in precisely the same way. He had the rare gifts of a
constitutional monarch. If his life had been prolonged twenty years,
his name would have been known to Europe as that of King Leopold is
known. While he lived he was at a disadvantage. The statesmen who had
most power in England were men of far greater experience than himself.
He might, and no doubt did, exercise a great, if not a commanding
influence over Lord Malmesbury, but he could not rule Lord Palmerston.
The old statesman who governed England, at an age when most men are
unfit to govern their own families, remembered a whole generation of
states men who were dead before Prince Albert was born. The two were of
different ages and different natures. The elaborateness of the German
prince--an elaborateness which has been justly and happily compared
with that of Goethe--was wholly alien to the half-Irish, half-English,
statesman. The somewhat boisterous courage in minor dangers, and the
obtrusive use of an always effectual but not always refined,
commonplace, which are Lord Palmerston's defects, doubtless grated on
Prince Albert, who had a scholar's caution and a scholar's courage. The
facts will be known to our children's children, though not to us.
Prince Albert did much, but he died ere he could have made his
influence felt on a generation of statesmen less experienced than he
was, and anxious to learn from him.

It would be childish to suppose that a conference between a Minister
and his sovereign can ever be a conference of pure argument. "The
divinity which doth hedge a king" may have less sanctity than it had,
but it still has much sanctity. No one, or scarcely any one, can argue
with a Cabinet Minister in his own room as well as he would argue with
another man in another room. He cannot make his own points as well; he
cannot unmake as well the points presented to him. A monarch's room is
worse. The best instance is Lord Chatham, the most dictatorial and
imperious of English statesmen, and almost the first English statesman
who was borne into power against the wishes of the king and against the
wishes of the nobility--the first popular Minister. We might have
expected a proud tribune of the people to be dictatorial to his
sovereign--to be to the king what he was to all others. On the
contrary, he was the slave of his own imagination; there was a kind of
mystic enchantment in vicinity to the monarch which divested him of his
ordinary nature. "The least peep into the king's closet," said Mr.
Burke, "intoxicates him, and will to the end of his life." A wit said
that, even at the levee, he bowed so low that you could see the tip of
his hooked nose between his legs. He was in the habit of kneeling at
the bedside of George III. while transacting business. Now no man can
ARGUE on his knees. The same superstitious feeling which keeps him in
that physical attitude will keep him in a corresponding mental
attitude. He will not refute the bad arguments of the king as he will
refute another man's bad arguments. He will not state his own best
arguments effectively and incisively when he knows that the king would
not like to hear them. In a nearly balanced argument the king must
always have the better, and in politics many most important arguments
are nearly balanced. Whenever there was much to be said for the king's
opinion it would have its full weight; whatever was said for the
Minister's opinion would only have a lessened and enfeebled weight.

The king, too, possesses a power, according to theory, for extreme use
on a critical occasion, but which he can in law use on any occasion. He
can dissolve; he can say to his Minister, in fact, if not in words,
"This Parliament sent you here, but I will see if I cannot get another
Parliament to send some one else here." George III. well understood
that it was best to take his stand at times and on points when it was
perhaps likely, or at any rate not unlikely, the nation would support
him. He always made a Minister that he did not like tremble at the
shadow of a possible successor. He had a cunning in such matters like
the cunning of insanity. He had conflicts with the ablest men of his
time, and he was hardly ever baffled. He understood how to help a
feeble argument by a tacit threat, and how best to address it to an
habitual deference.

Perhaps such powers as these are what a wise man would most seek to
exercise and least fear to possess. To wish to be a despot, "to hunger
after tyranny," as the Greek phrase had it, marks in our day an
uncultivated mind. A person who so wishes cannot have weighed what
Butler calls the "doubtfulness things are involved in". To be sure you
are right to impose your will, or to wish to impose it, with violence
upon others; to see your own ideas vividly and fixedly, and to be
tormented till you can apply them in life and practice, not to like to
hear the opinions of others, to be unable to sit down and weigh the
truth they have, are but crude states of intellect in our present
civilisation. We know, at least, that facts are many; that progress is
complicated; that burning ideas (such as young men have) are mostly
false and always incomplete. The notion of a far-seeing and despotic
statesman, who can lay down plans for ages yet unborn, is a fancy
generated by the pride of the human intellect to which facts give no
support. The plans of Charlemagne died with him; those of Richelieu
were mistaken; those of Napoleon gigantesque and frantic. But a wise
and great constitutional monarch attempts no such vanities. His career
is not in the air; he labours in the world of sober fact; he deals with
schemes which can be effected--schemes which are desirable--schemes
which are worth the cost. He says to the Ministry his people send to
him, to Ministry after Ministry, "I think so and so; do you see if
there is anything in it. I have put down my reasons in a certain
memorandum, which I will give you. Probably it does not exhaust the
subject, but it will suggest materials for your consideration." By
years of discussion with Ministry after Ministry, the best plans of the
wisest king would certainly be adopted, and the inferior plans, the
impracticable plans, rooted out and rejected. He could not be uselessly
beyond his time, for he would have been obliged to convince the
representatives, the characteristic men of his time. He would have the
best means of proving that he was right on all new and strange matters,
for he would have won to his side probably, after years of discussion,
the chosen agents of the commonplace world--men who were where they
were, because they had pleased the men of the existing age, who will
never be much disposed to new conceptions or profound thoughts. A
sagacious and original constitutional monarch might go to his grave in
peace if any man could. He would know that his best laws were in
harmony with his age; that they suited the people who were to work
them, the people who were to be benefited by them. And he would have
passed a happy life. He would have passed a life in which he could
always get his arguments heard, in which he could always make those who
have the responsibility of action think of them before they acted--in
which he could know that the schemes which he had set at work in the
world were not the casual accidents of an individual idiosyncrasy,
which are mostly much wrong, but the likeliest of all things to be
right--the ideas of one very intelligent man at last accepted and acted
on by the ordinary intelligent many.

But can we expect such a king, or, for that is the material point, can
we expect a lineal series of such kings? Every one has heard the reply
of the Emperor Alexander to Madame de Stael, who favoured him with a
declamation in praise of beneficent despotism. "Yes, Madame, but it is
only a happy accident." He well knew that the great abilities and the
good intentions necessary to make an efficient and good despot never
were continuously combined in any line of rulers. He knew that they
were far out of reach of hereditary human nature. Can it be said that
the characteristic qualities of a constitutional monarch are more
within its reach? I am afraid it cannot. We found just now that the
characteristic use of an hereditary constitutional monarch, at the
outset of an administration, greatly surpassed the ordinary competence
of hereditary faculties. I fear that an impartial investigation will
establish the same conclusion as to his uses during the continuance of
an administration.

If we look at history, we shall find that it is only during the period
of the present reign that in England the duties of a constitutional
sovereign have ever been well performed. The first two Georges were
ignorant of English affairs, and wholly unable to guide them, whether
well or ill; for many years in their time the Prime Minister had, over
and above the labour of managing Parliament, to manage the
woman--sometimes the queen, sometimes the mistress--who managed the
sovereign; George III. interfered unceasingly, but he did harm
unceasingly; George IV. and William IV. gave no steady continuing
guidance, and were unfit to give it. On the Continent, in first-class
countries, constitutional royalty has never lasted out of one
generation. Louis Philippe, Victor Emmanuel, and Leopold are the
founders of their dynasties; we must not reckon in constitutional
monarchy any more than in despotic monarchy on the permanence in the
descendants of the peculiar genius which founded the race. As far as
experience goes, there is no reason to expect an hereditary series of
useful limited monarchs.

If we look to theory, there is even less reason to expect it. A monarch
is useful when he gives an effectual and beneficial guidance to his
Ministers. But these Ministers are sure to be among the ablest men of
their time. They will have had to conduct the business of Parliament so
as to satisfy it; they will have to speak so as to satisfy it. The two
together cannot be done save by a man of very great and varied ability.
The exercise of the two gifts is sure to teach a man much of the world;
and if it did not, a Parliamentary leader has to pass through a
magnificent training before he becomes a leader. He has to gain a seat
in Parliament; to gain the ear of Parliament; to gain the confidence of
Parliament; to gain the confidence of his colleagues. No one can
achieve these--no one, still more, can both achieve them and retain
them--without a singular ability, nicely trained in the varied detail
of life. What chance has an hereditary monarch such as nature forces
him to be, such as history shows he is, against men so educated and so
born? He can but be an average man to begin with; sometimes he will be
clever, but sometimes he will be stupid; in the long run he will be
neither clever nor stupid; he will be the simple, common man who plods
the plain routine of life from the cradle to the grave. His education
will be that of one who has never had to struggle; who has always felt
that he has nothing to gain; who has had the first dignity given him;
who has never seen common life as in truth it is. It is idle to expect
an ordinary man born in the purple to have greater genius than an
extraordinary man born out of the purple; to expect a man whose place
has always been fixed to have a better judgment than one who has lived
by his judgment; to expect a man whose career will be the same whether
he is discreet or whether he is indiscreet to have the nice discretion
of one who has risen by his wisdom, who will fall if he ceases to be
wise.

The characteristic advantage of a constitutional king is the permanence
of his place. This gives him the opportunity of acquiring a consecutive
knowledge of complex transactions, but it gives only an opportunity.
The king must use it. There is no royal road to political affairs:
their detail is vast, disagreeable, complicated, and miscellaneous. A
king, to be the equal of his Ministers in discussion, must work as they
work; he must be a man of business as they are men of business. Yet a
constitutional prince is the man who is most tempted to pleasure, and
the least forced to business. A despot must feel that he is the pivot
of the State. The stress of his kingdom is upon him. As he is, so are
his affairs. He may be seduced into pleasure; he may neglect all else;
but the risk is evident. He will hurt himself; he may cause a
revolution. If he becomes unfit to govern, some one else who is fit may
conspire against him. But a constitutional king need fear nothing. He
may neglect his duties, but he will not be injured. His place will be
as fixed, his income as permanent, his opportunities of selfish
enjoyment as full as ever. Why should he work? It is true he will lose
the quiet and secret influence which in the course of years industry
would gain for him; but an eager young man, on whom the world is
squandering its luxuries and its temptations, will not be much
attracted by the distant prospect of a moderate influence over dull
matters. He may form good intentions; he may say, "Next year I WILL
read these papers; I will try and ask more questions; I will not let
these women talk to me so". But they will talk to him. The most
hopeless idleness is that most smoothed with excellent plans. "The Lord
Treasurer," says Swift, "promised he will settle it to-night, and so he
will say a hundred nights." We may depend upon it the ministry whose
power will be lessened by the prince's attention will not be too eager
to get him to attend.

So it is if the prince come young to the throne; but the case is worse
when he comes to it old or middle-aged. He is then unfit to work. He
will then have spent the whole of youth and the first part of manhood
in idleness, and it is unnatural to expect him to labour. A
pleasure-loving lounger in middle life will not begin to work as George
III. worked, or as Prince Albert worked. The only fit material for a
constitutional king is a prince who begins early to reign--who in his
youth is superior to pleasure--who in his youth is willing to
labour--who has by nature a genius for discretion. Such kings are among
God's greatest gifts, but they are also among His rarest.

An ordinary idle king on a constitutional throne will leave no mark on
his time: he will do little good and as little harm; the royal form of
Cabinet government will work in his time pretty much as the unroyal.
The addition of a cypher will not matter though it take precedence of
the significant figures. But corruptio optimi pessima. The most evil
case of the royal form is far worse than the most evil case of the
unroyal. It is easy to imagine, 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 government.

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. He prolonged the American War,
perhaps he caused the American War, so we inherit the vestiges of an
American hatred; he forbade 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.




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 first-rate 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 Commons 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 newly-made 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 nor perceive any other.

The order of nobility is of great use, too, not only in what it
creates, but in what it prevents. It prevents the rule of wealth--the
religion of gold. This is the obvious and natural idol of the
Anglo-Saxon. He is 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 "poor devil of a
millionaire 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 STYLE of society; it is in the daily-spoken intercourse of
human beings what the art of literary expression is in their occasional
written intercourse. In reverencing wealth we reverence not a man, but
an appendix to a man; in reverencing inherited nobility, we reverence
the probable possession of a great faculty--the faculty of bringing out
what is in one. The unconscious grace of life MAY be in the middle
classes: finely-mannered persons are born everywhere; but it OUGHT to
be in the aristocracy: and a man must be born with a hitch in his
nerves if he has not some of it. It is a physiological possession of
the race, though it is sometimes wanting in the individual.

There is a third idolatry from which that of rank preserves us, and
perhaps it is the worst of any--that of office. The basest deity is a
subordinate employee, and yet just now in civilised Governments it is
the commonest. In France and all the best of the Continent it rules
like a superstition. It is to no purpose that you prove that the pay of
petty officials is smaller than mercantile pay; that their work is more
monotonous than mercantile work; that their mind is less useful and
their life more tame. They are still thought to be greater and better.
They are decords; they have a little red on the left breast of their
coat, and no argument will answer that. In England, by the odd course
of our society, what a theorist would desire has in fact turned up. The
great offices, whether permanent or Parliamentary, which require mind
now give social prestige, and almost only those. An Under-Secretary of
State with 2000 pounds a year is a much stronger man than the director
of a finance company with 5000 pounds, and the country saves the
difference. But except in a few offices like the Treasury, which were
once filled with aristocratic people, and have an odour of nobility at
second-hand, minor place is of no social use. A big grocer despises the
exciseman; and what in many countries would be thought impossible, the
exciseman envies the grocer. Solid wealth tells where there is no
artificial dignity given to petty public functions. A clerk in the
public service is "nobody"; and you could not make a common Englishman
see why he should be anybody. But it must be owned that this turning of
society into a political expedient has half spoiled it. A great part of
the "best" English people keep their mind in a state of decorous
dulness. They maintain their dignity; they get obeyed; they are good
and charitable to their dependants. But they have no notion of PLAY of
mind: no conception that the charm of society depends upon it. They
think cleverness an antic, and have a constant though needless horror
of being thought to have any of it. So much does this stiff dignity
give the tone, that the few Englishmen capable of social brilliancy
mostly secrete it. They reserve it for persons whom they can trust, and
whom they know to be capable of appreciating its nuances. But a good
Government is well worth a great deal of social dulness. The dignified
torpor of English society is inevitable if we give precedence, not to
the cleverest classes, but to the oldest classes, and we have seen how
useful that is.

The social prestige of the aristocracy is, as every one knows,
immensely less than it was a hundred years or even fifty years since.
Two great movements--the two greatest of modern society--have been
unfavourable to it. The rise of industrial wealth in countless forms
has brought in a competitor which has generally more mind, and which
would be supreme were it not for awkwardness and intellectual gene.
Every day our companies, our railways, our debentures, and our shares,
tend more and more to multiply these SURROUNDINGS of the aristocracy,
and in time they will hide it. And while this undergrowth has come up,
the aristocracy have come down. They have less means of standing out
than they used to have. Their power is in their theatrical exhibition,
in their state. But society is every day becoming less stately. As our
great satirist has observed, "The last Duke of St. David's used to
cover the north road with his carriages; landladies and waiters bowed
before him. The present Duke sneaks away from a railway station,
smoking a cigar, in a brougham." The aristocracy cannot lead the old
life if they would; they are ruled by a stronger power. They suffer
from the tendency of all modern society to raise the average, and to
lower--comparatively, and perhaps absolutely, to lower--the summit. As
the picturesqueness, the featureliness, of society diminishes,
aristocracy loses the single instrument of its peculiar power.

If we remember the great reverence which used to be paid to nobility as
such, we shall be surprised that the House of Lords as an assembly, has
always been inferior; that it was always just as now, not the first,
but the second of our assemblies. I am not, of course, now speaking of
the middle ages: I am not dealing with the embryo or the infant form of
our Constitution; I am only speaking of its adult form. Take the times
of Sir R. Walpole. He was Prime Minister because he managed the House
of Commons; he was turned out because he was beaten on an election
petition in that House; he ruled England because he ruled that House.
Yet the nobility were then the governing power in England. In many
districts the word of some lord was law. The "wicked Lord Lowther," as
he was called, left a name of terror in Westmoreland during the memory
of men now living. A great part of the borough members and a great part
of the county members were their nominees; an obedient, unquestioning
deference was paid them. As individuals the peers were the greatest
people; as a House the collected peers were but the second House.

Several causes contributed to create this anomaly, but the main cause
was a natural one. The House of Peers has never been a House where the
most important peers were most important. It could not be so. The
qualities which fit a man for marked eminence, in a deliberative
assembly, are not hereditary, and are not coupled with great estates.
In the nation, in the provinces, in his own province, a Duke of
Devonshire, or a Duke of Bedford, was a much greater man than Lord
Thurlow. They had great estates, many boroughs, innumerable retainers,
followings like a Court. Lord Thurlow had no boroughs, no retainers; he
lived on his salary. Till the House of Lords met, the dukes were not
only the greatest, but immeasurably the greatest. But as soon as the
House met, Lord Thurlow became the greatest. He could speak, and the
others could not speak. He could transact business in half an hour
which they could not have transacted in a day, or could not have
transacted at all. When some foolish peer, who disliked his domination,
sneered at his birth, he had words to meet the case: he said it was
better for any one to owe his place to his own exertions than to owe it
to descent, to being the "accident of an accident". But such a House as
this could not be pleasant to great noblemen. They could not like to be
second in their own assembly (and yet that was their position from age
to age) to a lawyer who was of yesterday,--whom everybody could
remember without briefs, who had talked for "hire," who had "hungered
after six-and-eightpence". Great peers did not gain glory from the
House; on the contrary, they lost glory when they were in the House.
They devised two expedients to get out of this difficulty: they
invented proxies which enabled them to vote without being present,
without being offended by vigour and invective, without being vexed by
ridicule, without leaving the rural mansion or the town palace where
they were demigods. And what was more effectual still, they used their
influence in the House of Commons instead of the House of Lords. In
that indirect manner a rural potentate, who half returned two county
members, and wholly returned two borough members, who perhaps gave
seats to members of the Government, who possibly seated the leader of
the Opposition, became a much greater man than by sitting on his own
bench, in his own House, hearing a Chancellor talk. The House of Lords
was a second-rate force, even when the peers were a first-rate force,
because the greatest peers, those who had the greatest social
importance, did not care for their own House, or like it, but gained
great part of their political power by a hidden but potent influence in
the competing House.

When we cease to look at the House of Lords under its dignified aspect,
and come to regard it under its strictly useful aspect, we find the
literary theory of the English Constitution wholly wrong, as usual.
This theory says that the House of Lords is a co-ordinate estate of the
realm, of equal rank with the House of Commons; that it is the
aristocratic branch, just as the Commons is the popular branch; and
that by the principle of our Constitution the aristocratic branch has
equal authority with the popular branch. So utterly false is this
doctrine that it is a remarkable peculiarity, a capital excellence of
the British Constitution, that it contains a sort of Upper House, which
is not of equal authority to the Lower House, yet still has some
authority. The evil of two co-equal Houses of distinct natures is
obvious. Each House can stop all legislation, and yet some legislation
may be necessary. At this moment we have the best instance of this
which could be conceived. The Upper House of our Victorian
Constitution, representing the rich wool-growers, has disagreed with
the Lower Assembly, and most business is suspended. But for a most
curious stratagem, the machine of Government would stand still. Most
Constitutions have committed this blunder. The two most remarkable
Republican institutions in the world commit it. In both the American
and the Swiss Constitutions the Upper House has as much authority as
the second: it could produce the maximum of impediment--the dead-lock,
if it liked; if it does not do so, it is owing not to the goodness of
the legal constitution, but to the discreetness of the members of the
Chamber. In both these Constitutions, this dangerous division is
defended by a peculiar doctrine with which I have nothing to do now. It
is said that there must be in a Federal Government some institution,
some authority, some body possessing a veto in which the separate
States composing the Confederation are all equal. I confess this
doctrine has to me no self-evidence, and it is assumed, but not proved.
The State of Delaware is NOT equal in power or influence to the State
of New York, and you cannot make it so by giving it an equal veto in an
Upper Chamber. The history of such an institution is indeed most
natural. A little State will like, and must like, to see some token,
some memorial mark of its old independence preserved in the
Constitution by which that independence is extinguished. But it is one
thing for an institution to be natural, and another for it to be
expedient. If indeed it be that a Federal Government compels the
erection of an Upper Chamber of conclusive and co-ordinate authority,
it is one more in addition to the many other inherent defects of that
kind of Government. It may be necessary to have the blemish, but it is
a blemish just as much.

There ought to be in every Constitution an available authority
somewhere. The sovereign power must be come-at-able. And the English
have made it so. The House of Lords, at the passing of the Reform Act
of 1832, was as unwilling to concur with the House of Commons as the
Upper Chamber at Victoria to concur with the Lower Chamber. But it did
concur. The Crown has the authority to create new peers; and the king
of the day had promised the Ministry of the day to create them. The
House of Lords did not like the precedent, and they passed the bill.
The power was not used, but its existence was as useful as its energy.
Just as the knowledge that his men CAN strike makes a master yield in
order that they may not strike, so the knowledge that their House could
be swamped at the will of the king--at the will of the people--made the
Lords yield to the people.

From the Reform Act the function of the House of Lords has been altered
in English history. Before that Act it was, if not a directing Chamber,
at least a Chamber of Directors. The leading nobles, who had most
influence in the Commons, and swayed the Commons, sat there.
Aristocratic influence was so powerful in the House of Commons, that
there never was any serious breach of unity. When the Houses
quarrelled, it was as in the great Aylesbury case, about their
respective privileges, and not about the national policy. The influence
of the nobility was then so potent, that it was not necessary to exert
it. The English Constitution, though then on this point very different
from what it now is, did not even then contain the blunder of the
Victorian or of the Swiss Constitution. It had not two Houses of
distinct origin; it had two Houses of common origin--two Houses in
which the predominant element was the same. The danger of discordance
was obviated by a latent unity.

Since the Reform Act the House of Lords has become a revising and
suspending House. It can alter bills; it can reject bills on which the
House of Commons is not yet thoroughly in earnest--upon which the
nation is not yet determined. Their veto is a sort of hypothetical
veto. They say, We reject your Bill for this once or these twice, or
even these thrice: but if you keep on sending it up, at last we won't
reject it. The House has ceased to be one of latent directors, and has
become one of temporary rejectors and palpable alterers.

It is the sole claim of the Duke of Wellington to the name of a
statesman, that he presided over this change. He wished to guide the
Lords to their true position, and he did guide them. In 1846, in the
crisis of the Corn-Law struggle, and when it was a question whether the
House of Lords should resist or yield, he wrote a very curious letter
to the late Lord Derby:--

"For many years, indeed from the year 1830, when I retired from office,
I have endeavoured to manage the House of Lords upon the principle on
which I conceive that the institution exists in the Constitution of the
country, that of Conservatism. I have invariably objected to all
violent and extreme measures, which is not exactly the mode of
acquiring influence in a political party in England, particularly one
in opposition to Government. I have invariably supported Government in
Parliament upon important occasions, and have always exercised my
personal influence to prevent the mischief of anything like a
difference or division between the two Houses,--of which there are some
remarkable instances, to which I will advert here, as they will tend to
show you the nature of my management, and possibly, in some degree,
account for the extraordinary power which I have for so many years
exercised, without any apparent claim to it." Upon finding the
difficulties in which the late King William was involved by a promise
made to create peers, the number, I believe, indefinite, I determined
myself, and I prevailed upon others, the number very large, to be
absent from the House in the discussion of the last stages of the
Reform Bill, after the negotiations had failed for the formation of a
new administration. This course gave at the time great dissatisfaction
to the party; notwithstanding that I believe it saved the existence of
the House of Lords at the time, and the Constitution of the country.

"Subsequently, throughout the period from 1835 to 1841, I prevailed
upon the House of Lords to depart from many principles and systems
which they as well as I had adopted and voted on Irish tithes, Irish
corporations, and other measures, much to the vexation and annoyance of
many. But I recollect one particular measure, the union of the
provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, in the early stages of which I had
spoken in opposition to the measure, and had protested against it; and
in the last stages of it I prevailed upon the House to agree to, and
pass it, in order to avoid the injury to the public interests of a
dispute between the Houses upon a question of such importance. Then I
supported the measures of the Government, and protected the servant of
the Government, Captain Elliot, in China. All of which tended to weaken
my influence with some of the party; others, possibly a majority, might
have approved of the course which I took. It was at the same time well
known that from the commencement at least of Lord Melbourne's
Government, I was in constant communication with it, upon all military
matters, whether occurring at home or abroad, at all events. But
likewise upon many others." All this tended of course to diminish my
influence in the Conservative party, while it tended essentially to the
ease and satisfaction of the sovereign, and to the maintenance of good
order. At length came the resignation of the Government by Sir Robert
Peel, in the month of December last, and the Queen desiring Lord John
Russell to form an administration. On the 12th of December the Queen
wrote to me the letter of which I enclose the copy, and the copy of my
answer of the same date; of which it appears that you have never seen
copies, although I communicated them immediately to Sir Robert Peel. It
was impossible for me to act otherwise than is indicated in my letter
to the Queen. I am the servant of the Crown and people. I have been
paid and rewarded, and I consider myself retained; and that I can't do
otherwise than serve as required, when I can do so without dishonour,
that is to say, as long as I have health and strength to enable me to
serve. But it is obvious that there is, and there must be, an end of
all connection and counsel between party and me. I might with
consistency, and some may think that I ought to have declined to belong
to Sir Robert Peel's Cabinet on the night of the 20th of December. But
my opinion is, that if I had, Sir Robert Peel's Government would not
have been framed; that we should have had ---- and ---- in office next
morning.

"But, at all events, it is quite obvious that when that arrangement
comes, which sooner or later must come, there will be an end to all
influence on my part over the Conservative party, if I should be so
indiscreet as to attempt to exercise any. You will see, therefore, that
the stage is quite clear for you, and that you need not apprehend the
consequences of differing in opinion from me when you will enter upon
it; as in truth I have, by my letter to the Queen of the 12th of
December, put an end to the connection between the party and me, when
the party will be in opposition to her Majesty's Government." My
opinion is, that the great object of all is that you should assume the
station, and exercise the influence, which I have so long exercised in
the House of Lords. The question is, how is that object to be attained?
By guiding their opinion and decision, or by following it? You will see
that I have endeavoured to guide their opinion, and have succeeded upon
some most remarkable occasions. But it has been by a good deal of
management.

"Upon the important occasion and question now before the House, I
propose to endeavour to induce them to avoid to involve the country in
the additional difficulties of a difference of opinion, possibly a
dispute between the Houses, on a question in the decision of which it
has been frequently asserted that their lordships had a personal
interest; which assertion, however false as affecting each of them
personally, could not be denied as affecting the proprietors of land in
general. I am aware of the difficulty, but I don't despair of carrying
the bill through. You must be the best judge of the course which you
ought to take, and of the course most likely to conciliate the confidence of the House of Lords. My opinion is, that you should advise the House to vote that which would tend most to public order, and would be most beneficial to the immediate interests of the country."

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