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These Speeches possess a double interest, as the literary compositions and the political manifestoes of the most eminent statesmen of the Nation. To me it has been a pleasant occupation dipping into them, here and there, in the volumes of Hansard and extracting a few notes personal to the Sovereign, or references to some of the great political issues of the latter half of the nineteenth century and the opening decades of the twentieth. There is a popular supposition that “the King’s Speeches” are the worst possible models of “the King’s English.” The condemnation is too sweeping. Unquestionably there are Speeches with sentences doubtful in grammar, as well as feeble and pointless. The writing of most of them, however, is pure and concise. It is possible to trace in them the characteristic styles and different moods of mind of the Prime Ministers by whom they were written. Disraeli’s Speeches stand put as the most ornate. He used more rhetoric than other Premiers deemed to be necessary or desirable. In one there is a picture of “the elephants of Asia carrying the artillery of Europe over the mountains of Rasselas”; in another the founding of British Columbia calls up a vision of her Majesty’s dominions in North America “peopled by an unbroken chain, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, of a loyal and industrious population of subjects of the British Crown.” Nothing could be more effective from an elocutionary point of view. The “Speeches” of Lord Melbourne trembled at times on the verge of puerility. Palmerston’s waved the Union Jack in relation to foreign affairs, and his off-hand “Ha, ha!” was heard in references to things domestic. Gladstone and Salisbury drafted “Speeches” equally noted for freshness and strength of expression. Lloyd George composed the longest and most comprehensive and possibly the most historic “Speeches”—those that immediately followed the conclusion of the World War. They were obviously addressed not so much to Lords and Commons as to the people at large.
The early age at which I am called to the sovereignty of this Kingdom renders it a more imperative duty that under Divine Providence I should place my reliance upon your cordial co-operation, and upon the loyal affection of all my people. I ascend the Throne with a deep sense of the responsibility which is imposed upon me; but I am supported by the consciousness of my own right intentions, and by my dependence upon the protection of Almighty God.
These are the concluding words of the Speech from the Throne read by Victoria, the girl-Queen, to her first Parliament, on November 20, 1837. “Never,” wrote Mrs. Kemble, “have I heard any spoken words more musical in their gentle distinctness than the ‘My Lords and Gentlemen’ which broke the breathless stillness of the illustrious assembly, whose gaze was riveted on that fair flower of Royalty.” It was a new Parliament, fresh from the country, after the General Election which, as the law then required, followed the demise of the Crown owing to the death of William IV. The scene on that historic occasion in the old House of Lords was most brilliant. To the right of the young Queen stood her mother, the Duchess of Kent. On her left was Viscount Melbourne, the Prime Minister. At the foot of the Throne were grouped other great officers of State. The benches were crowded with peers in their robes—amongst whom Wellington, Brougham, Lyndhurst, were distinguished figures—and with peeresses in Court plumes and diamonds. At the Bar were assembled the Commons, Mr. Speaker Abercromby at their head, and in the throng might be seen such eminent statesmen and notabilities as Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston, Daniel O’Connell, Stanley (afterwards Lord Derby), and two young Members, Gladstone, who already had four years’ experience of Parliament, and Disraeli, just returned at the General Election for Maidstone, who were destined to become the two greatest political protagonists of the nineteenth century. Writing to his sister on November 21, 1837, Disraeli thus comically describes how the Commons went to the House of Lords, and what they saw there:
The rush was terrific; Abercromby himself nearly thrown down and trampled upon, and his macebearer banging the Members’ heads with his gorgeous weapon and cracking skulls with impunity. I was fortunate enough to escape, however, and also to ensure an entry. It was a magnificent spectacle. The Queen looked admirable; no feathers, but a diamond tiara. The peers in robes, the peeresses and the sumptuous groups of courtiers rendered the affair most glittering and imposing.
What a contrast between this splendid and joyful ceremony and the pathetic scene that was witnessed in the same Chamber, just a year earlier, when Parliament was opened by William IV for the last time! The aged King, wrapped in his ample purple robes, and his grey locks surmounted by the Imperial Crown, stood on the Throne struggling with dim eyes in the twilight of the Chamber to read the Speech prepared for him by Lord Melbourne. He stammered slowly, and almost inaudibly, through the first few sentences, pausing now and then over a difficult word, and querulously appealing to the Prime Minister “What is it, Melbourne?” loudly enough to be heard by the Assembly. At last, losing all patience, he angrily exclaimed, in the full-blooded language of the period, “Damn it, I can’t see!” Candles were instantly brought in and placed beside the King. “My Lords and Gentlemen,” said he, “I have hitherto not been able, for want of light, to read this Speech in a way its importance deserves; but as lights are now brought me, I will read it again from the commencement, and in a way which, I trust, will command your attention.” Then in a pitiful effort to prove to Peers and Commons that his mental and physical powers were by no means failing, he commenced the Speech again and read it through in a fairly clear voice and with some emphasis.
It was at the opening of the third session of the first Parliament of Queen Victoria, on January 16, 1840, Lord Melbourne being still Premier, that her Majesty read from her Speech the announcement of her approaching marriage to Prince Albert. Writing to the Prince a few days previously, she said the reading of the Speech was always a nervous proceeding, and it would be made an “awful affair” by the announcement of her engagement. “I have never failed yet,” she added, “and this is the sixth time that I have done it, and yet I am just as frightened as if I had never done it before. They say that feeling of nervousness is never got over, and that William Pitt himself never got up to make a speech without thinking he should fail. But then I only read my speech.” The passage in the Speech from the Throne in reference to her marriage is as follows:
My Lords and Gentlemen,—Since you were last assembled I have declared my intention of allying myself in marriage with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. I humbly implore that the Divine blessing may prosper this union, and render it conducive to the interests of my people, as well as to my own domestic happiness; and it will be to me a source of the most lively satisfaction to find the resolution I have taken approved by my Parliament. The constant proofs which I have received of your attachment to my person and family persuade me that you will enable me to provide for such an establishment as may appear suitable to the rank of the Prince and the dignity of the Crown.
Mrs. Simpson, in her Many Memories of Many People, writes that her first recollection of the opening of Parliament was on this auspicious occasion. “I sat up in a little gallery over the Woolsack between the beautiful Lady Dufferin and Miss Pitt,” she says. “I remember well the Queen’s sweet voice and that the paper shook in her hand. By her side stood Lord Melbourne, repeating inaudibly—we could see his lips move—every word she uttered.”
On the next occasion her Majesty opened Parliament, February 3, 1842, Sir Robert Peel being Prime Minister, she announced in the Speech another joyful event in her domestic life, the birth of the Prince of Wales, which took place on November 9, 1841. The Speech said:
My Lords and Gentlemen,—I cannot meet you in Parliament assembled without making a public acknowledgment of my gratitude to Almighty God on account of the birth of the Prince, my son—an event which has completed the measure of my domestic happiness, and has been hailed with every demonstration of affectionate attachment to my person and government by my faithful and loyal people.
The Prince Consort died on December 14, 1861, at the early age of forty-two years. At the opening by Commission of the next session of Parliament, Lord Palmerston being Prime Minister, the domestic affliction of the Sovereign was thus announced in “the Queen’s Speech”:
My Lords and Gentlemen,—We are commanded by her Majesty to assure you that her Majesty is persuaded that you will deeply participate in the affliction by which her Majesty has been overwhelmed by the calamitous, untimely and irreparable loss of her beloved Consort, who has been her comfort and support. It has been, however, soothing to her Majesty, while suffering most acutely under this awful dispensation of Providence, to receive from all classes of her subjects the most cordial assurances of their sympathy with her sorrow, as well as their appreciation of the noble character of him, the greatness of whose loss to her Majesty and to the nation is so justly and so universally felt and lamented.