Yet this boundless respect is less an act of homage to the monarchy than to a court, which is untainted by the breath of scandal, and a virtuous Queen who understands the duties of a constitutional sovereign so well, that the best informed statesmen, whether Liberals or Conservatives, declare that they know not to which side her heart leans.
Not that the Queen’s conservatism is not known to be of the strongest kind; but she has always had enough tact, and respect for the convictions of her subjects, to dissimulate her personal sentiments so far, that a statesman may always pretend not to know them without seeming to insult the common sense of his audience.
To read the speeches and decrees of the Queen, studded as they are with the phrase “it is our royal pleasure;” to hear her royal assent given to bills passed by both Houses of Parliament under the formula of La reyne le veult, you would believe yourself in the Middle Ages, or at least in the seventeenth century, under a despotic, absolute monarchy. All these vestiges of old royal prerogatives are carefully preserved in England, but they are merely empty forms: the will of the Queen is not more terrible than the Tower of London, from which you can now emerge as easily as you enter, and more easily too, for you must pay sixpence to go in, and you can come out for nothing at all. If a photograph could sign documents, the Queen’s would replace her quite well.
“Gouvernement facile et beau,
A qui suffit, pour toute garde,
Un Suisse, avec sa hallebarde,
Peint sur la porte du château.”
The royal speeches and decrees are ratified and signed by the Queen, and no doubt she previously reads them or has them read to her, but not one phrase is hers, and if you would form an exact idea of her as a woman, it is not her speeches and decrees that will help you.
In the second volume of the Queen’s “Life in the Highlands,” published this year, you will look in vain for the slightest allusion to politics; it is the journal of a country gentleman’s wife, who takes but small interest in anything outside the family circle. It is the diary of a queen that gives her people but one subject of complaint, which is that they do not see enough of her.