The younger Pitt is reported to have said that any man with £40,000 a year had a right to a seat in the House of Lords. Some of his creations notably that of Lord Carrington gave effect to that opinion. These peerages, however, did but foreshadow faintly the elevations of men actually engaged in commerce as in the case of Lord Armstrong, vicariously through his widow in that of Mr W. H. Smith, and many more. The press, too, is not less representative than the House of Commons. Nor in all probability is Lord Glenesk the last representative of journalism, as he has been the first to receive a seat in the Hereditary legislature. Under any circumstances, the well placed English newspaper is likely to be not less expository of public opinion than any body of gentlemen, by whatever mode elected, sitting at Westminster. Special tendencies of the time make the press an exceptionally lifelike measure of the thoughts and wishes in every department of life of every section of the English people. Newspaper proprietorship has in fact become not less a fashion of the day than theatrical lesseeship was a few years since. A number of men agreed on certain points such as the development or exploitation of particular enterprises, are seized with the conviction that ‘an organ’ is essential to their success. They combine, therefore, to buy or to press into their service by subsidies some printed sheet which may yet have the ear of the nation but which happens just now to have fallen upon evil times. If no such opportunity as this present itself, newspaper starting has become a recognized industry of commerce. After a time, therefore, a new literary champion of the Empire enters the lists. Its real object may be narrow and even personal. Its managers know that if their end is to be accomplished it must be veiled by a programme of more disinterested generalities, and that popular sentiment should form the first study of its conductors. In this way therefore, apart from the great newspaper oracles of the time which in all but name are national enterprises, the press has increasingly an inducement, that never fails, to hold up the mirror to the convictions, prejudices and sentiments into which public opinion can be analysed. The reptile press of Germany is, upon any considerable scale, not known in England. The connection between most journals whose support is envied, or whose opposition is dreaded, and some or more of the leading public men of the day, has been often very close[57] and is perhaps, still not quite unknown.

The newspaper, however, is but a single agency for the literary influence exercised upon the public life of the day. Of late years periodicals, appearing at less frequent intervals, have among politicians themselves competed in attractiveness with the national assemblies at Westminster. In proportion as parliamentary reports have been in the daily press reduced to a few columns and in the case of all but speakers of the first rank to a few paragraphs or sentences; parliamentarians themselves have substituted the monthly Review for the stenographer or for Hansard as the depository of their views. Technically the presence of reporters in the gallery is even to-day connived at rather than constitutionally sanctioned. Yet the leader of the House of Commons, not very long since, reminded his hearers that those who were not present at his speech might master his points by referring to the parliamentary reports next day. Members with a taste for writing, having some carefully thought out message to deliver on an intricate topic of foreign or domestic policy are increasingly inclined entirely to pretermit the parliamentary stage of their exposition. By reserving their remarks for the monthly periodical, they can be sure of fixing popular attention more conspicuously. Their signatures are appended to their effusions. The editor incurs no responsibility either for the substance or the form of the opinions delivered. The reciprocity of the arrangement is, between him and his contributor, complete. On the one hand the literary impressario secures the advertisement of a familiar if not a famous name, good as he knows it to be for the sale of a certain number of copies, each one of which represents a clear if a small profit. On the other hand, assuming the senator to deserve an audience, he is more likely to secure one when his views are placed before the public for the first time with all the advantages of good type and paper, when they are read comfortably in library or club, not listened to with an effort, and even then but partially heard in the exhausted atmosphere of the House of Commons. Again if the Popular Chamber still be of the same intellectual calibre as of old, it has grown also more manifestly fastidious and more demonstratively intolerant of speakers who do not hit its taste. As Sir James Mackintosh and Lord Macaulay in different words both said, it was always a Chamber whose tastes and verdict were incalculable. Since, under a democratic franchise, it has become an Assembly primarily of business gentlemen, the chances of failure to satisfy it are so alarmingly numerous as to prevent all but the most self assured and impassive from making the effort. It prides itself above all things on its business-like tastes. Therefore, it abhors any approach to rhetoric. It fails not to remember its traditions of eloquence, or the ascendancy over itself which to a master of words and phrases, to a Disraeli, a Gladstone, a Lowe, a Canning, a Peel, it was proud to accord, like a horse that knows, and that takes a pleasure in, its rider. Therefore the House expects from those who address it something more than the bald, business talk of the Board room; an aptitude for clothing sound original reasons in diction which shall be without pretentiousness, but that shall not lack felicity and point always, and epigram sometimes. If these conditions be forthcoming; if the Chamber be in a good humour; if it be neither too long nor too soon since it lunched nor too near the hour when it dines; then the elective legislators will perhaps for a short time give their ear to one who rises at the right moment and in favour of whom they are predisposed. The conditions are obviously severe. It is therefore not to be wondered at that candidates for oratorical honours at St Stephen’s tend steadily to diminish.

There is another kind of rivalry to which of late years the House of Commons has been exposed, which may excite a smile, but which is in its way a reality to be reckoned with. This is not that of the provincial platform, of the public meeting room, or of the debating society in its older development. These latter have always, among the lower middle classes, fulfilled a function like that of the University Unions among the classes somewhat better to do. Coger’s Hall was the school of discussion in which the late Charles Bradlaugh acquired great power of direct and incisive utterance as well as a perfect control over his temper. London and all the great provincial towns have as many of these places as ancient Rome possessed of gladiatorial schools. A really new growth of the last quarter of the nineteenth century is the local Houses of Commons. These sprung up in and for every quarter or suburb of London, and in many provincial districts as well. They are still known, and sometimes much in vogue. They are not of course recognized by the legislature. Nor, as in the case of the municipal bodies which we have already seen at work, is their machinery controlled by the Local Government Board. A seat in them has been known to be as much an object of rivalry among an increasing class, as a place on the green leather benches of Westminster. The member for Kennington or Lavender Hill in the south of London, for Westbourne Grove or Shepherd’s Bush in the west, for Haverstock Hill in the north, may even be as considerable a personage with his immediate friends in the district as the member for Westminster in the Imperial Parliament. The leader in the Hampstead House of Commons, or the Chancellor of the Exchequer in that which meets on Richmond Hill is not certain that he would change his place with his titular equivalents at St Stephen’s. These are considerations that may explain why the House of Commons, whose supremacy was unchallenged under a Peel, a Stanley, a Palmerston, a Disraeli, a Gladstone, is regarded no longer with awe, sometimes with the familiarity that breeds contempt.

As yet this diminution of parliamentary prestige, if such there really be, is indicated only by a floating sentiment. It finds expression chiefly in social chatter or in newspaper flippancies. Nor in the present decade of the Victorian epoch are there many positive signs of our representative system being superseded by the controlling will of an individual autocrat for whom the late Mr Froude thought the time was steadily approaching. The same remark might with equal truth probably be made of every part in our national polity. It is certainly true of the House of Lords not less than of the monarchy. The position practically occupied by the Crown to-day, is that which the Prince Consort many years ago marked out for it. Some of these functions he was himself able to assist the Queen in discharging. To him there seemed to devolve upon the monarchy duties analogous to those discharged by the permanent officials in the great departments of State. Amid the vicissitudes of party, the rise and fall of Ministers, the changes of popular opinion, the Crown was in his judgment the one guarantee for continuity in policy, domestic not less than foreign. The occupant of the Throne took, as Ministers of State, those whom parliamentary majorities and public opinion indicated. The Sovereign however had other functions than merely to register and sanction the wish of subjects and the decisions of Commons. Chief among these, as every other page of Sir Theodore Martin’s book during the Peelite and Palmerstonian periods clearly shows, was to judge of the quarters whence a stable Administration could be formed; whether, in fact, Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston, or Lord Derby, in a balanced state of parliamentary feeling, had the best chance of carrying on the Queen’s government to the welfare of the realm and the confidence of its representatives. The most familiar aspects of the political and parliamentary situation have ceased to be now what in the Prince Consort’s day they habitually were. The doctrine that Ministers are the free choice of the Sovereign was never propounded absolutely by the husband of the Queen. The doctrine was rather assumed by him in the interests of the national convenience than expressed in any terms defining the Royal prerogative. The slow process of absorption of the Peelites into the Liberal ranks; the lifelong rivalry of Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston produced, during much of the Prince Consort’s time, a condition of unstable equilibrium in party organization, which in these later days of popular mandates, general elections which are plebiscites and of overwhelming majorities which amount to commissions of the democracy, it is not easy to realize.

Some there were who thought that the Liberal disruption of 1886 might reproduce in English politics the precarious and fluctuating relations of parties and statesmen that seemed between 1852 and 1865 to have become permanent. Had that forecast been fulfilled, the Sovereign to-day might be confronted with personal responsibilities of Ministerial selection which would have recalled the duty devolved upon her during earlier portions of her reign. Nothing of the kind has happened. The event of ten years ago has resulted not in party instability, but in fresh fixity of tenure to the political conglomerate that the constituencies have as yet shown no wish to dismiss. Of course in time the same conditions as of old must recur. The national organization of which Liberals as well as Conservatives are constituent parts, will at some day or other upon issues perhaps now unsuspected resolve themselves into their elements. Ancient lines of demarcation will again declare themselves. A cycle of government by groups may yet be opened.[58] People and Parliament may still wait for the Royal choice to close an interval of confusion and of doubt. In whatever form this reversion to an older order may present itself, whatever the exact contingencies in store, the occupant of the Throne as has been shown above cannot divest himself of the right, therefore of the duty, of giving a casting vote when his officers of State hesitate, as Mr Disraeli did in 1868, as to the exact moment when the appeal to the constituences most advantageously can be made.

CHAPTER XX

ROYALTY AS A SOCIAL FORCE

The general power and usefulness of the English Crown strengthened, and not weakened, by the constitutional transfer of political power to Parliament and Ministers. The national aims of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth contrasted. Possibility of the Sovereign more correctly than Parliament or Ministers interpreting indications of national will. What happened under Queen Anne may conceivably occur under some of her successors. The facts concerning the monarchy as they are to-day. Posthumous recognition of the soundness of the Prince Consort’s views on the sphere of Royal duties, and the legitimate field of the Crown’s activities. His influence still a living force. Court offices, and reforms attributable to him. The present Prince of Wales exactly follows his father’s example.