“‘And is public opinion of less influence on an individual than on a body?’
“‘But public opinion may be indifferent. A nation may be misled—may be corrupt.’
“‘If the nation that elects the Parliament be corrupt, the elected body will resemble it.... But this only shows that there is something to be considered beyond forms of government—national character....’
“‘But do you then declare against Parliamentary government?’
“‘Far from it. I look upon political change as the greatest of evils, for it comprehends all. But if we have no faith in the permanence of the existing settlement—if the very individuals who established it are year after year proposing their modifications or their reconstructions—so, also, while we uphold what exists, ought we to prepare ourselves for the change we deem impending. Now, I would not that either ourselves or our fellow-citizens should be taken unawares as in 1832, when the very men who opposed the Reform Bill offered contrary objections to it which destroyed each other, so ignorant were they of its real character, historical causes, its political consequences.... For this purpose I would accustom the public mind to the contemplation of an existing though torpid power in the constitution, capable of removing our social grievances.... The House of Commons is the house of a few; the Sovereign is the sovereign of all.’”
Now, undoubtedly the period to which these words refer was one when certain Whig leaders contemplated an oligarchical republic, and wished to compass their aim by an undue exaltation of the Lower House, as, in 1718, Sunderland had wished to attain the same end by that of the Upper. No student of the Croker Papers can fail to recognise the fact, and undoubtedly Disraeli thought—and Sir Robert Peel thought so too—that the times were ripe for reviving those constitutional prerogatives, those kingly privileges which form the Crown’s sole direct representative faculty in the constitution, of which the Crown had long been robbed, first by its own alternate abuse or incapacity to use them, afterwards by faction itself often imitating the royal errors. And so the executive power had passed almost wholly into ministerial hands. After 1830 the prerogatives which, as I shall show, Mr. Gladstone champions, seemed falling into entire abeyance. In 1836, before he had entered Parliament, Disraeli had, in the Runnymede Letters, where he spoke of “the people of England sighing once more to be a nation,” called on Sir Robert Peel to achieve “a great task in a great spirit”—“rescue your Sovereign from an unconstitutional thraldom; rescue an august Senate which has already fought the battle of the people; rescue our National Church which our opponents hate, our venerable constitution at which they scoff; but, above all, rescue that mighty body of which all these great classes and institutions are but one of the constituent and essential parts—rescue the nation.”
In 1837, “our young Queen and our old Institutions” were no mere catchwords. And it seems unquestionable, also, that the subsequent interferences of Baron Stockmar, the late Queen’s early tutelage to Lord Melbourne, the circumstances attendant on her happy marriage, the peculiar treatment of Prince Consort by her first ministers, and the long retirement due to private grief, contributed in successive combination towards that invisibility, so to speak, of her royal office, which prevailed, though it did not, however, eventually preclude her very real and valuable exercise of it. In England the only true blemish of our party system, which Disraeli vehemently fought to uphold, is, as he more than once urged, that it tends to “warp the intelligence.” To this fault the wisdom of a constitutional and popular monarch, above and beyond party, offers an antidote.
Sir Robert Peel, in the very year of Queen Victoria’s accession, writes to Croker as follows:—
“... The theory of the constitution is that the King has no will except in the choice of his ministers.... But this, like a thousand other theories, is at variance with the fact. The personal character of the sovereign ... has an immense practical effect.... There may not be violent collisions between the King and his Government, but his influence, though dormant and unseen, may be very powerful. Respect for personal character will operate in some cases; in others the King will have all the authority which greater and more widely extended experience than that of any single minister will naturally give. A King, after a reign of ten years, ought to know much more of the working of the machine of government than any other man in the country. He is the centre to which all business gravitates. The knowledge that the King holds firmly a certain opinion, and will abide by it, prevents in many cases an opposite opinion being offered to him.... The personal character of a really constitutional King, of mature age, of experience in public affairs, and knowledge, manners, and customs, is practically so much ballast, keeping the vessel of the State steady in her course, countervailing the levity of popular ministers, of orators forced by oratory into public councils, the blasts of democratic passions, the groundswell of discontent, and ‘the ignorant impatience for the relaxation of taxation.’ ... The genius of the Constitution had contrived this in times gone by.
“‘Speluncis abdidit atris
Hoc metuens, molemque et montes insuper altos
Imposuit, Regemque dedit, qui fœdere certo
Et premere, et laxas sciret dare jussus habenas.’