To defer the most obvious among these, the King’s consultative faculty, “the power,” to cite Mr. Gladstone, “which gives the monarch an undoubted locus standi in all the deliberations of a Government, ... remains as it was.” In olden days this was effected openly in form. Nor should it be forgotten that whenever a Ministry is changed, again to cite Mr. Gladstone, “the whole power of the State periodically returns into the royal hands.” In 1852, when Lord Derby reluctantly consented to assume office with a minority, there were forty-eight hours when, as Disraeli pointed out in a speech of 1873, “the Queen was without a Government.” Then take the royal prerogative of dissolution. This right enabled, in 1852, that very administration to perform the work of the session, and to carry the supplies before appealing to the constituencies on its right to exist. It is in effect a right of appeal by the Sovereign through or even against (should he deem it their duty to take the national voice) his ministers to the country; and in any crucial instance it forms the best check to faction of which our Constitution admits.
Further, there exists the admitted prerogative, openly exercised, of choice of ministers. This was the main arena of party cleavage under the greater portion of the sway of George III. It was this which, as Mr. Gladstone also mentions, was unsuccessfully, but neither unwholesomely nor unfairly, pressed into popular service in 1834. And, among many others remaining, there is that to appoint bishops—a stalking-ground of contention during the reign of Anne, and, in the Victorian era, signalised by Dr. Hampden’s appointment against a remonstrant primate. There is the prerogative of the Royal Warrant utilised by Mr. Gladstone himself in the repeal of the Purchase Act. There is the prerogative of disapproving the choice of Speaker, which will probably cease. There is that for proposing grants of public money, and there is the salutary initiative of Royal Commission which paves the way for social reform. On these personal rights I need not dwell. But on the prerogative of peace and war a word must be said. Had it been withheld for hostilities in the Crimea, a needless complication of Europe need never have occurred.[111] We may conjecture that its influence was not absent from our recent peace in South Africa. Mr. Gladstone has instanced the Chinese war, some fifty years ago, as an example of carrying on a conflict believed to be necessary despite its condemnation by “the stewards of the public purse.” The Sovereign has also the undoubted right to consult with his ministers, and to attend the deliberations of his Cabinet. Queen Anne did this habitually, and the fatal movement of her fan decided great issues on more than one occasion. The first two Georges used on occasion, but with indifference where money was not concerned, to do the same. Since then it has fallen into disuse, and perhaps the end is better served by the premier’s audiences with his King. But I may here be permitted to hope that when the great intercolonial council which is in the air has taken shape, the Sovereign may deign to be its President. Such a decision would be in complete accord with the policy of Disraeli, who affirmed in 1876, “No one regrets more than I do that favourable opportunities have been lost of identifying the colonies with the royal race of England.”
The prerogatives are the royal faculties for independent expression. But it is obviously not by prerogative mainly or alone that the Crown rivets and can mould a nation. The Crown is a many-sided emblem. It is the centre of English unity, a focus of consolidation and compactness; while it also represents Great and Greater Britain abroad. As a source of home sympathy, as the embodiment of the might and mercy of a great Empire, as the durable impersonation of the individual character that out of many welded races creates a united Empire, it is manifestly operative. I may add that it may also set an example of simplicity, for the Crown is able to bring choice virtues into vulgar fashion.
Nor should sight be lost of the immense services which the Sovereign may render to British interests abroad. Shifting administrations encourage various hopes in foreign powers. The Crimean War was an outcome of such renewed aspirations. Our foreign policy lacks the strength of continuity, and its changefulness seems ineradicable from our party system. It is, therefore, of high importance that European courts should be able to count on certain limits which they know that a monarch whom they respect is likely to maintain. Such a consciousness of finality enables foreign Governments to moderate the popular clamour often worked up by dishonest agitation, and the more obstinate because purposely misinformed. The Crown can thus become a great conciliator,[112] and sometimes a preventer of actual war. The affinities of the blood royal to continental dynasties are not so cogent, though their material aid as sources of inner information is manifest. But as guarantees of amity they often prove comparatively helpless, unless supported by the recognition of character, tact, and abilities, for which the nurture of every British prince should fit him, and which entitle him to appeal to every differing headship of peoples abroad, as well as to the originally alien ingredients of empire at home. The British Sovereign may well be called the Member for the Empire.
On these aspects Disraeli often dwelt; and at a period when, for these objects, the comparatively small expense was affected to be grudged by a set of extreme politicians, his analysis proved its cheapness in proportion to the cost of large democracies and republics.
A great outcry was raised when, twenty-seven years ago, Disraeli made the startling move of appealing alike to the Hindoo and the Mohammedan sentiment by investing Queen Victoria with a title which has impressed India with the grandeur of Great Britain. To the Oriental the style of a white queen meant as little as to the queen of the Ansaries, so humorously depicted in Tancred. It was well said of Disraeli by Lord Salisbury, in the speech which commemorated his death, that zeal for the greatness of England had eaten him up; and zeal, as Disraeli observed in an Irish speech of 1844, is rare enough in these days. Never was a stroke more justified by its results. Like the purchase of the Suez Canal shares, equally justified, it was bitterly and blindly assailed. “Bastard imperialism” was the refrain of the Opposition. No one knew on what sacred ark the Machiavellian finger might next be laid.
Disraeli proved that “empress” was an old ascription even in England, and that “emperor” even in the Western mind was not a title bound up with “bad associations.” Macaulay had singled out the age of the Antonines as a signal era for the world, and the Antonines had been emperors. In the early ’sixties a definite and powerful party had conspired to break the unity of the empire and the dignity of the kingdom, to sacrifice everything to material considerations, to convert a first-class monarchy into a second-class republic. It was not enough that the national sentiment should be diverted from appeals to pocket by appeals to patriotism; that the gush of utilitarian cold water should be arrested from drowning the rekindled flames of public spirit. The coloured imagination of the East must also be brought into line with the soberer background of the West. Nor was the relation of the measure less weighty to Europe. Europe, too, must realise that India was a trust which Britain was resolute never to abandon. These objects Disraeli effected by his “Royal Titles Bill,” a conception as simple as it was daring. “They know in India,” he urged, after imploring the House to “remove prejudice from their minds”—“they know in India what this bill means, and they know that what it means is what they wish.... Let not our divisions be misconstrued. Let the people of India feel that there is a sympathetic chord between us and them, and do not let Europe suppose for a moment that there are any in this House who are not deeply conscious of the importance of our Indian Empire. Unfortunate words have been heard in the debate upon this subject; but I will not believe that any member of this House seriously contemplates the loss of our Indian Empire.... If you sanction the passing of this bill, it will be an act, to my mind, that will add splendour even to her throne, and security even to her Empire.” In a subsequent chapter I shall show that these ideas of sympathy with India had animated him while the great Mutiny was raging.
It was Disraeli who suggested to Queen Victoria the propriety of learning the language and studying the literature of the vast domain over which she ruled, and the munshis summoned to instruct her, brought home to every Indian the conviction that her sway was one, not only of strength, but of sympathy and intelligence. Doubtless these policies were born of dreams, and of dreams which to the unreflecting might seem extravaganzas. But they were not merely an Arabian Nights’ entertainment. The Monarchy, like the Church, in his mind were in one respect akin. The Clergy and the King were both “English citizens and English gentlemen,” and yet the undue political influence of either, as he insisted in 1861, was to be feared, because it might diminish their best influence. Both make for order, and order makes for liberty. “... It is said sometimes that the Church of England is hostile to religious liberty. As well might it be said that the Monarchy of England is adverse to political freedom.”
Many of Disraeli’s central ideas as to British kingship were partly decided by him from his boyish conversance with the works of Lord Bolingbroke, whose constitutional theories (repeated by Burke) solved the difficulty of accounting for the popularity of exclusiveness in the theory of government, and for the odiousness of that party which had once been inclusive and “national.” Prerogative has been nowhere better defined than by Bolingbroke, who uniformly also declares that Parliament is the main barrier against “the usurpation of its illegal, or the abuse of its legal, powers.” He terms prerogative “a discretionary power in the King to act for the good of his people where the laws are silent; ... never contrary to law;” and this in a passage where he protests against its being raised “one step higher;” and he has further shown elsewhere how some such “barefaced, extraordinary powers” were welcomed by the nation in Elizabeth’s reign, because they were called forth by popular emergencies and used in a popular manner. Elizabeth, at a time before the Sovereign depended on Parliament, and before the Cabinet system was established, owed her power to her sympathy with her people. The first two Georges were unsympathetic, and the second abetted not only partisanship, but cliqueship. He became dependent on contending heads of greedy factions. To cure these evils was the purport of the “Patriot King,” which inspired Disraeli as it had before inspired Chatham.
It has been objected that Bolingbroke’s aim was for the King to “defy Parliament.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Throughout his writings he champions the rights of Parliament; indeed, Parliament was his hobby. In his treatise on the “Patriot King,” the word “Parliament” is not employed—it is his only essay from which it is absent—but the phrase “the people,” that is, has been expressly defined by him as the whole nation in its capacities, representative as well as collective. It therefore includes “Parliament.” In Bolingbroke’s previous “Spirit of Patriotism,” he had approached the theme of national regeneration from the standpoint of the ideal citizen; in the “Patriot King,” from the standpoint of a throne in accord with national concurrence. Its whole pith is that the ideal King, governing through ministers and through party, should rise above and beyond them. He must be neither a partisan (as all the Georges proved), nor a puppet, nor (as Canning long afterwards repeated) “the tool of a confederacy,” but in alliance with and reliance on the whole body of his subjects. The “Patriot King” is expressly urged “to confine instead of labouring to extend his prerogative;” and Bolingbroke adds that such an ideal would be derided by his own generation.