Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria/Chapter 18

by Millicent Garrett Fawcett

Chapter XVIII.

The Queen and the Empire.

Reference was made in the last chapter to the celebration of the Queen's Jubilee in 1887. It was kept with all kinds of appropriate festivals in every part of the British Empire. But the centre and kernel of the whole celebration was the beautiful and touching national ceremony in Westminster Abbey on June 21st. On the same spot where as a young girl the Queen had knelt and had sworn fidelity to the constitution of her kingdom, and to govern according to law, justice, and mercy, the aged Queen again appeared, followed by a troop of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, to return thanks to the Almighty for the blessings of her reign and the augmenting power, prosperity, and numbers of her people. In 1837 her people had looked to her with the enthusiasm of hope; in 1887 they looked upon her with the enthusiasm of gratitude, with the memory of fifty wonderful years behind them, griefs and joys in common, common pride in the greatness and glories of England, common shame for her shortcomings; but in spite of these a common faith that earth's best hopes rest with England, and that her growing greatness promotes the happiness and well-being of mankind. In this national festival the Queen was felt to be the emblem of national unity, the one political power in the nation that is dissociated from party, with its petty squabbles and ignoble sacrifices. While statesmen too often stand merely for their party, and may be willing to sacrifice the true and obvious interests of the whole nation to gain a party majority, the Queen is more and more felt to stand for the nation that is above and beyond all party. That was the real meaning of the Jubilee, compared to which personal congratulations to a lady who had filled an important position with credit for fifty years held only a very secondary place.

It may be claimed for the Queen that she has realized, as no other modern Sovereign of this country has done, and as only a section of the public dimly appreciate, the true value of the Crown as a power which is above party, and therefore representative of the whole nation. Her function has been to check Ministers who have been ready to make national sacrifices to promote party ends; constantly, for instance, to keep before the heads of successive Governments the importance of maintaining the efficiency of the national defences. How many Prime Ministers and Chancellors of the Exchequer may have been tempted to procure a surplus, and thus obtain for their party the popularity of a remission of taxation, by neglecting to build ships and keep up our naval supremacy, but for the unwearying attention given by the Queen to all matters connected with internal and external defence. When the records of the later years of this reign come to be fully written, innumerable proofs will be given to the public that when statesmen have from time to time disdained to seize a party triumph which would bring with it a national disaster, they have either been inspired by the direct counsels of the Queen, or have received from her, after the event, immediate proof that she has watched their course of conduct with sympathy and appreciation. All government, including party government, only exists for the welfare of the governed; that is, the whole nation. It is quite natural that party leaders should often forget this; it is the function of the Crown never to forget it, and to exert all its influence to prevent the interests of the nation being sacrificed for the supposed benefit of a section of it.

The Queen fully realized, and has over and over again expressed, in the most definite way, the truth that in England the real ultimate power is the will of the people. They may decide wrong, but their decision is the ultimate authority. Her own private opinions on various political questions have no weight in opposition to the will of the people. A large number of her Ministers have left on record their experience of the Queen's complete loyalty to this fundamental principle. She will never let her private feelings or opinions stand in the way of her duty as a constitutional Sovereign. This being so, an impression has gained ground in some quarters that a Constitutional Monarch is only a sort of Chinese mandarin, mechanically nodding assent to whatever is proposed by the Ministers. This is very far from being true. All the executive officers of the Crown are directly responsible to the Queen, and she keeps a watchful eye over their departments, requiring constant reports, and to have proofs of their efficiency submitted to her. Then in matters involving conflict between parties, she exercises a moderating influence, inducing the "outs" to use their position with a due sense of responsibility to national interests, and not to think that these may be sacrificed for the mere purpose of defeating the "ins." In matters involving conflict between the Lords and Commons, the present Sovereign has again and again prevented matters coming to a deadlock, reminding the leaders of the House of Lords of the fundamental fact that the will of the people is the ultimate source of authority, and inducing the leaders of the House of Commons to act in a spirit of statesman-like conciliation and moderation. Two examples will suffice to show how invaluable the exercise of these functions may be, and how they serve to oil the rather cumbrous machinery of the constitution. After the election of 1859, Lord Palmerston was again returned to power, but with considerably reduced majority compared to that of 1857. The Conservatives had fought the election with immense vigor. Their leader, the Earl of Derby, had given £20,000 to the war-chest for the elections. When the new Parliament met, Lord Derby's Government was only beaten on an amendment to the Address by thirteen, so the parties were very nearly balanced. The Conservatives had expected to win, and had made immense efforts, and were proportionately disappointed. The slashing vigor of Lord Derby's eloquence had gained for him the title of the Rupert of Debate. The expectation was that he would lead repeated sallies against the Government; but, contrary to expectation, he was unusually moderate and pacific. The reason came out when the last volume of the Greville Memoirs was published, in 1887. The Queen sent for Lord Derby, when he had left office in 1859, and entreated him not to use the power he had, from the nearly balanced state of parties, to upset Lord Palmerston's Government. She urged the great objections there were to constant changes, and that in the critical state of foreign politics nothing ought to be done to weaken the Government. Lord Derby entirely concurred, and promised to act in conformity with her wishes. Greville says, "He has entirely done so. Nothing could be more temperate and harmless than the few remarks he made on Tuesday night." The circumstance brings out the value of having at the head of the State an officer who is neither nominated by, nor responsible to, party. It also gives a good illustration of the Queen's power of subordinating her own private inclinations to the national welfare; because, although her feelings were softened towards Lord Palmerston, they were hardly cordial, and she strongly dissented from the view which he represented with so much vigor on the questions then at issue between Italy and Austria.

An example of the success of the Queen's efforts to prevent conflict between the two Houses of Parliament is given in full detail in the Life of Archbishop Tait. It will be within the recollection of many readers that the election of 1868 was fought mainly on the question of the Disestablishment of the Church in Ireland, and that an enormous majority was returned to the House of Commons favorable to its disestablishment. The House of Lords, by a large majority, were in favor of the Establishment. Here, then, was a fine field for a battle between the two Houses. The new Parliament was opened on February 16th, 1869. On that morning the Archbishop of Canterbury received an autograph letter from the Queen, expressing her anxiety on the subject of the proposed measure, and adding:—

"The Queen has seen Mr. Gladstone, who shows the most conciliatory disposition. He seems to be really moderate in his views, and anxious, so far as he can properly and consistently do so, to meet the objections of those who would maintain the Irish Church."

She then pointed out the desirability of a conference between Mr. Gladstone and the Archbishop on the subject of the forthcoming Disestablishment Bill; she had already paved the way for this in conversation with the Prime Minister, and was confident that while he would strictly maintain the principle of disestablishment, there were many matters connected with the question which might be open to discussion and negotiation. The interview between Mr. Gladstone and the Archbishop took place almost immediately. It is hardly necessary to draw attention to the sagacity which prompted the Queen to bring about this meeting before the introduction and publication of the Bill, rather than after. It is much easier to prevent an irreconcilable hostility by friendly negotiation, than to charm it away after it has once sprung into existence. Before seeing Mr. Gladstone, the Archbishop drew up a short memorandum of four points which he considered absolutely essential; after the interview he added a note to his MS. to the effect that he had not read it to Mr. Gladstone, "As the interview took the form of an exposition of his policy by Mr. G." In fact he rehearsed to the Archbishop, on February 19th, 1869, the famous speech which he made in the House of Commons on March 1st. The Archbishop, however, heard with great satisfaction that the four essential conditions which he had noted down prior to the interview, were practically observed by Mr. Gladstone in his proposed measure. He immediately communicated this to the Queen, and expressed his satisfaction upon it, and his desire to aid by any means in his power a course of moderation and conciliation. The Bill passed through the House of Commons practically unaltered; all amendments were rejected by immense majorities; there was, in a word, every indication that the Bill was a practical expression of the national will. Then came its fate in the Lords to be considered; and again the Archbishop, by the Queen's commands, put himself in communication with the Prime Minister on the subject, with the view of averting a collision between the two Houses. The Archbishop gave his strenuous support to the Lords adopting the policy of passing the second reading, and amending the Bill in committee. The ordinary Conservative majority in the Lords in 1869 was about sixty; and the practical question was how many of the opposition could be induced either to abstain from voting or to support the second reading. Much, the Archbishop wrote to the Queen, would depend on Lord Granville's time in introducing the Bill in the Lords. He ventured to suggest that Her Majesty should represent this to him. He also wrote to Mr. Disraeli, and begged him to influence his friends in the House of Lords to allow the Bill to pass a second reading, in order to amend it in committee. The Archbishop spoke in this sense in the debate in the Lords, but abstained from voting; Lord Salisbury, among other well-known Conservative leaders, voted with the Government in favor of the second reading, which was carried by a majority of thirty-three. The first danger to the Bill was thus safely passed; but the acute stage of the fight between the Lords and Commons occurred over the Lords' amendments, which were both numerous and important. The Archbishop was again in almost hourly communication with the Queen, constantly urged by her that a spirit of moderation must be shown on both sides, in order to secure a successful issue. In one of his letters to the Queen, while the war on the amendments was being waged (July 8th, 1869), the Archbishop suggested that, rather than yield on one point connected with the endowments, it would be better to defeat the Bill and risk another year of agitation. The Queen immediately replied, deprecating this course, and expressing her fear that another year of political warfare would result in worse, rather than better, terms being forced upon the Church. She herself had all along favored the plan of concurrent endowment, but the majority in the House of Commons was strongly against it, and all the amendments in this direction introduced by the Lords were disallowed. Mr. Gladstone spoke with great vehemence in the House of Commons against the whole of the Lords' amendments. His unyielding language delighted his followers, and there was a corresponding feeling of exasperation among his opponents, especially in the Lords. But when the first heat caused by his speech had subsided, and the actual points of irreconcilable difference between the two Houses were calmly considered, it was felt that though Mr. Gladstone had spoken daggers, he had used none; the Government were, as a matter of fact, prepared to give way on the clause relating to the disposal of the surplus, to accord terms more favorable to the commuting clergy of the Disestablished Church, and to concur in the postponement of the date of disestablishment. On the other hand, they nailed their colors to the mast against concurrent endowment. This indicates the basis of the compromise ultimately arrived at, and without doubt it was largely due to the efforts made by the Queen to bring it about. The Archbishop wrote in his diary, July 25th, 1869:—

"A messenger from Windsor waiting for me with a further letter from the Queen about the Irish Church. It is a great blessing that the Queen takes such a vivid interest in the welfare of her people, and is (e.g.) so earnest to ward off a collision between the two Houses of Parliament."

He then gives a narrative of his personal activity in bringing about the compromise, and his negotiations with Lords Salisbury, Cairns, Grey, and Carnarvon on the one side, and Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville on the other, and adds, "We have made the best terms we could, and, thanks to the Queen, a collision between the two Houses has been averted."

Through the publication of the Archbishop's life, a detailed account of the Queen's activity in this matter has been given to the public; but in order fully to appreciate it, it should be borne in mind that the circumstances just narrated are only a specimen of what is constantly going on of the Queen's unwearying watchfulness over national interests, so that necessary changes take place without unnecessary friction and violence. There is a passage in one of the Queen's letters to her uncle, published in the "Life of the Prince Consort," in which Her Majesty expresses (in 1852) her weariness of political strife, and says, "We women are not made for governing." As this passage meets the eye we can hardly forbear the remembrance that St. Paul wrote of himself, no doubt sincerely, as the chief of sinners. No Sovereign has ever shown more diligence, tact, and courage in the fulfilment of Royal duties than the Queen, and there can be no doubt, not only of her vast knowledge, but also of her intense interest in her work, and of its high utility to the nation.

There has been no space in this little book to dwell upon the colonial expansion of England during the Queen's reign, nor yet upon the great development of man's powers over the forces of nature during the same period, making the England of to-day more different from the England of 1819 than the England of 1819 was from the England of Elizabeth. Neither has space allowed even a reference to the wonderful social progress that has accompanied this material development. Disraeli was perhaps the first among statesmen to grasp the fact of what England's Colonial and Indian Empire meant, and the new place it gave this country in the world. It should not, however, be forgotten that the conception of England as a great Imperial Power is as much due to the philosopher as to the statesman. Sir John Seeley, in the field of historical research, has contributed to it as much as the practical politician. He has pointed out that "the main fact of all facts is the expansion not only of the English race, but of the English State all over the globe." The English people, it has been said, have conquered and peopled half a world in a fit of absence of mind; and it required a Jewish statesman and a Cambridge professor to point out to them that there was anything noticeable in the achievement. Disraeli had not perceived it in 1852. In that year he, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote to Lord Malmesbury, as Foreign Secretary, "These wretched colonies will all be independent in a few years, and are a millstone round our necks." What a change between this remainder biscuit of an effete doctrine of the Manchester School, and the Imperial statesman of later years! When his life is written it will be interesting to see when and how he developed the Imperialism with which his name is now associated. His passing of the Bill in 1876 which made the Queen Empress of India has been already referred to. The Queen valued him as a statesman and as a friend more than any Prime Minister since the days of Sir Robert Peel and Lord Aberdeen. Whether he derived his Imperialism from her, or she hers from him, will not be known till the history of both lives can be fully revealed. She honored him with her regard and friendship, entirely abandoning the distrust and suspicion with which at the outset of his political career she had regarded him. In Hughenden Church she placed after his death a memorial tablet with the following inscription, written by herself:—

To the dear and honored memory of
Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield,
This memorial is placed by
His grateful and affectionate Sovereign and Friend,
Victoria, R. I.
"Kings love them that speak right."—Prov. xvi. 13.

She wrote at the time of Lord Beaconsfield's death to Dean Stanley:—

"The loss of my dear, great friend … has completely overwhelmed me. His devotion and kindness to me, his wise counsels, his great gentleness combined with firmness, his one thought for the honor and glory of the country, and his unswerving loyalty to the throne, make the death of my dear Lord Beaconsfield a national calamity. My grief is great and lasting."

The Queen's words, "his one thought for the honor and glory of the country," are illustrative of what Her Majesty most values in her counsellors; they also indicate her conception of Royalty as a means of representing the nation, and the fusion of party differences. With the wider and wider extension of the suffrage, the House of Commons stands in danger, by its very representative character, of representing only the people who vote for it, and these are only a handful in the great world of the British Empire. The Queen has 378,000,000 subjects; of these only about six millions vote for the Members of the House of Commons. There is danger of the six millions acting with something less than justice to the unrepresented 372,000,000. The Queen constantly watches against this danger, and her well-trained eye quickly detects those among the statesmen of both parties who are able to grasp the larger conception of the duties of government, who are not prepared to destroy the Empire to buy a party majority, or who steadily decline to buy, for example, thirty seats in Lancashire, by the sacrifice of Indian fiscal interests. To such men she gives her support and encouragement, and she has consequently been, throughout her long reign, a steady influence with both parties on the side of prefering national to party ends.

That she has achieved much in this direction is undoubted, and it is also undoubted that she has achieved it mainly by the absolute sincerity of her own character, and by its spontaneous power of distinguishing between the false and the true, the noble and the ignoble. With all the temptations of her position, the possession of almost unlimited power from girlhood, she has chosen to live simply and to live laboriously; with everything before her that wealth could offer in the way of pleasure, she has never found her amusements in pursuits that bring to others sorrow and misery. She has ever been the true woman, and because a true woman therefore a great Queen.

In the earlier chapters of this little book an attempt was made to indicate the formative influences on the Queen's character, and a chief place was given, in this connection, to Baron Stockmar and to the Prince Consort. The bed-rock of the character of all three is the value they put on Love and Duty. Stockmar, towards the close of his life, wrote:—

"Were I now to be asked by any young man just entering into life, 'What is the chief good for which it behooves a man to strive?' my only answer would be, 'Love and Friendship!' Were he to ask me, 'What is a man's most priceless possession?' I must answer, 'The consciousness of having loved and sought the truth, of having yearned for the truth for its own sake!' All else is either vanity or a sick man's dream."

With a similar unconscious self-revelation, the Prince Consort wrote to his eldest daughter, almost immediately after her marriage, counselling her not to think of herself, but to think of duty and service. "If," he said, "you have succeeded in winning people's hearts by friendliness, simplicity, and courtesy, the secret lay in this, that you were not thinking of yourself. Hold fast this mystic power; it is a spark from heaven." The Queen's nature was full of responsive sympathy with these "spirits finely touched to fine issues." In her correspondence she too gives her conception of the secret of happiness. Characteristically enough, she finds her illustration in the person of her husband, and says how people are struck, not only by his great power and energy, but also by his great self-denial, and constant wish to work for others. And "this," adds the Queen, "is the happiest life. Pining for what one cannot have, and trying to run after what is pleasantest, invariably ends in disappointment."

This is the spirit which has enabled Her Majesty to fill her great position so worthily, and to have been, therefore, of untold service to the country she has loved so well.