Littell's Living Age/Volume 138/Issue 1779/The Burial of Hanover

From The Spectator.

THE BURIAL OF HANOVER.

Nothing in history is more strange, though it seems to us all so natural, than the quiet, persistent, immovable refusal of the English people, a refusal continued through seven generations, to care anything about Hanover. Five successive kings, one of whom was among the most popular of English sovereigns, had it most nearly at their hearts that their English subjects should care. Ministry after ministry accepted the sovereign's view, and either did care, or made believe to care so much that they fought, and wrote despatches, and intrigued for the sake of Hanover. When, in 1815, the Continent emerged from the deluge under which all landmarks had been lost, the English envoy — in terms which we shall know one day, when the secret archives of Hanover see the light, in that history of Hanover under English kings, which we recommend to the next historian in want of a subject — demanded the restoration of Hanover as a first article in his claims, and it was granted, but still the English people paid to the little kingdom no attention. They did not visit it, they did not study it, they did not recollect it, or recollected it only with a dislike which, if faint, was so real that to be a Hanoverian was to be in this country, in popular opinion, disqualified for royal favor. So universal and so deep-seated was the feeling, that people thought it quite natural, and still think it so, never inquired into its origin, and refused altogether to discuss,arguments on the opposite side. Yet so far from its being natural, it may safely be said that to any other people but the English, Hanover would have seemed a most precious possession. Its elector-kings were always most anxious to draw the bonds between the electorate and the kingdom closer, and so far from neglecting Britain for Hanover, neglected Hanover for Britain, in a way that only Germans, and Germans of the pre-national age, would have endured. They seldom went there, they governed through viceroys, and they spent their Hanoverian income in Great Britain. The junction of the crowns gave Britain the possibility of an immense position on the Continent, a free entry for its troops to points whence they could protect Holland, Belgium, and Denmark, menace Prussia, and exercise a direct influence over the policy of southern Germany. All that we obtain by our alliance with Belgium was secured in a much greater degree by our connection with Hanover, with this additional advantage, that Hanover could lend us, without loss of self-respect, the aid of thirty thousand of the best troops in the world. It was worth, in a military sense, half-a-dozen Indias, and it might in 1815, when England was irresistible, have been considerably enlarged. Nor was it in any way lost when the accession of Queen Victoria once more, after a hundred and twenty-three years of mingled existence, divided the two crowns. The king of Hanover was still a member of the English royal family, and would still have been only too willing to regard himself as a British prince, and purchase support by a subordination of policy such as Portugal, when anxious for assistance, always promises, and in ordinary times — as witness the Delagoa Bay affair — always refuses to concede. The disjunction of the crowns need never have been noticed, if the British people had cared that Hanover should be theirs. So excellent, indeed, was the position, that Continental statesmen never quite believed in English feeling on the subject, treated the Britannic character of Hanover as a factor in European politics, and up to the moment of its extinction half believed that the kingdom would be saved by British interference. The British people, however, cared absolutely nothing about it. They were very sorry their kings should be Continental rulers, they were very glad when they ceased to hold the double position, and after the separation of the crowns they declined to think about Hanover at all. When the kingdom was extinguished, they were, on the whole, pleased. It must have been a very bitter pill for the Duke of Cambridge, who never forgot that he stood second in succession to the State; but no serious word of remonstrance was ever uttered in Parliament, and we never remember to have read a complaint, except against the sequestration of George V.'s private fortune. The ex-king, whose title to his territories was ideally perfect, he reigning at once by "right" and by con sent, had even among Legitimists no English adherents, and when he died, M. de Rochefoucauld-Bisaccia seemed a more natural mourner at the preliminary funeral ceremony than the Prince of Wales. The queen issued an order directing mourning to be worn for her cousin, and we are told that in a few London churches the order was obeyed; but the majority of the people were entirely indifferent, and indeed ignorant that with Prince Ernest's renunciation of the Hanoverian throne a chapter of English history will end. Neither the antiquity of the house of Guelph — an antiquity which so attracted Gibbon that he wrote on it a monograph, now unjustly forgotten — nor the benefits it has accidentally conferred on Great Britain, nor the unrivalled chance of Continental influence which the union of, the crowns might have opened, have moved the sensible, stolid, unhistorical islanders to care one jot what became of the English branche cadette. Of all Englishmen of rank, the one who is to Englishmen most shadowy is Prince Ernest of Cumberland, eldest male by German and French law of the English royal house. We doubt if there are ten men in England who could say what this prince is like, who ever bought his photograph, or who have the slightest idea why the Hanoverian minister who wrote "For Sceptre and Crown," holds him in such visible disdain.

So complete, indeed, is the indifference, that we scarcely know why we touch the subject, unless it be from an interest in the little-noticed sides of history, which some of our readers may share with us; but as we have touched it, we may notice another point, the entire extinction as an effective force of the idea of legitimacy. George V. had a much better title to Hanover than Henry V. has to France. The line is as old — having intermarried, Gibbon says, with that of Charlemagne — and though not seated in Hanover for more than five hundred years, it acquired the duchy rightfully, and has the immense advantage that it reigned up to the moment of its extinction with the full consent of its people, who even in émeute asked for a constitution, and not a déchéance. Nobody, not even Prince Bismarck, ever questioned the title of the family, or denied its right to fight in 1866, or claimed to expel it on any other ground than that its expulsion was to the interest of the body of the German people. That argument was sound, and was admitted not only by the Germans, but by all Europeans: but in that argument, so accepted, is the knell of all dynastic claims. If the welfare of the people is the governing rule in the distribution of thrones, then any throne may be abolished in the interest of that welfare, and as they themselves must be judges on the subject, they may expel their kings without reproach. That Prussia conquered Hanover is true. That it annexed Hanover, in the interest of all Germans, is also true. But if Prussia had the right to do this — which we do not dream of disputing — then, a fortiori, Germany herself, or any other independent State, has the right to do the same thing. That is not a doctrine fatal to constitutional kings, any more than to presidents, for a king may reign by an informal, as well as a formal consent of his people, but it is a doctrine fatal to all those claims to be above consent which kings have hitherto put forward. The extinction of Hanover, after seven hundred and twenty-one years of recognized and separate existence, because its continuance in independence was generally inconvenient, is the recognition in the most concrete and practical form of the right of peoples to organize themselves as they please, in utter disregard of any rights their sovereigns may claim. The king of Hanover had committed no fault. Hanover as a State had refused no reasonable concession. There was no proof that the prince Ernest or the Duke of Cambridge, if called to the throne, would not have signed any treaty necessary to the German empire, and have assumed as regards that empire the attitude of the kings of Saxony or Bavaria. There was, in fact, no excuse for the bouleversement, except that while Hanover existed Prussia could not be strong, and that a strong Prussia was essential to the aspirations of the German people; and that excuse, which would justify any anti-royal revolution, seemed to the foremost of German legitimists amply sufficient. It seems so also to constitutionalists and republicans, and it was well it should seem so; but then, if it is sufficient, where is the logical claim of sovereigns against subjects? It is reduced to this, — that if subjects wish a throne to disappear, they must have the necessary force to bring it to the ground. We do not suppose the Hohenzollerns will ever regret the severe measure dealt out to the Guelphs. It was necessary to deal it, or to draw back from their appointed task; but a day may come when they may recollect it, and doubt whether Louis XIV. did not understand kingcraft when he said, "Sovereigns should stand by one another." They have learned a higher lesson, but whether it is one which will equally tend to their own prosperity is a question to be settled in the future, if it ever arrives, when Germany fulfils Heine's prophecy, and the German republic is born. It is not the farther off because the last Guelph was unattended to his grave by representatives of Germany, and was honored in England only with an official and perfunctory mourning.