The Life of King Edward Vii

CHAPTER I.. The Crown and the Empire

The Crown and the Empire

The great development of a political nature in the British Empire of the nineteenth century was the complete harmony which gradually evolved between the Monarchy and a world-wide democracy. This process was all-important because it eliminated an element of internal discord which has destroyed more than one nation in the past; because it permitted the peaceful progress of scattered states to continue through the passing years without having questions of allegiance to seriously hamper their growth; because it trained political thought along lines of stability and continuity and made loyalty and liberty consistent and almost synonymous terms; because it made the Crown the central symbol of the Empire's unity, the visible object of a world-wide allegiance, the special token of a common aspiration and a common sentiment amongst many millions of English-speaking people--the subject of untutored reverence and unquestioned respect amongst hundreds of millions of other races.

THE POSITION OF THE CROWN

The chief factor in this development was the late Queen Victoria, and to the inheritance of the fabric thus evolved came a son who was educated amid the constitutional environment in which she lived and was trained in the Imperial ideas which she so strongly held and so wisely impressed upon her statesmen, her family and her people. King Edward came into responsibilities which were greater and more imposing than those ever before inherited by a reigning sovereign. He had not only the great example and life of his predecessor as a model and as a comparison; not only the same vast and ever-changing and expanding Empire to rule over; not only a similar myriad-eyed press and public to watch his every expression and movement; but he entered with his people upon a new century in which one of the first and most prominent features is a decay in popular respect for Parliament and a revival of the old-time love for stately display, for ceremonial and for the appropriate trappings of royalty. With this evident and growing influence of the Crown as a social and popular factor is the knowledge which all statesmen and constitutional students now possess of the personal influence in diplomacy and statecraft which was wielded by the late Queen Victoria and which the experience and tact of the new Monarch enabled him to also test and prove. Side by side with these two elements in the situation was the conviction which has now become fixed throughout the Empire that the Crown is the pivot upon which its unity and future co-operation naturally and properly turns; that the Sovereign is the one possible central figure of allegiance for all its scattered countries and world-wide races; that without the Crown as the symbol of union and the King as the living object of allegiance and personal sentiment the British realms would be a series of separated units.

These facts lend additional importance to the character and history of the Monarchy; to the influences which have controlled the life and labours of King Edward; to the abilities which have marked his career and the elements which have entered into the making of his character. He may not in succeeding years of his reign have declared war like an Edward I., or made secret diplomatic arrangements like a Charles II. He may not have manipulated foreign combinations like a William III., or dismissed his Ministers at pleasure like a George III., or worked one faction in his Kingdom against another like a Charles I. None of these things have been attempted, nor will his successor desire to undertake them. But none the less there lay in his hand a vast and growing power--the personal influence wielded by a popular and experienced Monarch over his Ministry, his Court, his Diplomatic Staff throughout the world, and his high officers in the Army and Navy. The prestige of his personal honours or personal wishes and the known Imperialism of his personal opinions must have had great weight in controlling Colonial policy in London; while his experience of European and Eastern statecraft through many years of close intercourse with foreign and home statesmen undoubtedly had a marvelous effect in the control of British policy abroad.

To the external Empire, as constituted at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Crown is a many-sided factor. The personal and diplomatic influence of the Sovereign is obvious and was illustrated by Queen Victoria in such historic incidents as the personal relations with King Louis Philippe which probably averted a war with France in the early forties; in the later friendship with Louis Napoleon which helped to make the Crimean War alliance possible; in the refusal by the Queen to assent to a certain casus belli despatch during the American War which saved Great Britain from being drawn into the struggle; in her influence upon the Cabinet in connection with the Schleswig-Holstein question, which was exerted to such an extent (according to Lord Malmesbury) as to have averted a possible conflict with Germany.

The political power of the Crown and its wearer is proven to exist in the dismissal of Lord Palmerston for his rash recognition of the French coup d'état; in the occasional exercise of the right of excluding certain individuals from the Government--notably the case of Mr. Labouchere a decade ago; in such direct exercise of influence as the Queen's intervention in the matter of the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill as related by the late Archbishop Tait. The Imperial influence of the Sovereign has been shown in more than merely indirect ways. The Queen's refusal to approve the first draft of the Royal Proclamation for India in 1858 and her changes in the text were declared by Lord Canning to have averted another insurrection. Her personal determination to send the Prince of Wales to Canada in 1860 and her own visit to Ireland in one of the last years of her reign were cases of actual initiative and active policy. South Africa owed to the late Queen the several visits of the Duke of Edinburgh and the exhibition of her well-known sympathy with the views of Sir George Grey--who, had he been allowed a free hand, would have consolidated and united those regions many years ago and averted the recent disastrous struggle.

Australia owed to her the compliment of various visits from members of the Royal family, the kindly personal treatment of its leaders and a frequently expressed desire for its unity in one great and growing nationality--British in allegiance and connection and power; Australian in local authority, patriotism and development. India was indebted to its Queen-Empress for continued sympathy and wise advice to its Governors-General; for the phraseology in the Proclamation after the Mutiny, already referred to, which rendered the new conditions of allegiance comprehensible and satisfactory to the native mind; for the important visit of the Prince of Wales to that country in 1877; and for the support given to Lord Beaconfield's Imperial policy of asserting England's place in the world, of purchasing the Suez Canal shares in order to help in keeping the route to the East and of paving the way for that acquisition of Egypt and the Soudan which has since made Cecil Rhodes' dream of a great British-African empire a realizable probability. The Colonies, as a whole, owed to Queen Victoria a condition of government which made peaceful constitutional development possible; which extinguished discontent and the elements or embers of republicanism; which gradually eliminated the separative tendencies of distance and slowly merged the Manchester school ideas of the past into the Imperialism of the present; which made evolution rather than revolution the guiding principle of British countries in the nineteenth century.

THE MONARCHY IN HISTORY

How has the Crown become such an important factor in the modern development of British peoples? The answer is not found altogether in personal considerations nor even in those of loyalty to somewhat vague and undefined principles of government. These considerations have had great weight but so also has the traditional and actual power of the Monarchy in moulding institutions and ideas during a thousand years of history. To a much greater extent than is generally understood in these democratic days has this latter influence been a factor. Through nearly all British history the Sovereign has either represented the popular instincts of the time or else led in the direction of extended territory and power under the individual influence of royal valour or statecraft. The history of England has not, of course, been confined to the biography of its Kings or Queens, but it would be as absurd to trace those annals without extended study of the rulers and their characters as it would be to write the records without reference to the people and popular progress. And the Monarchy has done much for the British Isles. Its influence has effected their whole national life in war and in peace, in religion and in morals, in literature and in art. The individual achievements and actions of some of these rulers constitute the very foundation stones in the structure of modern British power. Others again have helped to build the walls of the national edifice until the Sovereign at the beginning of the twentieth century has become the pivot upon which turns the constitutional unity of a great Empire and which forms the only possible centre for a common allegiance amongst its varied peoples.

Continue reading The Life of King Edward Vii free in the Wunder reader →