be made, and made to party gatherings: and Gladstone being, as the Duke of Richmond wrote to the Queen, 'imprudent' and Salisbury 'impulsive,' the natural result followed; and, as Hartington said to her, Salisbury's speeches 'were not very promising,' and Gladstone's 'very unwise.' Chamberlain's were, of course, worse, and quite broke away from the probably impossible undertaking Gladstone had, with his consent, given to the Queen, that both the past history and the future prospects of the House of Lords should be kept out of the controversy, a promise which, when broken by Chamberlain, he explained away with characteristic casuistry. The Queen, acutely conscious of the mischief done by speeches in widening the gulf and inflaming the excitement on both sides, tries to keep Gladstone quiet and urges the Duke of Richmond to prevent Salisbury from attending meetings. Of course, she was right. Indeed, the whole story is conspicuous evidence of the superiority of secret diplomacy to open. So long as the negotiations were conducted by public speeches with newspapers to report and parties to applaud, little or no progress was made. Directly Hartington and Beach met privately it was seen that agreement would not be difficult; and, though Beach withdrew, feeling his position to be made impossible by yet one more foolish speech, this time, from Lord John Manners, yet the Queen's renewed pressure got them resumed; and when Gladstone and Salisbury, with Granville and Northcote, met in the seclusion of Downing Street, no serious difficulties were incurred, and peace was soon assured. Well might the Prime Minister thank the Queen 'for the wise, gracious and steady influence on your Majesty's part which has so powerfully contributed to bring about this accommodation and avert a serious crisis of affairs,' to which she could proudly and truthfully reply, 'To be able to be of use is all I care to live for now.' 6 She had been of use. She had shown what the Sovereign could do in a national crisis; what could not have been done by anybody but the Sovereign. For the task she undertook was a very difficult one. Gladstone and Salisbury were both men of very high character; and both, Gladstone more often than Salisbury, occasionally show at their best in this controversy. But both were strong men, wilful men and party leaders, looking out for party victories, and having to consider men even narrower and more wilful than themselves. Gladstone sent the Queen in August a long memorandum on the situation which struck the Queen, so often a severe critic of her Prime Minister, by its 'fairness and impartiality.' And again, on Sept. 25 he made in a letter to Ponsonby the fruitful suggestion that the Opposition leaders should demand from us clearer specifications and more binding pledges in regard to the principles of Redistribution.' This was the ultimate way of salvation. But as even a month later he still clung to his absurd insistence on the Franchise Bill being passed first, and rejected the Queen's proposals for a conference, the September offer was obviously a hollow one. So far Salisbury's case was unanswerable. Meetings, he said, were useless in the circumstances; and he even thought Gladstone himself evidently disinclined for them, unless we first cut off our own powers of resistance by passing the Franchise Bill alone.' That he rightly was determined not to do; and did not do. He and Cairns insisted that a compromise must be a compromise and not a surrender, and, being both obviously right and possessed of the power of resistance, they gained their point. The Franchise Bill was not passed till they had been shown the scheme of Redistribution and had played their part in shaping it. But Salisbury had been very difficult up to the very last moment, and in fact seems only to have accepted the proposed consultations when he found the Peers would not follow him in further resistance. On Nov. 17 he had called a meeting of a few Peers at which the Duke of Richmond (as the Duke afterwards told the Queen) had frankly said that he would not again be a party to throwing out the Franchise Bill. He insisted that an arrangement ought to be come to about Redistribution. Salisbury was 'very much annoyed,' and called a meeting of the whole Party. But there again, as Richmond reported, he and Cairns repeated what they had said the day before 'to which Lord Salisbury replied that he was very much grieved to hear it, but gave way.' By a day or two later, the Duke believed that even Salisbury had seen that what they had proposed had been the best course to pursue. At any rate, Glad ז' 2 T stone found him most conciliatory in their conferences, which were a rapid and complete success. Our business here is with the Queen. It has been worth while, I think, to set out this story in some detail in order to show how great the difficulties were; how awkward to manage the two principal personages; how hard the Queen worked all through the dangerous weeks; how much more clearly than either Gladstone and Salisbury she saw the true goal; how patiently she kept her eyes on it, refused to see anything else, and at last by indirect and direct appeals made them see it too, and go straight to it in the only way. There could not be a better example of the service which the Crown, and the Crown alone, raised high above Parties, can render to the country. And there could not be clearer proof of the necessity of maintaining the height of that dignity, of securing to the Sovereign such a position and such influence that when Party violences are threatening to wreck the State, there should be one Voice to which all must listen with attention and respect. We have lately seen an instance in a smaller field where a member of the Royal Family, representing the Crown, was able to play an important part in settling a very heated and dangerous racial and political controversy. The truth is that Constitutional Monarchy has still very great advantages over Republicanism, and the Constitutional Sovereign a very important part to play. No President can be what he is. Of one of the two most important Republics in the world the President is a party chief who governs as well as reigns for four or eight years, after which he is nothing at all. His party connections combine with his previous and future obscurity to make it quite impossible for him to be reverenced as the Head of the whole nation to whom all can look up as reconciler and arbiter of their differences. The President of the other has no power and little prestige. Neither can play the part which a King or Queen of England can play. We have indeed seen, in England, a year or two before the war, a crisis in which the Sovereign earnestly and magnanimously tried to play his part but failed. Possibly, however, as Englishmen invented Constitutional Monarchy, it requires Englishmen to work with. And in that crisis the forces which made agreement impossible were certainly Irish and probably also Welsh. In the crisis described in these letters the important persons were all English. Like all Englishmen, in the very last resort and after a lot of foolish speechifying, both Gladstone and Salisbury shrank back from the folly of quarrelling, in the Irish fashion, for the mere sake of quarrelling. And the Queen who, in her honesty, simplicity, directness, and common sense, was much more typically English than either of them, was determined that the crisis should be solved in that spirit of compromise which has for centuries been the secret and genius of English politics. Being no mere President, but a Sovereign, and one who had reigned for fifty years, and being also a woman, and a woman of will and character, she did what no one else could have done. She saved the country from a great folly which would have been a great danger, and therefore a great crime. Every one who reads the story, as it is given here, will echo Granville's words to her: Your Majesty must feel rather proud,' and her note on them: Which I certainly am; or rather, more than thankful, that I have been able to effect this.' If Constitutional Monarchy remains, as all wise men hope it will, the most august, and not the least useful, of the discoveries of the political genius of England, the historians of the future will certainly admit that its preservation and development are very largely due to the long reign, the high character, and, in spite of all her prejudices and vehemencies, the common sense and practical wisdom of Queen Victoria. · JOHN BAILEY. e SOME RECENT BOOKS. The Old College of Glasgow-Wagner's Letters--de Quincey THE University of Glasgow is singularly fortunate in one Lives of great men rarely remind us that we can make our lives sublime, and do not often show that they were particularly sublime themselves. In any case, the best we can hope from them is that they represent the great man as he truly was in his passions, inspiration, and everyday common-sense. 'The Letters of Richard Wagner' (Dent), as selected by Prof. Wilhelm Altmann and translated by M. M. Bozman, is a revealing book. These seven hundred odd letters, with their frank outpourings, tell the truth of the Master pretty sincerely as his Autobiography did not. They exhibit him in his poverty, struggles, and fame; as the man of genius and of frequent meanness; as the lover, the husband, the idealist, the incomplete business man, the creator Vol. 250.-No. 495. |