A COMMISSION OF INQUIRY ON ROYALTY
(1876.)
The subjects for our solemn consideration are the seclusion of her Most Gracious Majesty, and the complaints thereanent published in several respectable journals. In order to investigate the matter thoroughly, we constituted ourselves (the unknown number x) into a special Commission of Inquiry. We are happy to state that the said Commission has concluded its arduous labors, and now presents its report within a week of its appointment; surely the most prompt and rapid of commissions. The cause of this celerity we take to be the fact that the Commissioners were unsalaried; we being unanimously of opinion that had we received good pay for the inquiry throughout the period of our session, we could have prolonged it with certain benefit, if not to the public yet to ourselves, for a great number of years. If, therefore, you want a Commission to do its work rapidly vote no money for it. And do not fear that the most headlong haste in gathering evidence and composing the report will diminish the value of such report; for when a Commission has lasted for years or months it generally rises in a quite different state of the subject matter from that in which it first sat, and the report must be partly obsolete, partly a jumble of anachronisms. In brief, it may be fairly affirmed as a general rule that no Commission of Inquiry is of any value at all; the appointment of one being merely a dodge by which people who don’t want to act on what they and everybody else see quite well with their naked eyes, set a number of elderly gentlemen to pore upon it with spectacles and magnifying glasses until dazed and stupid with poring, in the hope that this process will last so long that ere it is finished the public will have forgotten the matter altogether. And now for the result of our inquiries on this subject, which is not only immensely important, but is even sacred to our loyal hearts.
A West-end tradesman complains bitterly that through the absence of the Court from Buckingham Palace, and the diminished number and splendor of royal pomps and entertainments, the “Season” is for him a very poor season indeed. The Commissioners, find that the said tradesman (whose knowledge seems-limited to a knowledge of his business, supposing he knows that) is remarkably well off; and consider that West-end tradesmen have no valid vested interest in Royalty and the Civil List, that at the worst they do-a capital trade with the aristocracy and wealthy classes (taking good care that the punctual and honest shall amply overpay their losses by the unpunctual and dishonest); that if they are not satisfied with the West-end, they had better try the East-end, and see how that will suit them; and, in short, that this tradesman is not worth listening to.
Numerous fashionable and noble people (principally ladies) complain that they have no Court to shine, in. The Commissioners think that they shine a great deal too much already, and in the most wasteful manner, gathered together by hundreds, light glittering on light; and that if they really want to shine beneficially in a court there are very many very dark courts in London where the light of their presence would be most welcome.
It is complained on behalf of their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales that they have to perform many of the duties of royalty without getting a share of the royal allowance. The Commissioners think that if the necessary expenses of the heir to the throne are really too heavy for his modest, income, and are increased by the performance of royal duties, he had better send in yearly a bill to his Mamma for expenses incurred on her account, and a duplicate of the same to the Chancellor to the Exchequer; so that in every Budget the amount of the Civil List shall be equitably divided between her Majesty and her Majesty’s eldest son, doubtless to their common satisfaction.
It is complained on behalf of various foreign royal or ruling personages that while they in their homes treat generously the visiting members of our royal family, they are treated very shabbily when visiting here. The Commissioners think that Buckingham Palace, being seldom or never wanted by the Queen, and very seldom wanted for the reception of the English Court, should be at all times open for such royal or ruling visitors; that a Lord Chamberlain, or other such noble domestic servant should be detailed to attend on them, and see to their hospitable treatment in all respects; and that to cover the expenditure on their account a fair deduction should be made from her Majesty’s share of the Civil List, which deduction, being equitable her Majesty would no doubt view with extreme pleasure.
It is complained on the part of her Majesty’s. Ministers, that when they want the royal assent and signature to important Acts of Parliament, they have to lose a day or two and undergo great fatigue (which is peculiarly hard on men who are mostly aged, and all overworked) in travelling to and from Osborne or Balmoral. The Commissioners think the remedy plain and easy, as in the two preceding cases. Let a law be passed assuming that absence, like silence, gives, consent; so that whenever her Majesty is not in town, the Speaker of the Commons or the Lord Chancellor, or other great officer of State, be empowered to seal and sign in her name, and generally to perform any of her real and royal duties, on the formal demand of the Ministry, who always (and not the Queen) are responsible to Parliament and the country for all public acts.
A taxpayer complains that for fourteen years her Majesty has been punctually drawing all moneys allotted to support the royal dignity, while studiously abstaining from all, or nearly all, the hospitalities and other expensive functions incident to the support of the said dignity. The Commissioners consider that her Majesty is perchance benefiting the country more (and may be well aware of the fact) by taking her money for doing nothing than if she did something for it; that if she didn’t take the said money, somebody else would (as for instance, were she to abdicate, the Prince of Wales, become King, would want and get at least as much); so that while our Government remains as it is, the complaint of the said taxpayer is foolish.
Another Taxpayer, who must be a most mean-minded fellow, a stranger to all sacred sympathies and hallowed emotions, says: “If a washerwoman, being stupified by the death of her husband, neglected her business for more than a week or two, she would certainly lose her custom or employment, and not all the sanctity of conjugal grief (about which reverential journalists gush) would make people go on paying her for doing nothing; and if this washerwoman had money enough of her own to live on comfortably, people would call her shameless and miserly if she asked for or accepted payment while doing nothing; and if this washerwoman had a large family of boys and girls around her, and shut herself up to brood upon her husband’s death for even three or four months, people would reckon her mad with selfish misery. The Commissioners (as soon as they recover from the stupefaction of horror into which this blasphemy has thrown them) consider and reply that there can be no proper comparison of a Queen and a washerwoman, and that nobody would think of instituting one, except a brute, a Republican, an Atheist, a Communist, a, fiend in human form; that anyhow if, as this wretch says, a washerwoman would be paid for a week or two without working, in consideration of her conjugal affliction, it is plain that a Queen, who (it will be universally allowed) is at least a hundred thousand times as good as a washerwoman, is therefore entitled to at least a hundred thousand times the “week or two” of salary without performance of duty – that is, to at least 1,923 or 3,846 years, whereas this heartless and ribald reprobate himself only complains that our beloved Sovereign has done nothing for her wage throughout “fourteen years.” The Commissioners therefore eject this complainant with ineffable scorn; and only wish they knew his name and address, that they might denounce him for prosecution to the Attorney-General.
A Malthusian (whatever kind of creature that may be) complains that her Majesty has set an example of uncontrolled fecundity to the nation and the royal family, which, besides being generally immoral, is likely, at the modest estimate of £6,000 per annum per royal baby, to lead to the utter ruin of the realm in a few generations. The Commissioners, after profound and prolonged consideration, can only remark that they do not understand the complaint any better than the name (which they do not understand at all) of the “Malthusian;” that they have always been led to believe that a large family is a great honor to a legitimately united man and woman; and that, finally, they beg to refer the Malthusian to the late Prince Consort.
A devotedly loyal Royalist (who unfortunately does not give the name and address of his curator) complains that her Majesty, by doing nothing except receive her Civil List, is teaching the country that it can get on quite as well without a monarch as with one, and might therefore just as well, and indeed very much better, put the amount of the Civil List into its own pocket and call itself a Republic. The Commissioners remark that this person seems the most rational of the whole lot of complainants (most rational, not for his loyalty, but most rational as to the grounds of his complaint, from his own point of view; in accordance with the dictum, “A madman reasons rightly from wrong premises; a fool wrongly from right ones,”) and that his surmise is very probably correct – namely, that her Majesty is really a Republican in principle, but not liking (as is perfectly natural in her position) to publicly profess and advocate opinions so opposed to the worldly interests of all her friends and relatives, has been content to further these opinions practically for fourteen years past by her conduct, without saying a word on the subject. The Commissioners, however, find one serious objection to this surmise in the fact that if her Majesty is really a Republican at heart, she must wish to exclude the Prince of Wales from the Throne; while it seems to them that the intimate knowledge she must have of his wisdom and virtues (not to speak of her motherly affection) cannot but make her feel that no greater blessing could come to the nation after her death than his reigning over it. As this is the only complaint which the Commissioners find at once well-founded and not easy to remedy, they are happy to know that it is confined to the very insignificant class of persons who are “devotedly loyal Royalists.”
The Commissioners thus feel themselves bound to report that all the complaints they have heard against our beloved and gracious Sovereign (except the one last cited, which is of no importance) are without foundation, or frivolous, or easily remedied, and that our beloved and gracious Sovereign (whom may Heaven long preserve!) could not do better than she is now doing, in doing nothing.
But in order to obviate such complaints, which do much harm, whether ill or well founded, and which especially pain the delicate susceptibilities of all respectable men and women, the Commissioners have thought it their duty to draw up the following project of a Constitution, not to come into force until the death of our present beloved and gracious Sovereign (which may God, if so it please Him, long avert!), and to be modified in its details according to the best wisdom of our national House of Palaver.
Draft
Whereas it is treasonable to talk of dethroning a monarch, but there can be no disloyalty in preventing a person not yet a monarch from becoming one:
And whereas it is considered by very many, and seems proved by the experience of the last – years that the country can do quite well without a monarch, and may therefore save the extra expense of monarchy:
And whereas it is calculated that from the accession of George I. of blessed memory until the decease of the most beloved of Queens, Victoria, a period of upwards of a century and a half, the Royal Family of the House of Guelph have received full and fair payment in every respect for their generous and heroic conduct in coming to occupy the throne and other high places of this kingdom, and in saving us from the unconstitutional Stuarts:
And whereas the said Stuarts may now be considered extinct, and thus no longer dangerous to this realm: And whereas the said Royal Family of the House of Guelph is so prolific that the nation cannot hope to support all the members thereof for a long period to come in a royal manner:
And whereas the Dukes of this realm are accounted liberal and courteous gentlemen:
And whereas the constitution of our country is so far Venetian that it cannot but be improved in harmony and consistency by being made more Venetian still:
Be it enacted, etc., That the Throne now vacant through the ever-to-be-deplored death of her late most gracious Majesty shall remain vacant. That the mem-ers of what has been hitherto the Royal Family keep all the property they have accumulated, the nation resuming from them all grants of sinecures and other salaried appointments. That no member of the said Family be eligible for any public appointment whatever for at least one hundred years. That the Dukes in the order of their seniority shall act as Doges (with whatever title be considered the best) year and year about, under penalty of large fines in cases of refusal, save when such refusal is supported by clear proof of poverty (being revenue under a settled minimum), imbecility, brutality, or other serious disqualification. That no members of a ducal family within a certain degree of relationship to the head of the house be eligible for any public appointment whatever; the head of the house being eligible for the Dogeship only. That the duties of the Doge be simply to seal and sign Acts of Parliament, proclamations, etc., when requested to do so by the Ministry; and to exercise hospitality to royal or ruling and other representatives of foreign countries, as well as to distinguished natives. That a fair and even excessive allowance be made to the Doge for the expenses of his year of office. That the royal palaces be official residences of the Doge. That the Doge be free from all political responsibility as from all political power; but be responsible for performing liberally and courteously the duties of hospitality, so that Buckingham Palace shall not contrast painfully with the Mansion House. Etc., etc.
God preserve the Doge!
The Commission of Inquiry having thus triumphantly vindicated our beloved and gracious Sovereign against the cruel aspersions of people in general, and having moreover drafted a plan for obviating such aspersions against any British King or Queen in future, ends its Report, and dissolves itself, with humble thankfulness to God Almighty whose grace alone has empowered it to conclude its arduous labors so speedily, and with results so incalculably beneficial.
P. S. – Since the above report was drawn up, that ardent English patriot and loyalist, Benjamin Disraeli, being by the grace of God and the late Earl of Derby Prime Minister of this realm, has proposed that Parliament shall enable her Most Gracious Majesty to assume the additional title of Empress of India, and Parliament has so far humbly assented. Being sore pressed by many cantankerous persons to give valid reasons for this change, he has given reasons many and weighty; such as the earnest desire of the princes and people of India, which desire has been so abundantly expressed that the expressions thereof cannot be produced lest they should overwhelm Parliament and destroy the balance of the world in general; then the imposing authority of “Whitaker’s Almanack,” a dissenting minister and a school-girl aged twelve: and lastly the necessity of such a title for scaring all the Russias from India. But I believe that in deference to the well-known modesty of her Most Gracious Majesty he has not produced the most cogent reason of all, which is that for her wonderful and continual goodness during the past fourteen years in abstaining from the active functions of royalty, thus not only doing no mischief but preparing us for a Republic de jure by habituating us to a Republic de facto, she merits a great reward; and that, as she has already more money than she knows what to do with, this reward of royal virtue can most fittingly be rendered by her grateful subjects promoting her to the rank of Empress. And it should be noted that whereas the old title of Queen has a certain strength and stability in the habitudes if not in the affections of the people, the new fangled title of Empress has no such support, so that in assuming it our beloved monarch is but working consistently and resolutely toward the great end of her reign, the speedy abolition of monarchy and establishment of a Republic.
A BIBLE LESSON ON MONARCHY
(1876.)
The old theory of “The right divine of kings to govern wrong,” and the much-quoted text, “Fear God and honor the king,” seem to have impressed many good people with the notion that the Bible is in favor of monarchy. But “king” in the text plainly has the general meaning of “ruler,” and would be equally applicable to the President of a Republic. In Romans xiii. 1 – 3, we read: “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil.” Without stopping to discuss the bold assertion in the last sentence, we may remark that the real teaching of this passage is that Christians ought to be indifferent to politics, quietly accepting whatever government they find in power; for if the powers that be are ordained of God, or in other words, if might is right, all forms of government are equally entitled to obedience so long as they actually exist. Of course Christians are not now, and for the most part have not been for centuries, really indifferent to politics, because for the most part they now are and long have been Christians only in name; but it is easy to understand from the New Testament itself why the first Christians naturally were thus indifferent, and why Christianity has never afforded any political inspiration. Nothing can be clearer to one who reads the New Testament honestly and without prejudice than the fact that Christ and his apostles believed that the end of the world was at hand. Thus in Matt, xxiv., Jesus after foretelling the coming to judgment of the son of man in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory, when the angels shall gather the elect from the four winds, adds, v. 34, “Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.” This is repeated in almost the same words in Mark xiii., and Luke xxi., and a careful reading of the Epistles shows that their writers were profoundly influenced by this prophecy. But with the world coming to an end so soon, it would be as absurd to take any interest in its politics as for a traveller stopping two or three days in an inn to concern himself self with schemes for rebuilding it, when about to leave for a far country where he intends settling for life. If therefore we want any political guidance from the Holy Scriptures, we must go to the Old Testament, not to the New.
Now the first lesson on Monarchy, which we remember made us think even in childhood, is the fable of the trees electing a king, told by Jotham, the son of Gideon, in Judges ix. The trees in the process of this election showed a judgment much superior to that which men usually show in such a business. It is true that they did not select first the most strong and stalwart of trees, the cedar or the oak, but they had the good sense to choose the most sweet-natured and bountiful, the olive, then the fig, then the vine. But the bountiful trees thus chosen had good sense too, and would not forsake the fatness and the sweetness and the wine which cheereth God and man, to rule over their fellow trees. Then the poor trees, like a jilted girl who marries in spleen the first scamp she comes across, asked the bramble to be their king; and that barren good-for-nothing of course accepted eagerly the crown which the noble and generous had refused, and called upon the trees to put their trust in its scraggy shadow, “and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon.” Young as we were when this fable first caught our attention, we mused a good deal over it, and even then began to learn that those most eager for supremacy, the most forward candidates in elections, are nearly always brambles, not olives or fig-trees or vines; and that the first thought of a bramble, when made ruler over its betters, is naturally to destroy with fire the cedars of Lebanon.
But God himself in the case of the Israelites has vouchsafed to us a very clear judgment on the question of Monarchy. In the remarkable constitution for that people which he gave to Moses, he did not include a king, and Israel remained without a king for more years than it is worth while endeavoring to count here. We read, 1 Samuel viii., how “All the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Hamah, and said unto him, Behold thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations. But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the Lord. And the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.
“… Now therefore hearken unto their voice: how-beit yet protest solemnly unto them, and show them the manner of the king that shall reign over them.” Some students of the Bible may have thought that God’s severe condemnation of the Israelites for wanting a king arose chiefly from wounded pride, from the fact that they had rejected him, and we cannot affirm that this feeling did not inflame his anger, for he himself has said that he is a jealous God; but the protest which he orders Samuel to make, and the exposition of the common evils of kingship, prove clearly that God did not (and therefore, of course, does not) approve this form of government. And, indeed, it is plain that if he had approved it, he would have given it to his chosen people at first. For although divines have termed the form of government under which the Jews lived before the kings a theocracy, God did not then rule immediately, but always through the medium of a high-priest or judge, and could have governed through the medium of a king had he thought it well so to do. And he who reads the history of the Jews under the Judges, as contained in the Book of Judges, and especially the narratives in chapters xvii. to xxi. which illustrate the condition of Jewish society in those days when “there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes,” will see that God must have thought a Monarchy very vile and odious indeed when he was angry at the request for it, and implied that it was actually worse than that government by Judges alternated with bondage under neighboring tribes which the theologians call a theocracy. Samuel warned the people of what a king would do, and doubtless thought he was warning them of the worst, but kings have far outstripped all that the prophet could foresee. The king, he said, will take your sons to be his warriors and servants; and will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and cooks, and bakers. This was the truth, and nothing but the truth, but it was not the whole truth; for the sons have been taken to be far worse than mere warriors and servants, and the daughters for much viler purposes than cooking and baking. Samuel goes on: “And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants” – when he does not keep them for himself might have been added. “And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.” Surely much more than a tenth, O Samuel! We will not quote the remainder of this wise warning. Like most wise warnings it was ineffectual; the foolish people insisted on having a king, and in the following chapters we read how Saul the Son of Kish, going forth to seek his father’s asses, found his own subjects.
The condemnation of Monarchy by God, as we read it in this instance, is so thorough and general that we feel bound to add a few words on an exceptional case in which a king is highly extolled in the Scriptures, without any actions being recorded of him, as in the instances of David and Solomon, to nullify the praise. The king in question was Melchizedek, King of Salem, and priest of the most high God, who met Abram returning from the defeat of the four kings and blessed him, and to whom Abram gave tithes of all, as we read in Genesis xiv. But this short notice of Melchizedek in Genesis does not by any means suggest to us the full wonderfulness of his character, though we naturally conclude from it that he was indeed an important personage to whom Abram gave tithes of all. The New Testament, however, comes to our aid, and for once gives us a most valuable political lesson, though the inspired writer was far from thinking of political instruction when he wrote the passage. In Hebrews vi., 20, and vii., 1 to 3, we read: “Jesus, made an High Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec. For this Melchisedec, King of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him; to whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all; first being by interpretation King of righteousness, and after that also King of Salem, which is King of peace; without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually.” Now he to whom Jesus is compared, and who is like the Son of God, is clearly the noblest of characters; and therefore, as the history in the first book of Samuel teaches us that Monarchy is generally to be avoided, these fine verses from the Epistle to the Hebrews delineate for us the exceptional king whose reign is to be desired.
The delineation is quite masterly, for a few lines give us characteristics which cannot be overlooked or mistaken. This model monarch must be a priest of the most high God – a king of righteousness and king of peace; without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God. Whenever and wherever such a gentleman is met with, we would advise even the most zealous Republicans to put him forthwith upon the throne. But in the absence of such a gentleman we can hardly do wrong if we follow the good advice of Samuel dictated by God Almighty, and manage without any Monarch.