“To change back the oligarchy into a generous aristocracy round a real throne,” Disraeli ranks, with his ideal mission towards the Church, as “the trainer of the nation;” towards Labour, to “the moral and physical condition of the people;” towards Ireland, by governing it “according to the policy of Charles I., and not of Oliver Cromwell;” to Reform, by emancipating “the political constituency of 1832 from its sectarian bondage and contracted sympathies.”

“Sovereignty,” he says, in the peroration to Sybil, “has been the title of something that has had no dominion, while absolute power has been wielded by those who profess themselves the servants of the people. In the selfish strife of factions, two great existences have been blotted out of the history of England—the Monarch and the Multitude; as the power of the Crown has diminished, the privileges of the people have disappeared....” Such was Disraeli’s summary in 1870 of what inspired “Young England” in 1840. The more real is representation, the greater the chances of royalty. De Tocqueville, too, has shown that it was just the decay of mediÆval, municipal institutions that loosened the hold of the French Crown on the French nation.

The “real throne,” as against the ornamental, formed a very material part of it. It chimed with Disraeli’s outlook on English institutions as “popular, but not democratic.” Since Sybil was written, the “subject” is no longer “a serf,” but for a long time the “sceptre” tended to remain “a pageant.” The constitutional possibilities and opportunities of kingship under our limited monarchy are even now, perhaps, hardly realised. Before I close this chapter, I intend to say something of their historical lineage.

There is a satirical passage about George the Fourth among the brilliant flippancies of Vivian Grey, which may amuse us before coming to close quarters with the serious side of sovereignty: “The first great duty of a monarch is to know how to bow skilfully. Nothing is more difficult, ... a royal bow may often quell a rebellion, and sometimes crush a conspiracy. Our own Sovereign bows to perfection. His bow is eloquent, and will always render an oration ... unnecessary, which is a great point, for harangues are not regal. Nothing is more undignified than to make a speech. It is from the first an acknowledgment that you are under the necessity of explaining, or conciliating, or convincing, or confuting; in short, that you are not omnipotent, but opposed.”

“The Monarchy of the Tories is more democratic than the Republic of the Whigs!” exclaimed Disraeli, as I have already quoted, in his early Spirit of Whiggism. “I think,” cried Canning in 1812, “that we have the happiness to live under a limited monarchy, not under a crowned republic;” while, six years later, Canning again denounced most forcibly the error of those “who argue as if the constitution of this country was a broad and level democracy inlaid (for ornament’s sake) with a peerage and topped (by sufferance) with a crown.” This belief inspired the same statesman when, towards the agitated close of his days, he speaks in a letter to Mr. Croker of his reliance on the “vigour of the Crown” in conjunction with the “body of the people.”

This, too, was the belief that inspired Disraeli. “The monarch and the multitude.” Monarchy should be neither a gewgaw nor an abstraction, but a centre of national enthusiasm. “It is enthusiasm alone that gives flesh and blood to the skeletons of opinions.” From the beginning of the first to the close of the fifth decade of last century kingship had been on its trial in England. “The Tories,” wrote Disraeli in The Press, “already recognised the necessity of employing all the popular elements of the Constitution in support of its monarchical foundation.” Just as I have shown with regard to the Church, his predisposition lay towards pure Theocracy, but his practical bent discerned in a national Church its aptest and most congenial embodiment; so with regard to kingship his predisposition lay towards pure monarchy—royal leadership—which he knew, and indeed hoped, could in England never prove absolute, still less arbitrary. But a British king retains the great advantage of being outside the prejudices of every order in the State of which he is the social chieftain. The tendency, mused “Sidonia,” of “advanced civilisation was to ‘pure monarchy;’” “Monarchy is indeed a government which requires a high degree of civilisation for its fulfilment.” Public opinion, absorbing so many functions of control, training, and discussion, should find in the king a disinterested exponent. “In an enlightened age, the monarch on the throne, free from the vulgar prejudices and the corrupt interests of the subject, again becomes divine.” But this was said with regard to France, and in answer to “Coningsby’s” hazard that the republic of that country might absorb its kingdom, and Paris109 the provinces. It was a dream. None felt more deeply than Disraeli that English tradition was the temper of England. None, more than he, deprecated centralisation. The very value of her “glorious institutions” is, as he often insists, that they foster, in a form above the passions of momentary outburst or fickle reactions, those great elements of loyalty, religion, industry, liberty, and order which have conjoined to make and keep her great. Representing classes, they humanise virtues. The problem since the Revolution has always been how to bring the varying force of public opinion, the power of Parliament, and the cabinet system, which has gradually crystallised, into line with the ancient and beneficial personality of the Crown; in later times, how to reconcile the King both to Downing and also to Fleet Street; how to harmonise the dependence of his just limits with the independence of his just influence; how to render him no mere roi fainÉant, or marionette to be danced on the wires of patricians or tribunes, but a real representative individuality; how he may rule as well as reign; and all this, in this country and in this century, without assuming any kind of either fatherly or of stepfatherly meddlesomeness; for the “Patriot King” must never take even a tinge of the Patriarch. He must be one, whatever else he may be, who “thinks more of the community and less of the government.” He must, in a word, bear himself as a chief, and not as a master.

As Byron sang, bearing Bolingbroke in mind—

The monarch, thought Disraeli, embodies the national elements in a form of abiding and unarbitrary influence; he is above interest and beyond party; his position prevents, his functions collide with, any favouritism of any class. A King at one with public opinion can prove a real check on individual designs, ministerial mistakes, private cajoleries, public passions. “The proper leader of the people is the individual who sits upon the throne.”

“‘And yet,’ said Coningsby, ‘the only way to terminate what is called class legislation is not to entrust power to classes.... The only power that has no class sympathy is the Sovereign.’

“‘But suppose the case of an arbitrary Sovereign, what would be your check against him?’

“‘The same as against an arbitrary Parliament.’

“‘But a Parliament is responsible ... to its constituent body.’

“‘Suppose it was to vote itself perpetual?’

“‘But public opinion would prevent that.’

“‘And is public opinion of less influence on an individual than on a body?’

“‘But public opinion may be indifferent. A nation may be misled—may be corrupt.’

“‘If the nation that elects the Parliament be corrupt, the elected body will resemble it.... But this only shows that there is something to be considered beyond forms of government—national character....’

“‘But do you then declare against Parliamentary government?’ “‘Far from it. I look upon political change as the greatest of evils, for it comprehends all. But if we have no faith in the permanence of the existing settlement—if the very individuals who established it are year after year proposing their modifications or their reconstructions—so, also, while we uphold what exists, ought we to prepare ourselves for the change we deem impending. Now, I would not that either ourselves or our fellow-citizens should be taken unawares as in 1832, when the very men who opposed the Reform Bill offered contrary objections to it which destroyed each other, so ignorant were they of its real character, historical causes, its political consequences.... For this purpose I would accustom the public mind to the contemplation of an existing though torpid power in the constitution, capable of removing our social grievances.... The House of Commons is the house of a few; the Sovereign is the sovereign of all.’”

Now, undoubtedly the period to which these words refer was one when certain Whig leaders contemplated an oligarchical republic, and wished to compass their aim by an undue exaltation of the Lower House, as, in 1718, Sunderland had wished to attain the same end by that of the Upper. No student of the Croker Papers can fail to recognise the fact, and undoubtedly Disraeli thought—and Sir Robert Peel thought so too—that the times were ripe for reviving those constitutional prerogatives, those kingly privileges which form the Crown’s sole direct representative faculty in the constitution, of which the Crown had long been robbed, first by its own alternate abuse or incapacity to use them, afterwards by faction itself often imitating the royal errors. And so the executive power had passed almost wholly into ministerial hands. After 1830 the prerogatives which, as I shall show, Mr. Gladstone champions, seemed falling into entire abeyance. In 1836, before he had entered Parliament, Disraeli had, in the Runnymede Letters, where he spoke of “the people of England sighing once more to be a nation,” called on Sir Robert Peel to achieve “a great task in a great spirit”—“rescue your Sovereign from an unconstitutional thraldom; rescue an august Senate which has already fought the battle of the people; rescue our National Church which our opponents hate, our venerable constitution at which they scoff; but, above all, rescue that mighty body of which all these great classes and institutions are but one of the constituent and essential parts—rescue the nation.”

In 1837, “our young Queen and our old Institutions” were no mere catchwords. And it seems unquestionable, also, that the subsequent interferences of Baron Stockmar, the late Queen’s early tutelage to Lord Melbourne, the circumstances attendant on her happy marriage, the peculiar treatment of Prince Consort by her first ministers, and the long retirement due to private grief, contributed in successive combination towards that invisibility, so to speak, of her royal office, which prevailed, though it did not, however, eventually preclude her very real and valuable exercise of it. In England the only true blemish of our party system, which Disraeli vehemently fought to uphold, is, as he more than once urged, that it tends to “warp the intelligence.” To this fault the wisdom of a constitutional and popular monarch, above and beyond party, offers an antidote.

Sir Robert Peel, in the very year of Queen Victoria’s accession, writes to Croker as follows:—

“... The theory of the constitution is that the King has no will except in the choice of his ministers.... But this, like a thousand other theories, is at variance with the fact. The personal character of the sovereign ... has an immense practical effect.... There may not be violent collisions between the King and his Government, but his influence, though dormant and unseen, may be very powerful. Respect for personal character will operate in some cases; in others the King will have all the authority which greater and more widely extended experience than that of any single minister will naturally give. A King, after a reign of ten years, ought to know much more of the working of the machine of government than any other man in the country. He is the centre to which all business gravitates. The knowledge that the King holds firmly a certain opinion, and will abide by it, prevents in many cases an opposite opinion being offered to him.... The personal character of a really constitutional King, of mature age, of experience in public affairs, and knowledge, manners, and customs, is practically so much ballast, keeping the vessel of the State steady in her course, countervailing the levity of popular ministers, of orators forced by oratory into public councils, the blasts of democratic passions, the groundswell of discontent, and ‘the ignorant impatience for the relaxation of taxation.’ ... The genius of the Constitution had contrived this in times gone by.

“If at other times this paternal authority110 were requisite, the authority to be exercised foedere certo, by the nice tact of an experienced hand, how much more is it necessary when every institution is reeling, when

Sir Robert’s idea, then, of a constitutional sovereign was that of an unseen driver who holds the reins from within. The sailor-king of narrow mind but broad sympathies, just departed when Peel wrote, had not proved a cipher. He insisted on being for a space Lord High Admiral, despite Croker’s ungenerous retort that James II. had done the same. In 1828 he had offered wise advice to his ministers as to the unripeness of the times for a change in the form then proposed, which touched his heart. On his accession he emphatically expressed his pleasure in retaining his ministers. And, though he composed a couplet so bad that it might have been the jingle of Harley—

yet throughout the brief and perplexed span of his reign he honestly tried to accord with the whole nation as opposed to cliques and sections of it that assumed the title of “the people.” The fact was that he acceded during one of those crises when the balance of power was shifting, and, his intellect being mediocre, he became bewildered. The new, the legitimate, the organised predominance of public opinion clashed with Parliament, and was played upon by ambitious ministers. William the Fourth lived in just fear and blunt defiance of that “Venetian oligarchy” which ever since 1704 had been the recurrent ideal of the place-engrossing, great revolution families. What he apprehended was foiled, principally by the personality of Sir Robert Peel, whom he summoned to his aid. Henceforward the monarchy became, as it ought long before to have become, completely, if gradually, popularised. When monarchy is popular, the invisibility of its office ceases to be an expedient. “... I think,” said Disraeli, in a speech of 1850, “it one of the great misfortunes of our time, and one most injurious to public liberty, that the power of the Crown has diminished.”

With Victoria and our present King—if we except a very transient spasm of George III., whose first essay to be a “patriot king” had been to dismiss and thwart the most popular minister that England has ever had—monarchy has for the first time during nearly two centuries proved wholly and nationally popular. Before the Stuarts, Elizabeth had ruled by the sole virtue of her popularity; she had “inflamed the national spirit,” and the checks introduced by the Revolution were only a necessity for unpopular sovereigns. The Press has now introduced a far greater check than any of these. Now that the nation is in full unison with the Crown, the King is doubly entitled to support the nation in hours of befitting emergency against the cabals or passions of a person, a clique, or a class. A modern English King is too cognisant of the popular feeling eloquent in an unbridled press ever to violate it; he could not do so with impunity. The last surrender of “independent kingship,” which Mr. Gladstone has noted, and others after him, was in 1827, when a weak sovereign renewed the “charter of administration of the day.” There is no pretext now for a King to yield or hide his just and popular privileges to serve the turn of ministers. The necessity for a “monarch of Downing Street” has disappeared.

Disraeli adverted to some of these topics at Manchester in 1872, long after the events of those times had passed, but when “the banner of republicanism” was once again unfurled.

“... Since the settlement of that constitution, now nearly two centuries ago, England has never experienced a revolution, though there is no country in which there has been so continuous and such considerable change. How is this? Because the wisdom of your forefathers placed the prize of supreme power without the sphere of human passions. Whatever the struggle of parties, whatever the strife of factions, whatever the excitement and exaltation of the public mind, there has always been something in this country round which all classes and powers could rally, representing the majesty of the law, the administration of justice, and involving at the same time the security for every man’s rights and the fountain of honour.” And then, after emphasising the non-partisanship of the Crown, the very end which Bolingbroke forecasted at the time when an unemancipated King was condemned to be a party man, he led the discussion to the conventional views of the King being not only outside politics, but outside affairs.

“... I know it will be said that, however beautiful in theory, the personal influence of the Sovereign is now absorbed in the responsibility of the minister. I think you will find there is a great fallacy in this view. The principles of the English Constitution do not contemplate the absence of personal influence on the part of the Sovereign; and if they did, the principles of human nature would prevent the fulfilment of such a theory.” He is here in complete accord with Peel. “Even,” he says, “with average ability, it is impossible not to perceive that such a Sovereign must soon attain a great mass of political information and political experience. Information and experience, ... whether they are possessed by a Sovereign or by the humblest of his subjects, are irresistible in life.... The longer the reign, the influence of that Sovereign must proportionately increase. All the illustrious statesmen who served his youth disappear. A new generation of public servants rises up. There is a critical conjuncture in affairs—a moment of perplexity and peril. Then it is that the Sovereign can appeal to a similar state of affairs that occurred perhaps thirty years before. When all are in doubt among his servants, he can quote the advice that was given by the illustrious men of his early years, and though he may maintain himself within the strictest limits of the Constitution, who can suppose, when such information and such suggestions are made by the most exalted person in the country, that they can be without effect? No; ... a minister who could venture to treat such influence with indifference would not be a Constitutional minister, but an arrogant idiot....” And in another speech of the same year, after insisting that English attachment to English institutions was no “political superstition,” but sprang from a resolve that “the principles of liberty, of order, of law, and of religion ought not to be entrusted to individual opinion, or to the caprice and passion of multitudes, but should be embodied in a form of permanence and power,” he also remarked: “... We associate with the Monarchy the ideas which it represents—the majesty of law, the administration of justice, the fountain of mercy and honour.” He might, in fitness with his other pronouncements, have added the ideas of loyalty and of leadership. Again, in 1871, a moment of republican revival, adverting to the superintendence of public business by the Sovereign, he insisted that “... there is not a dispatch received from abroad, or sent from this country abroad, which is not submitted to the Queen.... Those Cabinet Councils, ... which are necessarily the scene of anxious and important deliberations, are reported and communicated, ... and they often call from her critical remarks requiring considerable attention.... No person likely to administer the affairs of this country would treat the suggestions of Her Majesty with indifference, for at this moment there is probably no person living who has such complete control over the political conditions.... But, although there never was a Sovereign who would less arrogate any power or prerogative which the Constitution does not authorise, so I will say there never was one more wisely jealous of those which the Constitution has allotted to her, because she believes they are for the welfare of her people.”

It is by its constitutional prerogatives that, in the first place, the Crown can assert its lawful influence. They confer on him a deciding power in many spheres. Of these prerogatives Disraeli was a champion; and Mr. Gladstone upheld them in at least two interesting discussions among his “Gleanings.”

To defer the most obvious among these, the King’s consultative faculty, “the power,” to cite Mr. Gladstone, “which gives the monarch an undoubted locus standi in all the deliberations of a Government, ... remains as it was.” In olden days this was effected openly in form. Nor should it be forgotten that whenever a Ministry is changed, again to cite Mr. Gladstone, “the whole power of the State periodically returns into the royal hands.” In 1852, when Lord Derby reluctantly consented to assume office with a minority, there were forty-eight hours when, as Disraeli pointed out in a speech of 1873, “the Queen was without a Government.” Then take the royal prerogative of dissolution. This right enabled, in 1852, that very administration to perform the work of the session, and to carry the supplies before appealing to the constituencies on its right to exist. It is in effect a right of appeal by the Sovereign through or even against (should he deem it their duty to take the national voice) his ministers to the country; and in any crucial instance it forms the best check to faction of which our Constitution admits.

Further, there exists the admitted prerogative, openly exercised, of choice of ministers. This was the main arena of party cleavage under the greater portion of the sway of George III. It was this which, as Mr. Gladstone also mentions, was unsuccessfully, but neither unwholesomely nor unfairly, pressed into popular service in 1834. And, among many others remaining, there is that to appoint bishops—a stalking-ground of contention during the reign of Anne, and, in the Victorian era, signalised by Dr. Hampden’s appointment against a remonstrant primate. There is the prerogative of the Royal Warrant utilised by Mr. Gladstone himself in the repeal of the Purchase Act. There is the prerogative of disapproving the choice of Speaker, which will probably cease. There is that for proposing grants of public money, and there is the salutary initiative of Royal Commission which paves the way for social reform. On these personal rights I need not dwell. But on the prerogative of peace and war a word must be said. Had it been withheld for hostilities in the Crimea, a needless complication of Europe need never have occurred.111 We may conjecture that its influence was not absent from our recent peace in South Africa. Mr. Gladstone has instanced the Chinese war, some fifty years ago, as an example of carrying on a conflict believed to be necessary despite its condemnation by “the stewards of the public purse.” The Sovereign has also the undoubted right to consult with his ministers, and to attend the deliberations of his Cabinet. Queen Anne did this habitually, and the fatal movement of her fan decided great issues on more than one occasion. The first two Georges used on occasion, but with indifference where money was not concerned, to do the same. Since then it has fallen into disuse, and perhaps the end is better served by the premier’s audiences with his King. But I may here be permitted to hope that when the great intercolonial council which is in the air has taken shape, the Sovereign may deign to be its President. Such a decision would be in complete accord with the policy of Disraeli, who affirmed in 1876, “No one regrets more than I do that favourable opportunities have been lost of identifying the colonies with the royal race of England.”

The prerogatives are the royal faculties for independent expression. But it is obviously not by prerogative mainly or alone that the Crown rivets and can mould a nation. The Crown is a many-sided emblem. It is the centre of English unity, a focus of consolidation and compactness; while it also represents Great and Greater Britain abroad. As a source of home sympathy, as the embodiment of the might and mercy of a great Empire, as the durable impersonation of the individual character that out of many welded races creates a united Empire, it is manifestly operative. I may add that it may also set an example of simplicity, for the Crown is able to bring choice virtues into vulgar fashion.

Nor should sight be lost of the immense services which the Sovereign may render to British interests abroad. Shifting administrations encourage various hopes in foreign powers. The Crimean War was an outcome of such renewed aspirations. Our foreign policy lacks the strength of continuity, and its changefulness seems ineradicable from our party system. It is, therefore, of high importance that European courts should be able to count on certain limits which they know that a monarch whom they respect is likely to maintain. Such a consciousness of finality enables foreign Governments to moderate the popular clamour often worked up by dishonest agitation, and the more obstinate because purposely misinformed. The Crown can thus become a great conciliator,112 and sometimes a preventer of actual war. The affinities of the blood royal to continental dynasties are not so cogent, though their material aid as sources of inner information is manifest. But as guarantees of amity they often prove comparatively helpless, unless supported by the recognition of character, tact, and abilities, for which the nurture of every British prince should fit him, and which entitle him to appeal to every differing headship of peoples abroad, as well as to the originally alien ingredients of empire at home. The British Sovereign may well be called the Member for the Empire.

On these aspects Disraeli often dwelt; and at a period when, for these objects, the comparatively small expense was affected to be grudged by a set of extreme politicians, his analysis proved its cheapness in proportion to the cost of large democracies and republics.

A great outcry was raised when, twenty-seven years ago, Disraeli made the startling move of appealing alike to the Hindoo and the Mohammedan sentiment by investing Queen Victoria with a title which has impressed India with the grandeur of Great Britain. To the Oriental the style of a white queen meant as little as to the queen of the Ansaries, so humorously depicted in Tancred. It was well said of Disraeli by Lord Salisbury, in the speech which commemorated his death, that zeal for the greatness of England had eaten him up; and zeal, as Disraeli observed in an Irish speech of 1844, is rare enough in these days. Never was a stroke more justified by its results. Like the purchase of the Suez Canal shares, equally justified, it was bitterly and blindly assailed. “Bastard imperialism” was the refrain of the Opposition. No one knew on what sacred ark the Machiavellian finger might next be laid.

Disraeli proved that “empress” was an old ascription even in England, and that “emperor” even in the Western mind was not a title bound up with “bad associations.” Macaulay had singled out the age of the Antonines as a signal era for the world, and the Antonines had been emperors. In the early ’sixties a definite and powerful party had conspired to break the unity of the empire and the dignity of the kingdom, to sacrifice everything to material considerations, to convert a first-class monarchy into a second-class republic. It was not enough that the national sentiment should be diverted from appeals to pocket by appeals to patriotism; that the gush of utilitarian cold water should be arrested from drowning the rekindled flames of public spirit. The coloured imagination of the East must also be brought into line with the soberer background of the West. Nor was the relation of the measure less weighty to Europe. Europe, too, must realise that India was a trust which Britain was resolute never to abandon. These objects Disraeli effected by his “Royal Titles Bill,” a conception as simple as it was daring. “They know in India,” he urged, after imploring the House to “remove prejudice from their minds”—“they know in India what this bill means, and they know that what it means is what they wish.... Let not our divisions be misconstrued. Let the people of India feel that there is a sympathetic chord between us and them, and do not let Europe suppose for a moment that there are any in this House who are not deeply conscious of the importance of our Indian Empire. Unfortunate words have been heard in the debate upon this subject; but I will not believe that any member of this House seriously contemplates the loss of our Indian Empire.... If you sanction the passing of this bill, it will be an act, to my mind, that will add splendour even to her throne, and security even to her Empire.” In a subsequent chapter I shall show that these ideas of sympathy with India had animated him while the great Mutiny was raging.

It was Disraeli who suggested to Queen Victoria the propriety of learning the language and studying the literature of the vast domain over which she ruled, and the munshis summoned to instruct her, brought home to every Indian the conviction that her sway was one, not only of strength, but of sympathy and intelligence. Doubtless these policies were born of dreams, and of dreams which to the unreflecting might seem extravaganzas. But they were not merely an Arabian Nights’ entertainment. The Monarchy, like the Church, in his mind were in one respect akin. The Clergy and the King were both “English citizens and English gentlemen,” and yet the undue political influence of either, as he insisted in 1861, was to be feared, because it might diminish their best influence. Both make for order, and order makes for liberty. “... It is said sometimes that the Church of England is hostile to religious liberty. As well might it be said that the Monarchy of England is adverse to political freedom.”

Many of Disraeli’s central ideas as to British kingship were partly decided by him from his boyish conversance with the works of Lord Bolingbroke, whose constitutional theories (repeated by Burke) solved the difficulty of accounting for the popularity of exclusiveness in the theory of government, and for the odiousness of that party which had once been inclusive and “national.” Prerogative has been nowhere better defined than by Bolingbroke, who uniformly also declares that Parliament is the main barrier against “the usurpation of its illegal, or the abuse of its legal, powers.” He terms prerogative “a discretionary power in the King to act for the good of his people where the laws are silent; ... never contrary to law;” and this in a passage where he protests against its being raised “one step higher;” and he has further shown elsewhere how some such “barefaced, extraordinary powers” were welcomed by the nation in Elizabeth’s reign, because they were called forth by popular emergencies and used in a popular manner. Elizabeth, at a time before the Sovereign depended on Parliament, and before the Cabinet system was established, owed her power to her sympathy with her people. The first two Georges were unsympathetic, and the second abetted not only partisanship, but cliqueship. He became dependent on contending heads of greedy factions. To cure these evils was the purport of the “Patriot King,” which inspired Disraeli as it had before inspired Chatham.

It has been objected that Bolingbroke’s aim was for the King to “defy Parliament.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Throughout his writings he champions the rights of Parliament; indeed, Parliament was his hobby. In his treatise on the “Patriot King,” the word “Parliament” is not employed—it is his only essay from which it is absent—but the phrase “the people,” that is, has been expressly defined by him as the whole nation in its capacities, representative as well as collective. It therefore includes “Parliament.” In Bolingbroke’s previous “Spirit of Patriotism,” he had approached the theme of national regeneration from the standpoint of the ideal citizen; in the “Patriot King,” from the standpoint of a throne in accord with national concurrence. Its whole pith is that the ideal King, governing through ministers and through party, should rise above and beyond them. He must be neither a partisan (as all the Georges proved), nor a puppet, nor (as Canning long afterwards repeated) “the tool of a confederacy,” but in alliance with and reliance on the whole body of his subjects. The “Patriot King” is expressly urged “to confine instead of labouring to extend his prerogative;” and Bolingbroke adds that such an ideal would be derided by his own generation.

Of Elizabeth herself, whose great example is his perpetual praise, he has observed elsewhere that, “instead of struggling through trouble and danger to bend the constitution to any particular views of her own, she accommodated her notions, her views, and her whole character to it;” and he proceeds to say, “a free people expects this of their prince. He is made for their sakes, not they for his;” and again, “the merit of a wise governor is wisely to superintend the whole.” He expresses his ideal of an impartial and democratic King in his “Spirit of Patriotism” as of one who should “govern all by all.” He further, in many direct passages, distinctly looks forward to a transference of power from caballing cliques led by selfish ambition, to the nation at large, and he calls on the King to be a truly national ruler. He desires, under changes, descried in the dim distance, that the “sense of the Court, the sense of the Parliament, and the sense of the People should be the same;” that the King, as he expresses it, should prove the “centre of the nation,” and, as Disraeli has expressed it, should be above “class interests;” should, in a country of classes, respond to every class, and favouritise none. To this end he harped, as did Disraeli from first to last, on what he admits to be a seeming solecism—a “National Party;” and by this he means—as I could prove by countless passages—a party whose main object is national and imperial unity; one that is, moreover, comprehensive instead of being exclusive.

These ideas, in happier times and altered circumstances, passed to Disraeli. In 1859, repeating in part what he had affirmed of “Bolingbroke” in the Letter to Lord Lyndhurst, indited nearly twenty-five years earlier, he said of the Conservative party: “... In attempting, however humbly, to regulate its fortunes, I have always striven to distinguish that which was eternal from that which was but accidental in its opinions. I have always striven to assist in building it upon a broad and national basis, because I believed it to be a party peculiarly and essentially national—a party which adhered to the institutions of the country as embodying the national necessities and forming the best security for the liberty, the power, and the prosperity of England.”

In his Runnymede Letter to Peel of 1836, he calls on him to head this “national party.” In his Crystal Palace oration of 1872, he showed that the ideal of a “Conservative” party seeking to preserve, adapt, and expand traditional institutions is to be national. In this striking speech, after deprecating that, in the days of Eldon, “... instead of the principles professed by Mr. Pitt and Lord Grenville, and which those great men inherited ‘from predecessors’ not less illustrious, the Tory system had degenerated into a policy which formed an adequate basis on the principles of exclusiveness and restriction,” he urged, as he had always urged: “... The Tory party, unless it is a national party, is nothing. It is not a confederacy of nobles, it is not a democratic multitude; it is a party formed from all the numerous classes in the realm—classes alike and equal before the law, but whose different conditions and different aims give vigour and variety to our national life.”

For the essence of these ideas, the forms which have since appeared or vanished—the development of the ministerial system, the organisation of public opinion—are immaterial. Of course Bolingbroke could not foresee the routine of the far future; it was its spirit which he foresaw, and to which, through Disraeli, he contributed. In his own language about another, he “... had the wisdom to discern, not only the actual alteration which was already made, but the growing alteration which would every day increase.” And this, too, may be affirmed of Disraeli.

I think that, in the denial of Bolingbroke’s real objects, achieved by Disraeli, some misconception has arisen from the constant use towards the close of the eighteenth century of “to govern by party connections.”

George III., a student of Bolingbroke, but a narrow abuser on his first trial of his doctrine, was accused of meaning to dispense with this watchword of oligarchs. But the quarrels of his time proved that what George III. really wanted was to dispense with one party alone, to escape from the dictation of a few governing families, and to choose his own ministers. There may be—there have been—great parties based on principles of disruption and contraction rather than of union and expansion, or parties based on principles more international or continental than national and British. A “national” party does not exclude their existence and criticism, any more than it does that of another “national” party taking another outlook on “general principles.” What it ought more and more to exclude, what the monarch as the centre of union should more and more render impossible, is an anti-national group, and the remedy that Burke suggests for such an ailment is that propounded by Bolingbroke and upheld by Disraeli—the limited and constitutional prerogatives of the Crown—which should render less possible those gangs of office-mongers who, in Bolingbroke’s phrase, pay “a private court at the public expense,” and in Disraeli’s, are “public traders of easy virtue.”

These ideas, shared by Bolingbroke, by Burke, by Canning, and by Disraeli, are no tiresome theories, but lively and practical issues. We too must look ahead. How far under modern conditions, and apart from the spasms and clamours of party, can the sovereign power as a force consolidating the Empire be strengthened, and the royal prerogatives wisely displayed in the light of day? Ought a King’s personality to prove also the means of his power? Time will show.