The English Crisis

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 9, 1868

The English Crisis.

THE remarkable notice by an Irish Member of Parliament of a motion to inquire why the Ministry had not advised the Queen to abdicate, if her health did not permit her to remain in the capital, is really a blow at Mr. Gladstone. For many of the members will suddenly ask themselves—and we mistake Mr. Disraeli if he does not ask them—why that is not the logical conclusion of the Liberal policy. Separate Church and State in Ireland, and you have smoothed the way for a separation in England. But when the mind of the people is once fixed upon the essential reason of such relations, and upon the philosophy of government, a point always carefully avoided in English political discussion—should the people not ask, why have an hereditary executive?

Indeed, when the glamour of royalty is gone, and the king has become merely “an hereditary executive,” the crown is in great peril, not of being knocked off, but of falling off. The reason of the thing has expired. It has become an economical and other computation. The only question remaining is, how do we secure the most order most cheaply? No one who watches the course of English politics can escape seeing that such a question is becoming yearly more imminent. In every way the prestige of the crown disappears, and if the Queen were to die to-morrow there would be delay and a decided want of enthusiasm in the cry Vive le Roi!

The truth is, that while the Queen by her mild, maternal, and amiable character shields the crown from incisive criticism, her son, the Prince of Wales, invites and compels it. A youth without parts and of no promise, devoted to theatres, clubs, and much more questionable resorts, he offers nothing that can for a moment divert the searching question, what is the use of him? To the general intelligence of the British people it must be more and more impossible to answer the question, as they see the Prince lounging at White’s, or roaring out the cider-cellar lyrics, or dancing at the Jardin Mabille, while the Princess Alexandra sits silent and sad at home, why do we pay such enormous sums to maintain this young gentleman and the system of which he is a part? Do we need this pageant of royalty any longer?

Indeed, if what is currently reported and generally believed, both of the Prince of Wales and of his younger brother, the Duke of Edinburgh, be true, the regard of the English people for the regal system will be very much relaxed when they are its conspicuous representatives. A young man like the late Archduke Maximilian, who had an interest in affairs of state, and intelligence sufficient to guide him to conduct that should endear him personally to the people and thereby protect the monarchy, would have made a very different use of the opportunities offered to an English Crown Prince. Such a man would not have found it impossible to create an immense and restless loyalty in Ireland by identifying himself with fundamental Irish reforms, and residing long and familiarly in the country. The late visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales to “the brightest gem of the sea” shows how readily touched the heart of the race is, and how flexible it would be under skillful treatment.

The British heir-apparent seems to reproduce the tastes and general conduct of the late lamented Prince Regent, without his opportunities and companions. Prince Albert Edward, indeed, lives only forty years later than his grand-uncle, Prince George, but there is a century of progressive intelligence between their epochs. George IV had all the advantage of the immense reaction toward royal privilege of his father’s reign, and of that which followed the French Revolution. Albert Edward lives when the great Republic has revealed the power of popular government, and when the principle of that government carries fundamental reforms in England. The real tenacity of the system upon the hearts of the people will be tested by the Prince, who can have no other hold of them.

The British system has not been strengthened by the late extraordinary course of Mr. Disraeli in endeavoring to put the Queen forward as an active agent in politics. It is too much to expect that a man who has been struggling for sixty years to reach a lofty station will consent to be driven from it forever in a fortnight. And the antecedents of the Prime Minister should have assured everybody that he would hardly hesitate to strain the system to save himself. The British crisis is most remarkable, and not even the excitement of our own can destroy the interest with which events in England must now be contemplated.—Harper.