state of mind. Mr. Bagehot constructed for himself a stage peasant or artisan whose naïveté he brings into subtle contrast with his own keen analysis.

If we advance beyond the poorest and most ignorant classes, the conception of royalty which prevails is, we fear, too generally that of the pot-house oracle, who denounces it as a useless and costly extravagance, the greatest of all our spending departments-a department in which there is great pay for no toil, and in which the sweat of the workingman's brow is by a mischievous chemistry converted into fine clothes and sumptuous fare for them that dwell in kings' houses. Whether this view prevailed in Mr. Bagehot's time or not, there are many signs that it is prevalent now. Like the rustic in Virgil, who foolishly deemed that the city which is called Rome resembled his own little village, the field or the town laborer is persuaded that the Government of the United Kingdon is simply an enlargement of the municipal or county government of which he has direct experience. To him the monarchy seems a mere appendage to this Government, which could be detached from it without harm, and even with advantage-an inconvenient fifth wheel to the coach, a flapping and fanning drapery getting itself entangled with the machinery and impeding it, and which it would be desirable to cut away. Within the memory of men still living it was customary to speak of the King's or Queen's Government. Now the phrase is never heard except as a decorous Parliamentary formality. Mr. Gladstone's Government" and "Lord Salisbury's Government" have superseded both in work and thought "the Queen's Government." But if Mr. Gladstone or Lord Salisbury is governor, what is the Queen? If they are the real heads of the State, what is she? These words are not intended to describe the true the ory of Constitutional Government in England, but the popular impression of it which School Boards, an almost periodically extended franchise, local self govern ment in town and country, and neo Radical speeches have created. In it there is little place left for the monarchical idea.

Mr. Bagehot, whose doctrine has the fault inherent in all doctrines that are based on the necessity of disguise and false pretences in government, was not content with representing monarchy as a splen

didly embroidered veil or screen behind which the prosaic realities of Parliamentary and Cabinet Government worked. It was in his view scarcely less essential that such political functions as the monarch still discharges should be hidden. He seems to have thought that it would be dangerous if the fact that the royal robes clothed a living person, and not a mere doll or puppet, became too widely known. "The House of Commons," he wrote, " has inquired into most things; but it has never had a Committee on the Queen. There is no authoritative Blue-Book to say what she does." On the other hand, the Queen in her dignified capacity was of necessity conspicuous. Her appearance on great State occasions, her function as a part of the pageantry of State, were spectacular. She was a part of the outward show of life, the largest contributor to that ornamental side of government without which it becomes dull and bare and uninteresting. Since Mr. Bagehot wrote, all this has been changed. What was private has been made public, what was public has been withdrawn into privacy. The first of a series of Blue-Books on the Queen was published in 1875, just six years after Mr. Bagehot's essay on The English Constitution." They were not called by that name, they were called "The Life of his Royal Highness the Prince Consort, by Theodore Martin." Mr. Bagehot said that our own generation would never know, though a future generation might, how great and useful had been the part played by the Queen and the Prince Consortperhaps it would have been more correct to say, by the Prince Consort, in the name and with the authority of the Queen-in the government of England. He thought it undesirable that the disclosure should be made.

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Secrecy," he said, "is essential to the utility of the English monarchy as it now is. Above all things, our Royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it, you Committee on the Queen, the charm of Royalty will be gone. Its mystery is its life; you cannot let daylight upon magic. We must not bring the Queen into the combat of politics, or she will cease to be reverenced by all com. She will become one combatant batants.

cannot reverence it. When there is a Select

among many.'

All that Mr. Bagehot thought ought not to be done has been done deliberately, and with the Queen's own sanction and

authority, in the five volumes of "The Life of the Prince Consort." The "august and unknown powers" of the Constitution have been exposed to the same close scrutiny as "the known and serviceable powers. At the same time the spectacular part of the monarchy has been retrenched, and almost entirely abolished. What is the effect of this double change on the public sentiment? There is naturally some grumbling at a spectacle which is paid for, but not exhibited, at a theatre, the doors of which are almost always closed. As regards the direct action of the Crown in public affairs, the cognizance of it vouchsafed to her subjects by the Queen has been nearly simultaneous with the growth of the idea that the directly representative element in the Constitution ought not simply to be predominant, and in the long run decisive, but exclusive, and at every stage in the conduct of affairs the sole power.

The House of Commons obeys the imperative mandate of the constituents. The Ministry is the creature and instrument of the House of Commons. The right of any power not thus directly commissioned by popular suffrage to take part in affairs is rudely questioned, and seems to be submitted to only by way of contemptuous tolerance for a survival, not destined to be of long continuance, from an older state of things. The attitude practically enforced by the Queen and the Prince Consort upon the Ministry during the American Civil War may have been wiser than that which Lord Palmerston, and Lord Russell, and Mr. Gladstone, if left to themselves, would have taken; the Court may have been right with the masses, when the Cabinet, or its most influential members, were wrong with the classes. On the other hand, the feeling of the Court toward the Italian movement for unity and independence may have been less generous and sagacious than that of Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell. But the point now raised is whether the Queen had the right to be in the right against a Minister possessing a majority in the House of Commons-whether it is within the province of a constitutional monarch not to share the error of the Minister of the day, and to impose caution upon him in foresight of the wiser opinion which the people will entertain to-morrow. Of course there is the perhaps even chanceNEW SERIES.-VOL. LI., No. 3.

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let us, for argument sake, say the greater probability-that when they differ the Minister will be right and the Monarch wrong. Even so, divergence of opinion, though the divergent opinion may be erroneous, may be an advantage as insuring deliberation, and the attentive weighing of all sides of a question, before action is taken. Nevertheless, to a public incapable of entertaining more than one idea at a time, this is a hard saying. The admis. sion that the principle of representative government is in modern societies of European race an essential principle, is converted into the very different doctrine, that no power ought to exist in the State which is not derived from direct popular election. A more sagacious political philosophy and practical statesmanship have been put into language of admirable clearness by Mr. J. S. Mill. Censuring the politicians of a certain French school, from which the new English Radicalism seems to have drawn its inspiration, who are for deducing everything from a single principle of government, and eschewing everything which does not logically follow from that principle, Mr. Mill says:

"Inasmuch, however, as no government produces all possible beneficial effects, but all

are attended with more or fewer inconveniences; and since these cannot be combated by the very causes which produce them, it would be often a much stronger recommendation of some practical arrangement, that it does not follow from the general principle of the government than that it does. Under a government of legitimacy, the presumption is far rather in favor of institutions of popular origin; and in a democracy, in favor of arrangements tending to check the impetus of popular will. The line of argumentation, so commonly mistaken in France for political philosophy, tends to the practical conclusion that we should exert our utmost efforts to aggravate, instead of alleviating whatever are the characteristic imperfections of the system of institutions which we prefer, or under which we happen to live."-System of Logic, vol. ii., p. 521, third edition.

It is the fate of Mr. Mill to be praised by the politicians who affect to be his disciples, and to be neglected by them. He himself is almost a unique example of a man who in quitting the closet for Parliamentary life remained true in the House of Commons to the doctrines which he had thought out in his study. With others a change of pursuits seems not to be complete until it issues in apostasy. If Mr. Mill's doctrine be sound, and in theory it

will scarcely be questioned, it follows that the inevitable defects which inhere in the representative system of government require to be checked and counteracted by arrangements based upon other principles. The practical difficulty in the way is of course this, that the predominant power in a country is always ambitious to be the sole power; and that, when forces do not exist strong enough to impose checks upon it, it is seldom in the mood to impose restraints upon itself. A power strong enough to give effective assertion to its own just rights is usually strong enough to assert more than its just rights. Democracy is as little tolerant of rivals near its throne as despotism. The period at which a just balance is established between the old and the new powers, the powers which have long been in possession and the powers entering on possession, is usually, as time is counted in history, but a moment that is to say, a generation or half a century. In England we had this balance from 1832 to 1868, or let us say to 1885. Now things are tending to the ascendency of a single power in the State, the House of Commons, and to that of a single class in the community, the working classes.

That, in the present state of England and most European countries, practically the whole adult nation must be included in the representation, with or without distinction of sex, and with such conditions of durable residence as it may be expedient to enforce for the exclusion of the mere waifs and strays of society-the vagabondage, in the literal sense of the term, of the country-what in Switzerland are called the homeless classes (heimathlos), can no longer be disputed. The theory is in the ideas of the time, and, moreover, it is an established and irreversible fact. That within this system representation should be in proportion to numbers-that is to say, that groups numerically equal should return an equal number of members-an arrangement which prevails in Germany, France, Switzerland, and the United States, but to which only a very imperfect approach has as yet been made in England follows logically from the democratic principle now established; and even here, where facts follow logic with but a lame and halting foot, will no doubt presently be realized. This one-man one-vote doctrine implies that every vote and every

man shall count for as much as every other, and carries with it the principle of equal representation among constituencies numerically equal, and of the equal power of each vote within those constituencies-that is, of proportional representation as advocated by Mr. Hare, Mr. Mill, and, among men now engaged in public life, by Mr. Courtney. Whether logic and equity in this matter are destined to prevail over habit and prejudice he would be foolhardy who should predict. The principle has been discredited by the phrase, "reprosentation of minorities," which untruly describes it, and at present expresses the means, not the end, which is the proportionate representation of the majority. Now, as frequently happens both in England and the United States, a large majority in the constituencies may return a small majority to Parliament, or a minority of voters may return a majority of representatives. This is, of course, in direct contradiction to the democratic principle that the majority must rule; but this is not the worst. Our system makes it possible that the great bulk of the nation may, on particular questions, one after the other be overruled by infinitesimal fragments of it. The two great political parties may be nearly balanced, as they almost always are. In this case, a handful of fanatics or theorists, by selling its support to the candidates who will pledge themselves to its particular crotchet, may, under the present conditions of English political life and morality, succeed in securing the return of a majority of members pledged to their political crotchet. This has been the tactics of the opponents of the Contagious Diseases Act, it is the tactics of Sir Wilfrid Lawson and his local optionists, of Mr. Champion and the Eight Hours Bill agitators, of the antagonists of compulsory vaccination, and I know not what besides. It is thus quite conceivable that a minority of, say, three hundred thousand voters might succeed in carrying a project opposed to the opinions and feelings of three millions.

In former times, the House of Lords might be trusted to throw out a measure which came before them under these conditions. But, under the tyranny of the democratic idea, wrongly interpreted, the House of Commons is disposed to resent the vindication by the House of Lords of the real opinions of the majority in the

Commons as against their false professions of opinion; and the doctrine that no institution has a locus standi in politics which is not based on direct elective representation, is diffusing the same sentiment in the country. On great questions which divide parties an appeal may be made from the House of Commons to the country by a general election. But in the case supposed, both parties are tarred by the same brush, and at any rate the Ministry in power derives its majority from the clique against whom it would, in the case supposed, appeal. Moreover, a general election would simply bring the same instrumentalities for the falsification of opinion into play once more.

The Royal veto is even more completely out of the question than the rejection of the Bill by the House of Lords. But why may not the country at large have the opportunity of imposing its veto upon a measure which represents not its own convictions, but the successful electioneering tactics of busy and unscrupulous organizations, and the cowardice and want of principle of political candidates and leaders? Supposing an Anti-Vaccination Bill or an Eight Hours Bill to become law in the circumstances which have been supposed and it could scarcely become so in any other-why should not an appeal be made, on the principle of the Swiss Referendum, to the general sense of the country? The Sovereign of the country, standing aloof from political parties, would naturally be the person in whom, when there was reason to suppose that the voice of the nation had been falsified in the Parliamentary representation, this right of appealing to the nation at large would be vested. Instead of the merely formal assent, "La Reine le veut, "" or the obsolete form of veto, "La Reine s'avisera," we should have at the initiative of the Crown the decision, "Le peuple le veut,' or "Le peuple s'avisera. The trouble and inconvenience of frequent and vexatious appeals to the country on individual projects of legislation would prevent needless recourse to the Referendum. But under our present Parliamentary system, I do not see what other means exist for relieving the country from the domination of coteries and factions, which are able to turn the scale between the two parties in favor of projects which both parties and the country disapprove, and from the danger of

snap votes on questions vitally affecting the Constitution and the future of England in a Parliament returned on a great variety of issues other than that assumed to be decided at the general election.

To take a critical and proximate instance: if an ostensibly Home Rule majority should be returned two or three years hence to the House of Commons, it will consist largely of persons whose constituents care little or nothing about Home Rule, but who think that a Home Rule majority and Ministry will be a Welsh or Scotch disestablishment majority or Ministry, a local option and licensed victuallers' disestablishment Ministry, an Eight Hours' Bill Ministry, a land nationalization Ministry, an anti-vaccination Ministry, a Ministry not of all the talents, but of all the fads and all the crotchets. On a matter such as this, there should be a means of taking the sense of the people of England, simply and directly and without the intrusion of such side issues as deflect the votes at a general election even though the appeal be nominally made only on a single point. The coarse bribe offered in the phrase" Home Rule will help these things, and these things will help Home Rule," expresses the lowest degradation of general politics, and implies a system of more corrupting purchase and sale than was ever practised by Newcastle or Walpole. Even on the Referendum demagogic incentives would be freely plied, and endeavors would be made to induce men to vote on the simple question of the Union or of separation with an eye to other questions. Electioneering tricks, however, would be practised under greater disadvantages than at present, and there would be an appreciable increase of probability that the nominal issue would also be the real issue on which the vote would be taken.

The monarchical system is not essential to the Referendum, since it exists in Switzerland, both in its individual cantons and over the confederation as a whole, and, I believe, in some of the States of the American Union. But monarchy offers the conditions on which it could best be exercised. The President of a Republic necessarily represents the party in power, and he would not appeal to the country against what is his own policy. The same remark applies to the Prime Minister under a system of Cabinet Government such as ours. No doubt it might be arranged

that the Referendum should be adopted, if a certain proportion of the electors of the country, or if either, or both, of the two Houses called for it in petitions or memorials; and this scheme might be useful as an alternative in default of the spontaneous action of the Sovereign. But the easiest and promptest method would be by the direct action of the King or Queen. This would to some extent take the operation out of the hands of the wire-pullers and managers of factions, the producers of machine-made opinion.

Those who believe that the monarchy in England is worth maintaining, hold that it is, as compared with the immense cost of Presidential elections in the United States and of the administrative mechanism of France, a cheap form of government; that it is, what is yet more important, a pure form of government, the choice lying between hereditary sovereignty, or an elective and temporary monarchy by purchase, called Presidency; that it familiarizes the public mind with the idea of other public interests than those of rival parties and factions; that it gives dignity and splendor to the forms of government; that it aids the conception of an England which is more than the soil on which some forty millions are struggling, succeeding and failing-an England lying between a glorious past and a hopeful future, of which the men of to-day are simply the living link; that it ensures the presence in immediate contact with affairs of one who has, at least, had an opportunity of following them continuously through a generation, it may be half a century, while Ministers have come and gone and have but fragmentary and interrupted acquaintance with them; of one to whom questions of State, domestic and foreign, are, or ought to be, what the price of stocks are to City men, and the price of fat oxen to farmers.

These considerations, simple and elementary as they are, are yet truths of reflection rather than of simple inspection. The prevalent idea-that no one has a right to exercise any functions who has not been chosen to them by the vote of a majority, can only be qualified and corrected by the conclusive proof that the functions which are thus exceptionally tolerated are real functions, and that they are obviously exercised for the benefit of the country. The maxim of payment by re

sults will be applied to the monarchy, except as regards the numbers of the younger and remoter members of the Royal family, of whom the supply may exceed the demand, with the economic and political consequences involved in it. The old jealousy of a king who should attempt to govern as well as reign still subsists, but it is accompanied by a contempt for a king who reigns without governing, and a disposition even to question the title of a new king so to reign. As a matter of fact, English kings and queens, even under our Parliamentary system, and not exclusive of the first two Georges, governed a great deal more than is commonly supposed, and the disclosures made in the Memoirs of Stockmar, and in the Life of the Prince Consort, of the active part played by the Queen and her husband in public affairs were received in some quarters with misgiving. This jealousy, however, is not likely to be excited when the governing power of the king is seen to be the instru ment of giving more effect to the direct voice of the people in their own affairs, in correction of its possibly factious misinterpretation in the House of Commons, and of substituting in certain cases the popular assent or veto for the Royal assent or veto in projects of legislation.

The Parliamentary history of England during more than two centuries has been so splendid and useful, it forms so brilliant an epoch in history, that there is difficulty in believing that it requires readjustment to altered social conditions. Its supremacy tends to become independence of the nation, its omnipotence an all-meddlingness; instead of representing the will of the nation, there is danger, a danger which the reduction of the septennial to a quinquennial or triennial term would increase, that it may represent, turn and turn about, the accidental predominance, possibly of a factious minority, or even of a balanceturning clique. These evils have declared themselves elsewhere. In England it is held that the annual meeting of Parlia. ment is essential to freedom, and it is secured by the fact that the taxes are taken only for a year, and by the annual passing, now a little altered in form, of the Mutiny Act. In many of the States of the American Union it is expressly provided that the Legislature shall meet only. every second year, and then for but short periods, in order to limit its opportunities