Victoria

It is impossible to exaggerate the grief of the widowed queen. Other women have loved their husbands as dearly, but not all, nor perhaps many, of these have experienced so long and so poignantly what Tennyson, Victoria's favourite poet, called "sor row's crown of sorrow," the continued overshadowing of the present by the never-forgotten brightness of the past. The queen's mourning, alike in form and in fact, was indefinitely prolonged. Never again would she, to the end of her days, take up her resi dence in London. Only seven times, and then as a rule with much protest and complaining, did she consent to undertake the cere monial duty of opening the parliamentary session. Up to the time of the first Jubilee the public and spectacular functions of royalty remained almost entirely in abeyance, except in so far as they could be, and were, performed by the prince and princess of Wales. It was inevitable that this should cause dissatisfaction. There were suggestions, in the 'sixties, that the queen should abdicate in favour of her son. In the early 'seventies two rising politicians, Joseph Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke, were reputed to be "republicans," and the queen's failure to use her large income for what was supposed to be its proper purpose, was acrimoniously criticised. Victoria bitterly resented such com plaints. Her physicians agreed that her health could not stand the strain of public ceremonies, and she held that she was dis charging with unremitting industry the essential, as distinct from the ornamental, duties of her office. The modern notion that politics should be left to politicians had never been accepted by even the most lethargic of her predecessors, and it certainly found no favour with Victoria.

The Constitutional Monarch.

In his treatise on The Eng lish Constitution (published i865) Bagehot said that the sovereign had, in relation to his ministers, three rights—the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, and the right to warn; and, he adds, a sovereign of great sense and sagacity would want no others. "He would find that his having no others would enable him to use these with singular effect." If the sovereign dis approved of the minister's policy "he might not always turn his course, but he would always trouble his mind. In the course of a long reign a sagacious king would acquire an experience with which few ministers could contend." Moreover the sovereign's position must give him imponderable advantages in any conflict of opinion with his ministers. For there is a "divinity which doth hedge a king," and the minister, as Bagehot quaintly puts it, "cannot argue on his knees." Victoria had learnt from her husband and her uncle Leopold to have a low opinion of the intelligence, industry and patriotism of politicians in general and English politicians in particular. She conceived it to be her duty to do all that lay within her power to save her people—for were they not her people?—from the disasters into which their elected representatives were only too likely to lead them. She exercised to the full her "right to be consulted." Again and again, as we turn the pages of the

Letters of Queen Victoria (1862-85), we find ministers repri manded for making decisions without first submitting them to the queen. The ministers humbly apologise, plead haste, or accident, or suggest that the decision in question had in fact already been in principle approved, and promise not to offend again,—a promise seldom fulfilled, it would appear. The duties of ministers in this respect were indeed not easy, for in politics, especially foreign policy which was the queen's principal interest, speed is often an essential ingredient of efficiency, and the queen's absence at Balmoral or Osborne (she spent about four months of every year at each of these residences) made royal consultation diffi cult. In her exercise of "the right to encourage," the queen was more sparing, though she gave generous commendation where she felt that commendation was deserved; but only an exceptional statesman—a Disraeli for example—won that affectionate con fidence which the queen gave so readily to all her leading soldiers and to some of her representatives abroad, Lord Odo Russell, for example, when ambassador at Berlin, and Lord Lytton when Viceroy of India. The third of the rights enumerated by Bagehot, "the right to warn" was exercised without any intermission what ever. Again and again the queen exerted all her resources to secure a reversal of the policy adopted by her ministers. In small matters often and in great matters sometimes she succeeded. But when she found that no warnings of hers, however vehement, would avail, she remembered the limitations of her power, and officially identified herself with the policy she personally detested.

England and Germany.

For the first four years of the queen's widowhood (1862-65) Lord Palmerston, now nearly 8o, was prime minister, with Russell, already past 7o, as his foreign secretary, and the most embarrassing question of the day was the notorious "Schleswig-Holstein question" (q.v.). Roughly speaking, the question at issue was whether these two duchies, with their mainly German population, should remain subject to the king of Denmark, or become a separate state under a German prince, or be annexed by Prussia. In the English press and public there was widespread sympathy for Denmark, strengthened by the marriage, in 1863, of the prince of Wales with the charming Danish princess who was subsequently Queen Alexandra. Palmerston and Russell were strongly pro-Danish, and might well, in defiance of the views of the rest of the cabinet, have plunged the country into a disastrous war. The queen played an all-important part in restraining "those two dreadful old men." Her sympathies were with Prussia. Her eldest daughter had married the Prussian crown prince, and Albert had always held that the German States ought ultimately to be united under the Prussian monarchy. Within two months of the death of her husband she was at work, insisting on the removal of a provocative phrase from a despatch to Prussia.