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The English Constitution

W >> Walter Bagehot >> The English Constitution




Probably in most cases the greatest wisdom of a constitutional king
would show itself in well-considered inaction. In the confused
interval between 1857 and 1859 the Queen and Prince Albert were far
too wise to obtrude any selection of their own. If they had chosen,
perhaps they would not have chosen Lord Palmerston. But they saw, or
may be believed to have seen, that the world was settling down
without them, and that by interposing an extrinsic agency, they
would but delay the beneficial crystallisation of intrinsic forces.
There is, indeed, a permanent reason which would make the wisest
king, and the king who feels most sure of his wisdom, very slow to
use that wisdom. The responsibility of Parliament should be felt by
Parliament. So long as Parliament thinks it is the sovereign's
business to find a Government it will be sure not to find a
Government itself. The royal form of Ministerial government is the
worst of all forms if it erect the subsidiary apparatus into the
principal force, if it induce the assembly which ought to perform
paramount duties to expect some one else to perform them.

It should be observed, too, in fairness to the unroyal species of
Cabinet government, that it is exempt from one of the greatest and
most characteristic defects of the royal species. Where there is no
Court there can be no evil influence from a Court. What these
influences are every one knows; though no one, hardly the best and
closest observer, can say with confidence and precision how great
their effect is. Sir Robert Walpole, in language too coarse for our
modern manners, declared after the death of Queen Caroline, that he
would pay no attention to the king's daughters ("those girls," as he
called them), but would rely exclusively on Madame de Walmoden, the
king's mistress. "The king," says a writer in George IV.'s time, "is
in our favour, and what is more to the purpose, the Marchioness of
Conyngham is so too." Everybody knows to what sort of influences
several Italian changes of Government since the unity of Italy have
been attributed. These sinister agencies are likely to be most
effective just when everything else is troubled, and when,
therefore, they are particularly dangerous. The wildest and
wickedest king's mistress would not plot against an invulnerable
administration. But very many will intrigue when Parliament is
perplexed, when parties are divided, when alternatives are many,
when many evil things are possible, when Cabinet government must be
difficult.

It is very important to see that a good administration can be
started without a sovereign, because some colonial statesmen have
doubted it. "I can conceive," it has been said, "that a Ministry
would go on well enough without a governor when it was launched, but
I do not see how to launch it." It has even been suggested that a
colony which broke away from England, and had to form its own
Government, might not unwisely choose a governor for life, and
solely trusted with selecting Ministers, something like the Abbe
Sieyes's grand elector. But the introduction of such an officer into
such a colony would in fact be the voluntary erection of an
artificial encumbrance to it. He would inevitably be a party man.
The most dignified post in the State must be an object of contest to
the great sections into which every active political community is
divided. These parties mix in everything and meddle in everything;
and they neither would nor could permit the most honoured and
conspicuous of all stations to be filled, except at their pleasure.
They know, too, that the grand elector, the great chooser of
Ministries, might be, at a sharp crisis, either a good friend or a
bad enemy. The strongest party would select some one who would be on
their side when he had to take a side, who would incline to them
when he did incline, who should be a constant auxiliary to them and
a constant impediment to their adversaries. It is absurd to choose
by contested party election an impartial chooser of Ministers.

But it is during the continuance of a Ministry, rather than at its
creation, that the functions of the sovereign will mainly interest
most persons, and that most people will think them to be of the
gravest importance. I own I am myself of that opinion. I think it
may be shown that the post of sovereign over an intelligent and
political people under a constitutional monarchy is the post which a
wise man would choose above any other--where he would find the
intellectual impulses best stimulated and the worst intellectual
impulses best controlled.

On the duties of the Queen during an administration we have an
invaluable fragment from her own hand. In 1851 Louis Napoleon had
his coup d'etat: in 1852 Lord John Russell had his--he expelled Lord
Palmerston. By a most instructive breach of etiquette he read in the
House a royal memorandum on the duties of his rival. It is as
follows: "The Queen requires, first, that Lord Palmerston will
distinctly state what he proposes in a given case, in order that the
Queen may know as distinctly to what she is giving her royal
sanction. Secondly, having once given her sanction to such a measure
that it be not arbitrarily altered or modified by the Minister. Such
an act she must consider as failing in sincerity towards the Crown,
and justly to be visited by the exercise of her constitutional right
of dismissing that Minister. She expects to be kept informed of what
passes between him and Foreign Ministers before important decisions
are taken based upon that intercourse; to receive the foreign
despatches in good time; and to have the drafts for her approval
sent to her in sufficient time to make herself acquainted with their
contents before they must be sent off."

In addition to the control over particular Ministers, and especially
over the Foreign Minister, the Queen has a certain control over the
Cabinet. The first Minister, it is understood, transmits to her
authentic information of all the most important decisions, together
with, what the newspapers would do equally well, the more important
votes in Parliament. He is bound to take care that she knows
everything which there is to know as to the passing politics of the
nation. She has by rigid usage a right to complain if she does not
know of every great act of her Ministry, not only before it is done,
but while there is yet time to consider it--while it is still
possible that it may not be done.

To state the matter shortly, the sovereign has, under a
constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights--the right to be
consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king 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. He would say to his Minister: "The responsibility of these
measures is upon you. Whatever you think best must be done. Whatever
you think best shall have my full and effectual support. BUT you
will observe that for this reason and that reason what you propose
to do is bad; for this reason and that reason what you do not
propose is better. I do not oppose, it is my duty not to oppose; but
observe that I WARN." Supposing the king to be right, and to have
what kings often have, the gift of effectual expression, he could
not help moving his Minister. 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. The king could
say: "Have you referred to the transactions which happened during
such and such an administration, I think about fourteen years ago?
They afford an instructive example of the bad results which are sure
to attend the policy which you propose. You did not at that time
take so prominent a part in public life as you now do, and it is
possible you do not fully remember all the events. I should
recommend you to recur to them, and to discuss them with your older
colleagues who took part in them. It is unwise to recommence a
policy which so lately worked so ill." The king would indeed have
the advantage which a permanent under-secretary has over his
superior the Parliamentary secretary--that of having shared in the
proceedings of the previous Parliamentary secretaries. These
proceedings were part of his own life; occupied the best of his
thoughts, gave him perhaps anxiety, perhaps pleasure, were commenced
in spite of his dissuasion, or were sanctioned by his approval. The
Parliamentary secretary vaguely remembers that something was done in
the time of some of his predecessors, when he very likely did not
know the least or care the least about that sort of public business.
He has to begin by learning painfully and imperfectly what the
permanent secretary knows by clear and instant memory. No doubt a
Parliamentary secretary always can, and sometimes does, silence his
subordinate by the tacit might of his superior dignity. He says: "I
do not think there is much in all that. Many errors were committed
at the time you refer to which we need not now discuss." A pompous
man easily sweeps away the suggestions of those beneath him. But
though a minister may so deal with his subordinate, he cannot so
deal with his king. The social force of admitted superiority by
which he overturned his under-secretary is now not with him but
against him. He has no longer to regard the deferential hints of an
acknowledged inferior, but to answer the arguments of a superior to
whom he has himself to be respectful. George III. in fact knew the
forms of public business as well or better than any statesman of his
time. If, in addition to his capacity as a man of business and to
his industry, he had possessed the higher faculties of a discerning
states man, his influence would have been despotic. The old
Constitution of England undoubtedly gave a sort of power to the
Crown which our present Constitution does not give. While a majority
in Parliament was principally purchased by royal patronage, the king
was a party to the bargain either with his Minister or without his
Minister. But even under our present Constitution a monarch like
George III., with high abilities, would possess the greatest
influence. It is known to all Europe that in Belgium King Leopold
has exercised immense power by the use of such means as I have
described.

It is known, too, to every one conversant with the real course of
the recent history of England, that Prince Albert really did gain
great power in precisely the same way. He had the rare gifts of a
constitutional monarch. If his life had been prolonged twenty years,
his name would have been known to Europe as that of King Leopold is
known. While he lived he was at a disadvantage. The statesmen who
had most power in England were men of far greater experience than
himself. He might, and no doubt did, exercise a great, if not a
commanding influence over Lord Malmesbury, but he could not rule
Lord Palmerston. The old statesman who governed England, at an age
when most men are unfit to govern their own families, remembered a
whole generation of states men who were dead before Prince Albert
was born. The two were of different ages and different natures. The
elaborateness of the German prince--an elaborateness which has been
justly and happily compared with that of Goethe--was wholly alien to
the half-Irish, half-English, statesman. The somewhat boisterous
courage in minor dangers, and the obtrusive use of an always
effectual but not always refined, commonplace, which are Lord
Palmerston's defects, doubtless grated on Prince Albert, who had a
scholar's caution and a scholar's courage. The facts will be known
to our children's children, though not to us. Prince Albert did
much, but he died ere he could have made his influence felt on a
generation of statesmen less experienced than he was, and anxious to
learn from him.

It would be childish to suppose that a conference between a Minister
and his sovereign can ever be a conference of pure argument. "The
divinity which doth hedge a king" may have less sanctity than it
had, but it still has much sanctity. No one, or scarcely any one,
can argue with a Cabinet Minister in his own room as well as he
would argue with another man in another room. He cannot make his own
points as well; he cannot unmake as well the points presented to
him. A monarch's room is worse. The best instance is Lord Chatham,
the most dictatorial and imperious of English statesmen, and almost
the first English statesman who was borne into power against the
wishes of the king and against the wishes of the nobility--the first
popular Minister. We might have expected a proud tribune of the
people to be dictatorial to his sovereign--to be to the king what he
was to all others. On the contrary, he was the slave of his own
imagination; there was a kind of mystic enchantment in vicinity to
the monarch which divested him of his ordinary nature. "The least
peep into the king's closet," said Mr. Burke, "intoxicates him, and
will to the end of his life." A wit said that, even at the levee, he
bowed so low that you could see the tip of his hooked nose between
his legs. He was in the habit of kneeling at the bedside of George
III. while transacting business. Now no man can ARGUE on his knees.
The same superstitious feeling which keeps him in that physical
attitude will keep him in a corresponding mental attitude. He will
not refute the bad arguments of the king as he will refute another
man's bad arguments. He will not state his own best arguments
effectively and incisively when he knows that the king would not
like to hear them. In a nearly balanced argument the king must
always have the better, and in politics many most important
arguments are nearly balanced. Whenever there was much to be said
for the king's opinion it would have its full weight; whatever was
said for the Minister's opinion would only have a lessened and
enfeebled weight.

The king, too, possesses a power, according to theory, for extreme
use on a critical occasion, but which he can in law use on any
occasion. He can dissolve; he can say to his Minister, in fact, if
not in words, "This Parliament sent you here, but I will see if I
cannot get another Parliament to send some one else here." George
III. well understood that it was best to take his stand at times and
on points when it was perhaps likely, or at any rate not unlikely,
the nation would support him. He always made a Minister that he did
not like tremble at the shadow of a possible successor. He had a
cunning in such matters like the cunning of insanity. He had
conflicts with the ablest men of his time, and he was hardly ever
baffled. He understood how to help a feeble argument by a tacit
threat, and how best to address it to an habitual deference.

Perhaps such powers as these are what a wise man would most seek to
exercise and least fear to possess. To wish to be a despot, "to
hunger after tyranny," as the Greek phrase had it, marks in our day
an uncultivated mind. A person who so wishes cannot have weighed
what Butler calls the "doubtfulness things are involved in". To be
sure you are right to impose your will, or to wish to impose it,
with violence upon others; to see your own ideas vividly and
fixedly, and to be tormented till you can apply them in life and
practice, not to like to hear the opinions of others, to be unable
to sit down and weigh the truth they have, are but crude states of
intellect in our present civilisation. We know, at least, that facts
are many; that progress is complicated; that burning ideas (such as
young men have) are mostly false and always incomplete. The notion
of a far-seeing and despotic statesman, who can lay down plans for
ages yet unborn, is a fancy generated by the pride of the human
intellect to which facts give no support. The plans of Charlemagne
died with him; those of Richelieu were mistaken; those of Napoleon
gigantesque and frantic. But a wise and great constitutional monarch
attempts no such vanities. His career is not in the air; he labours
in the world of sober fact; he deals with schemes which can be
effected--schemes which are desirable--schemes which are worth the
cost. He says to the Ministry his people send to him, to Ministry
after Ministry, "I think so and so; do you see if there is anything
in it. I have put down my reasons in a certain memorandum, which I
will give you. Probably it does not exhaust the subject, but it will
suggest materials for your consideration." By years of discussion
with Ministry after Ministry, the best plans of the wisest king
would certainly be adopted, and the inferior plans, the
impracticable plans, rooted out and rejected. He could not be
uselessly beyond his time, for he would have been obliged to
convince the representatives, the characteristic men of his time. He
would have the best means of proving that he was right on all new
and strange matters, for he would have won to his side probably,
after years of discussion, the chosen agents of the commonplace
world--men who were where they were, because they had pleased the
men of the existing age, who will never be much disposed to new
conceptions or profound thoughts. A sagacious and original
constitutional monarch might go to his grave in peace if any man
could. He would know that his best laws were in harmony with his
age; that they suited the people who were to work them, the people
who were to be benefited by them. And he would have passed a happy
life. He would have passed a life in which he could always get his
arguments heard, in which he could always make those who have the
responsibility of action think of them before they acted--in which
he could know that the schemes which he had set at work in the world
were not the casual accidents of an individual idiosyncrasy, which
are mostly much wrong, but the likeliest of all things to be right--
the ideas of one very intelligent man at last accepted and acted on
by the ordinary intelligent many.

But can we expect such a king, or, for that is the material point,
can we expect a lineal series of such kings? Every one has heard the
reply of the Emperor Alexander to Madame de Stael, who favoured him
with a declamation in praise of beneficent despotism. "Yes, Madame,
but it is only a happy accident." He well knew that the great
abilities and the good intentions necessary to make an efficient and
good despot never were continuously combined in any line of rulers.
He knew that they were far out of reach of hereditary human nature.
Can it be said that the characteristic qualities of a constitutional
monarch are more within its reach? I am afraid it cannot. We found
just now that the characteristic use of an hereditary constitutional
monarch, at the outset of an administration, greatly surpassed the
ordinary competence of hereditary faculties. I fear that an
impartial investigation will establish the same conclusion as to his
uses during the continuance of an administration.

If we look at history, we shall find that it is only during the
period of the present reign that in England the duties of a
constitutional sovereign have ever been well performed. The first
two Georges were ignorant of English affairs, and wholly unable to
guide them, whether well or ill; for many years in their time the
Prime Minister had, over and above the labour of managing
Parliament, to manage the woman--sometimes the queen, sometimes the
mistress--who managed the sovereign; George III. interfered
unceasingly, but he did harm unceasingly; George IV. and William IV.
gave no steady continuing guidance, and were unfit to give it. On
the Continent, in first-class countries, constitutional royalty has
never lasted out of one generation. Louis Philippe, Victor Emmanuel,
and Leopold are the founders of their dynasties; we must not reckon
in constitutional monarchy any more than in despotic monarchy on the
permanence in the descendants of the peculiar genius which founded
the race. As far as experience goes, there is no reason to expect an
hereditary series of useful limited monarchs.

If we look to theory, there is even less reason to expect it. A
monarch is useful when he gives an effectual and beneficial guidance
to his Ministers. But these Ministers are sure to be among the
ablest men of their time. They will have had to conduct the business
of Parliament so as to satisfy it; they will have to speak so as to
satisfy it. The two together cannot be done save by a man of very
great and varied ability. The exercise of the two gifts is sure to
teach a man much of the world; and if it did not, a Parliamentary
leader has to pass through a magnificent training before he becomes
a leader. He has to gain a seat in Parliament; to gain the ear of
Parliament; to gain the confidence of Parliament; to gain the
confidence of his colleagues. No one can achieve these--no one,
still more, can both achieve them and retain them--without a
singular ability, nicely trained in the varied detail of life. What
chance has an hereditary monarch such as nature forces him to be,
such as history shows he is, against men so educated and so born? He
can but be an average man to begin with; sometimes he will be
clever, but sometimes he will be stupid; in the long run he will be
neither clever nor stupid; he will be the simple, common man who
plods the plain routine of life from the cradle to the grave. His
education will be that of one who has never had to struggle; who has
always felt that he has nothing to gain; who has had the first
dignity given him; who has never seen common life as in truth it is.
It is idle to expect an ordinary man born in the purple to have
greater genius than an extraordinary man born out of the purple; to
expect a man whose place has always been fixed to have a better
judgment than one who has lived by his judgment; to expect a man
whose career will be the same whether he is discreet or whether he
is indiscreet to have the nice discretion of one who has risen by
his wisdom, who will fall if he ceases to be wise.

The characteristic advantage of a constitutional king is the
permanence of his place. This gives him the opportunity of acquiring
a consecutive knowledge of complex transactions, but it gives only
an opportunity. The king must use it. There is no royal road to
political affairs: their detail is vast, disagreeable, complicated,
and miscellaneous. A king, to be the equal of his Ministers in
discussion, must work as they work; he must be a man of business as
they are men of business. Yet a constitutional prince is the man who
is most tempted to pleasure, and the least forced to business. A
despot must feel that he is the pivot of the State. The stress of
his kingdom is upon him. As he is, so are his affairs. He may be
seduced into pleasure; he may neglect all else; but the risk is
evident. He will hurt himself; he may cause a revolution. If he
becomes unfit to govern, some one else who is fit may conspire
against him. But a constitutional king need fear nothing. He may
neglect his duties, but he will not be injured. His place will be as
fixed, his income as permanent, his opportunities of selfish
enjoyment as full as ever. Why should he work? It is true he will
lose the quiet and secret influence which in the course of years
industry would gain for him; but an eager young man, on whom the
world is squandering its luxuries and its temptations, will not be
much attracted by the distant prospect of a moderate influence over
dull matters. He may form good intentions; he may say, "Next year I
WILL read these papers; I will try and ask more questions; I will
not let these women talk to me so". But they will talk to him. The
most hopeless idleness is that most smoothed with excellent plans.
"The Lord Treasurer," says Swift, "promised he will settle it to-
night, and so he will say a hundred nights." We may depend upon it
the ministry whose power will be lessened by the prince's attention
will not be too eager to get him to attend.

So it is if the prince come young to the throne; but the case is
worse when he comes to it old or middle-aged. He is then unfit to
work. He will then have spent the whole of youth and the first part
of manhood in idleness, and it is unnatural to expect him to labour.
A pleasure-loving lounger in middle life will not begin to work as
George III. worked, or as Prince Albert worked. The only fit
material for a constitutional king is a prince who begins early to
reign--who in his youth is superior to pleasure--who in his youth is
willing to labour--who has by nature a genius for discretion. Such
kings are among God's greatest gifts, but they are also among His
rarest.

An ordinary idle king on a constitutional throne will leave no mark
on his time: he will do little good and as little harm; the royal
form of Cabinet government will work in his time pretty much as the
unroyal. The addition of a cypher will not matter though it take
precedence of the significant figures. But corruptio optimi pessima.
The most evil case of the royal form is far worse than the most evil
case of the unroyal. It is easy to imagine, upon a constitutional
throne, an active and meddling fool who always acts when he should
not, who never acts when he should, who warns his Ministers against
their judicious measures, who encourages them in their injudicious
measures. It is easy to imagine that such a king should be the tool
of others; that favourites should guide him; that mistresses should
corrupt him; that the atmosphere of a bad Court should be used to
degrade free government.

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