The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860

by Charles Duke Yonge

  But it is needless to dwell at any length on the case, in which all subsequent historians and political critics, however generally prepossessed in favor of the Liberal ministers, have given up their position as untenable. Her Majesty herself kept strictly on the path of the constitution in guiding herself by the counsels of those who, till their successors were appointed, were still her responsible advisers. But the course which they recommended was absolutely irreconcilable with one fundamental principle of the constitution-the universal responsibility of the ministers. In denying the right of the incoming ministers to remodel the household (or any other body of offices) in whatever degree they might consider requisite, they were clearly limiting the ministerial authority. To limit the ministerial authority is to limit the ministerial responsibility; to limit the ministerial responsibility is to impose some portion of responsibility (that portion from which it relieves the minister) on the sovereign himself, a dangerous consequence from which the constitution most carefully protects him. In fact, that the advice Lord Melbourne gave was indefensible was tacitly confessed by himself, when, on the recurrence of the same emergency two years later, he was compelled to recommend a different course;[248] and the ladies whom Sir Robert had considered it necessary to remove anticipated their dismissal by voluntary resignation. It may be added that, at the close of this same year, Lord Melbourne himself insisted on nominating the private secretary to the Prince whom the Queen was about to marry, though no one could pretend that offices in his household were as important as those in that of the sovereign; and though, if there was any post in which the Prince might have been supposed to have a right to an unfettered choice, that might have been supposed to have been the office of his private secretary.[249]

  Her Majesty's marriage with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg, her first cousin-one tending as greatly to the happiness of herself and the advantage of the nation as any royal marriage recorded in history-took place in the beginning of 1840; and in the preparatory arrangements- matters of far greater consequence to the Queen's feelings than any appointments in the household-the ministry, by singular mismanagement, contrived to force the consideration of other constitutional questions on Parliament in such a way that the conclusions which were adopted, however inevitable, could hardly fail to be mortifying and vexatious to her Majesty, in whose cup of happiness at such a moment special care ought rather to have been taken to prevent the admixture of any such alloy. In the matter of the annuity to be settled on the young Prince, the Opposition must, indeed, share the blame with the minister. If it was unpardonable carelessness in the latter to omit the usual practice of previously consulting the leaders of the Opposition on the amount of the grant to be proposed, it was not the less impolitic and unworthy of such men as the Duke and Sir Robert Peel to show their disapproval of the inattention by a curtailment of the grant. The sum proposed, L50,000 a year, was fairly justified by the fact of its being the same which twenty-four years before had been settled on the Prince's uncle, Leopold, on his marriage with the Princess Charlotte. Indeed, if there were to be any difference, the circumstances might have been regarded as warranting an increase rather than a diminution of it. Money was certainly more plentiful in 1840 than in 1816, and the husband of an actual Queen occupied, beyond all question, a higher position than the husband of the heiress-presumptive, who might never become Queen, and who, in fact, never did. We cannot think, therefore, that the reduction of L20,000, which Sir Robert Peel proposed and carried, was reasonable or becoming, but regard it as neither called for by the circumstances of the kingdom, nor as befitting its liberality, nor as in harmony with its practice.

  But on the two other questions-one immediately affecting the constitution, and the other not absolutely unconnected with it-no defence of the minister seems available. At the opening of Parliament in 1840, her Majesty commenced her speech by the announcement of her intended marriage, describing the bridegroom simply as "the Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha," the same expression which she had used in addressing the Privy Council a few weeks before. That description of him had at once struck her uncle, Leopold-who, since the death of his English wife, the Princess Charlotte, had become King of Belgium-as so imperfect and insufficient, that, on reading her address to the Privy Council, he at once wrote to her to point out that it would have been desirable to mention the fact of the Prince being a Protestant,[250] and that the omission would inevitably cause discontent. But, in spite of this warning, Lord Melbourne refused to advise the Queen to insert a statement of the Prince's religion in her speech, though it was by no means superfluous on such an occasion, since, if he were a Roman Catholic, a marriage with him would have incurred a forfeiture of the crown. The Duke of Wellington, on the other hand, regarded it as a positive duty to require that the fact of the Prince being a Protestant should be mentioned, so as to show the care of Parliament to prevent any constitutional precautions from being overlooked, such statement having, indeed, been usually made on similar occasions. When he, therefore, moved an amendment to insert the word "Protestant" in the description of the Prince, Lord Melbourne did not venture to divide the House against it; but still his management gave an ungracious appearance to the transaction, as if there had been in any quarter an unwillingness to recognize the fact of the Prince's Protestantism till the recognition was forced on the government by the action of the Parliament.

  The third question, as affecting the relative ranks and positions of the different members of the royal family, cannot be said to have been wholly unconnected with the provisions of the constitution; and the mismanagement of the minister was, perhaps, even more sure to attract notice in this case than in the other, since to introduce into a bill a clause which had no connection whatever with its title had something of the appearance of a deliberate slight to the two Houses. A bill to naturalize the Prince was, of course, indispensable. But into it the ministers, without any notice, had introduced a clause enabling him "during his life to take precedence in rank after her Majesty in Parliament and elsewhere as her Majesty might think fit and proper, any law, statute, or custom to the contrary notwithstanding." It was admitted that no such precedence had been given to Prince George of Denmark, nor to Prince Leopold. And there were obvious difficulties in the way of conferring such a life-long precedence, because, as Lord Brougham had pointed out, it was possible that the Queen might die without issue, in which case the King of Hanover would become King of England also, and his son the Prince of Wales; and it would have been an inconceivable anomaly that a foreign naturalized prince should take precedence of the Prince of Wales, whose special rank and importance was recognized in many acts of Parliament. This objection was so clearly insuperable, that Lord Melbourne consented to alter the clause so as to give the Prince precedence only "after the heir-apparent." But even this concession failed to satisfy the objectors, the King of Hanover, among others, positively refusing to waive his precedence over any foreign prince. And eventually the minister withdrew the clause altogether, and the bill, as it was passed, was confined to the naturalization of the Prince. Lord Melbourne had thus contrived to make the Queen and Prince appear as if they were desirous to induce the two Houses by a sort of trick to confer on the Prince a precedence and dignity to which he was not entitled, and to render the refusal of Parliament to be so cajoled a fresh cause of mortification to the royal pair. The course that was eventually adopted is understood to have been suggested by the Duke of Wellington-to withdraw the affair altogether from the cognizance of Parliament, and to leave it to the Queen to confer on the Prince whatever precedence she might choose, as it was certainly within her right to do. And so, a few days after the bill had passed, she did by letters-patent give him precedence next to herself "on all occasions and in all meetings, except when otherwise provided by act of Parliament," as, seventeen years later, she, in the same way, with the cordial approval of the whole nation, conferred on him the title of Prince Consort. And apart from its convenience, as avoiding all unseemly discussions, this would s
eem to have been the most natural and proper mode of settling such a matter. The Queen is the fountain of honor in this kingdom, and at her own court she can certainly confer on any of her own subjects whatever precedence she may think fit, while it may be doubted whether any act of a British Parliament could give precedence at a foreign court. It was, probably, not in his character of Duke of Cumberland, but as an independent sovereign, that the King of Hanover maintained his claim to superior precedence; and it was plain that the most illustrious subject could not possibly at any court be allowed to rank above a king. With reference to its possible effect on the subsequent relations of Peel and his followers with the court, it was, perhaps, well that a few months later they had the opportunity of proving that no personal objection to the Prince himself had influenced their course in these transactions, by giving a cordial assent to the ministerial proposal of conferring the Regency on him in the event of the Queen giving an heir to the throne, and dying while he was still a minor. The principle was the same as that which had guided the arrangements for a Regency ten years before; but it was not inconceivable that Parliament might have hesitated to intrust so large an authority to so very young a man, and him a comparative stranger, such as the Prince still was, had the leaders of the Opposition given the slightest countenance to such an objection.

  Lord Melbourne's ministry was hardly strengthened by the circumstances under which it resumed office. Yet the close of the same year witnessed a reform of which it is hardly too much to say that no single measure of this century has contributed more to the comfort of the whole mass of the people, with which it has also combined solid commercial benefits. Hitherto the Post-office had been managed in a singular manner, and the profit derived from it had been treated as something distinct from the ordinary revenue of the kingdom. In the reign of Charles II. it had been given to the Duke of York, and the grant was regarded as conferring on him such extensive rights, that when, some years afterward, an enterprising citizen set up a penny post for the delivery of letters in the City and its precincts, the Duke complained of the scheme as an infraction of his monopoly, and the courts of law decided in his favor. That grant ceased, as a matter of course, on the Duke's accession to the throne; and in the reign of Queen Anne a portion of the Post-office proceeds was appropriated, with the general consent of a grateful country, to reward the great achievements of the Duke of Malborough, a perpetual charge on it of L5000 a year being annexed to the dukedom. In those days the postage of a letter was twopence for short distances, and threepence for any distance beyond eighty miles.[251] But those charges had been gradually increased; about the middle of the century the lowest charge was fixed at fourpence, rising in proportion to the distance, till the conveyance of a single letter from one extremity of the kingdom to the other cost eighteen-pence. Such a rate could not fail to be very profitable; and by the beginning of the present reign the yearly profit exceeded a million and a half of money. The heaviness of the charge, however, had latterly attracted attention, and had been the cause of many complaints, as being a great discouragement, and, in the case of the poorer classes, a complete obstacle to communication. However, neither the ministers nor the Parliament had succeeded in devising any remedy, since a system affording so large a return was not a thing lightly to tamper with, when those who complained suddenly found a practical leader in Mr. Rowland Hill, who published a pamphlet on the subject, in which he affirmed the cost of the conveyance of each letter even for such a distance as from London to Edinburgh to be infinitely less than a farthing; and that, consequently, all the rest of the postage was a tax for the purposes of revenue. When this fact was once established, it needed no argument to prove that to increase the tax paid by each recipient of a letter in proportion to the distance at which he lived from the writer was an indefensible unfairness; and, after much investigation and discussion, Mr. Hill succeeded in converting the ministers to his view. Accordingly, the Budget for 1839, introduced by Mr. Spring Rice, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, contained a clause which reduced the postage for every letter weighing less than an ounce to a uniform charge of a penny, to be prepaid by means of a stamp to be affixed to each letter by the sender. It was not without plainly-expressed reluctance that the scheme was consented to by the Opposition; nor can their hesitation be considered as unreasonable, in the very unsatisfactory condition of the finances of the kingdom at the time. The balance-sheet of the preceding year showed a considerable deficiency. There was a large unfunded debt; and even Mr. Hill's most sanguine calculations admitted a probable loss to the Post-office of L1,200,000 for the first year or two; though he expressed his confidence that eventually the correspondence of the kingdom would be found to increase so largely as to make up for the greater part, if not the whole, of the deficiency. His anticipations were far outran by the reality.

  In 1839 the Postmaster-general estimated the number of letters sent yearly by the post at less than twenty-five millions. They are now upward of a thousand millions, a number the conveyance of which (with the addition of newspapers, whose circulation had also been greatly augmented by a recent reduction of the tax to a penny) would have severely taxed the whole carrying power of the kingdom before the introduction of railroads. Nor have the benefits of the new system been confined to ourselves. Foreign nations have followed our example, though not quite in the same degree, till an international postage is at length established throughout the whole of the civilized world. And it has not been only the happiness of private individuals that has been augmented by this facility of communication. In its gradual development it has largely promoted the extension of trade of every kind, and, by facilitating a commercial intercourse between nations, it cannot but contribute to the maintenance of friendship and peace.

  The full advantages of this reform could not be seen at first; but, even had it been appreciated as fully as we appreciate it now, no approval of it could have counterbalanced the general dissatisfaction with which the ministry was regarded. At home the finances were falling into great disorder, the expenditure of the year greatly exceeding the income; while the feeling that their Irish policy was dictated by a wish to purchase at any price the support of O'Connell, was still more injurious to them, for he was already beginning to renew agitation in Ireland, inaugurating a new association, which, though its purposes were faintly veiled for a time under the title of the Precursor Association, was understood to point at a repeal of the Union; while the ministers, though they denounced such a measure as ruinous to every part of the kingdom, seemed willing to give it practical encouragement by a bill which they introduced, which bore the name of a Registration Act for Ireland, but which was not confined to that object. On the contrary, it contained a provision for lowering the qualification for the franchise by one-half; so that it was, in fact, a new Reform Bill for Ireland,[252] calculated greatly to increase his influence by the number of voters of the poorer classes whom it would create. The bill was defeated, but the odium of having proposed it remained.