CROWN AND CONSTITUTION

Evening Star, Issue 23093, 20 October 1938, Page 16

CROWN AND CONSTITUTION

SEEMING CONTRADICTIONS Perhaps the most valuable pages in Sir John Marriott’s new book are those in which he traces the early development of the Cabinet system at the time when it was beginning to asBixme its present shape. The author well fall« it “ the most characteristic and most differentiating of English political institutions.” That is to say, it is a mass of seeming contradictions which foreigners find most confusing hut which do not trouble over-much the native-born (writes J. B. Firth in the London' ‘ Sunday Times,’ review Jug ‘ This Realm of England*’). . For while the Cabinet is the King s Cabinet the King has no place at its .deliberations, and this was mainly due to the fact that George I. could not speak English, and therefore was so ■bored to distraction by proceedings which he could neither follow nor understand that he gladly yielded the chair to the Prime Minister, and ceased to attend. Thus the monarch put himself out of the Cabinet Room and Constitutional Monarchy began to

be. ■ This took place quite naturally, and there was no going . back. When George 111. sought to reassert the old ■ privileges of monarchy he found that the Sovereign’s_ position had been ■fatally compromised. Sir John Marriott shows with all the practised skill ;of one who has given long years of • studious thought to the elucidation of English history how easily a different system might have been evolved. The author essays in this book the ’ unusual role of the Constitutional historian, and while his primary purpose ' is to justify the British Constitution at the Judgment Seat of History, he : brings out in high relief the place held ■by the Crown, compared with which, •he says, Parliament is but “ a mushroom growth.” Not, of course, that the author derogates from the supreme ' importance of Parliament, though ' events have so shaped themselves that • the Constitutional foundation of the British Empire' since the Statute of '.Westminster rests solely in the person of the King. A WORLD EMPIRE. The Imperial Parliament by that Statute solemnly and for ever abdicated all control over the internal and external policies of the Dominions. It does not make the wonder less, that in the long evolutionary development of Crown and ParHnment it was Parliament which till then had steadily

waxed strong at the expense of the prerogatives ,of the Crown. The quality of the link was tested unexpectedly' in December, 1936, in painful circumstances which all will_ remember, and the crisis passed without harm. Says the author: With the strength of granite the British Constitution combines the flexibility of rubber. It can resist shocks; it can also absorb them. Parliamentary monarchy was a great experiment when first tried in the insular State. That the State could ever be adapted to a World Empire is an idea which would have staggered the imagination of the Pyms and the Walpoles or even the Pitts and the Peels. That is true, but one should remember that the idea is still new and historians 50 years hence will be in a much better position to pass judgment. It seems a fair conclusion, however, that the stability of the Crown at home promises to be strengthened by the fact of the indispensability of the Empire. Sir John Marriott very aptly quotes from a conversation between Lord Esher and Mr Balfour during the Constituional crisis of 190910. The latter had no misgivings as to what would have been the outcome of a conflict between the King and party politicians. “ You forget,” he said, “ the changed circumstances since 1832. During the latter half of Queen Victoria’s reign and more than ever now, Great Britain means the British Empire. Our people oversea, do not care a rush for Asquith or me. They hardly know our names. For them the symbol of the Empire is the King. Hands laid on the Sovereign would mean the disruption l of the Empire.” True enough, but the moral surely is not to contemplate a possible quarrel between King and party politicians without misgivings, but to keep the Crown out of party politics at all costs.