MONDAY, JUNE 17, 1912. CRITICISING ROYALTY.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXII, 17 June 1912, Page 4

MONDAY, JUNE 17, 1912. CRITICISING ROYALTY.

One of the dogmas of the British "Constitution is that "the King can do no wrong"; and. constitutionally, as the monarch of the country, he cannot, which is an excellent thing for the nation, as it ensures stability for the position of its official head and leaves the responsibility for all the acts of the Government with the men. who constitute it by the will of the people. Yet the divinity which is proverbially supposed to hedge a king has never been taken very seriously by the people of England, though it has been made much of by writers with reverence for royalty, and belief in the aristocratic principte of Government or authority by privilege and prescription. The people as a whole, however, have always maintained a frankly free-and-easy menta 7 attitude towards mbnarchs 'and monarchy; an attitude akin to that of the ancient Aragonese, whose formula, in declaring allegiance to their princes, was • "vYe, who ara greater than you, takt you for our king, if you will obey and maintain our laws and observe our customs : but, if not, then not." This too, has been the temper and humor of the people of England, though thej have not had a monopoly of it; indeed,

in the^ last resort, in the iriost undeveloped countries, even the most thorough-paced despotism has always been tempered by assassination. , With men oi intellect, and in the ultimate mental consciousness of all progreNsi. e peoples, irionarchs have always been seen in their essential human limitations, though aourtiers and the classes related to them, and the miscellaneous gapers and gazers of the populace, have generally conspired to encircle the kingly head with a halo of glamor and sacrosanctity. Yet in the estimation of the ancient Greek the insignia of loyalty were toys and feathers, and generally in the popular sentiment of the world, the dagger of Brutus has, as an emblem, been held in higher esteem than the imperial sceptre. In Shakespeare, whose world is pervaded with the feudal spirit, this sentiment often manifests itself, and in one of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays even a king is made to sav—

That where there is no difference in inen't, worths, Titles are jests. All the world knows what the people oi' England thought of kingship, in the time of Charles the First, and even in Charles the Second's time there were dramatists who frankly told that morally worthless monarch that he was the very reverse of what he should be. Junius and Wilkes were still more outspoken in the Georgian period, and they were backed by a large body of public opinion. Royalty, therefore, has never been a fetish with the British people, and yot in England the other day, when a new volume of the Dictionary of National Biography came out with Sir Sidney Lee's memoir of King Edward the Seventh, there were critics who- called the writer to account for his outskopenness, though it would seem that his sketch contains nothing stronger than statements to the effect that "Queen Victoria's obstinate refusal to grant her son genuine political responsibility or a settled solid occupation, somtewhat affected his moral robustness, while the gloom of his mother's Court helped to evoke a reaction against the conventional strictness of his upbringing"; that "he was a peacemaker, not through the exercis» of any diplomatic initiative or ingenuity, but by i'aith in the blessings of peace"; and that "his grace of manner helped to create a temper favorable to the French entente, but otherwise he bad no direct responsibility for its initiation or conclusion." Surely there is nothing slanderous, scandalous, or traitorous in this —nothing that even the Kaiser could treat as an instance of lese majeste. Much more trenchant things wers publicly said of King Edward during his lifetime, and especially while he was Prince of Wales, and one strenuous social philosopher declared that he had "demoralised the manners of the nation by setting an example in the vulgar habit of smoking foul-smell-ing cigars in public places." So far as the messages show, Sir Sidney Lee says nothing so strong as this in connection with the late King's life; yet the critics carp at his candor. Perhaps, in so far as newspapers are concerned, there are fits and fashions in these things. The da y after George the Fourth died The London Times said of him that "it spoke volumes about the man that there never was an individual less regretted by his fellow-creatures than this deceased King."' Then, when William the Fourth vacillated in connection with the Reform Bill, the newspapers characterised his conduct with a bluntness amounting almost to brutality, and one, like Silas Wigg, dropped into "poetry," thus:

"Hail, thou conundrum of our age, Britannia's great first fiddle. By turns a fool, by turns a sage, A puzzling royal riddle. By turns you make us weep or smile, Your country's curse or glorv ; The Billy Black of Britain's Isle, By turns a Whig or Tory." During one of the earlier periods of her reign, Queen Victoria was frequently hissed in the streets of London, and ceased to attend the Opera. At Ascot fince she was greeted with silence, broken by oeeasfoHfi! Kisses: and ? a§ a. n instance of what the newspapers frequently printed abcint her, here is ortS choice morsel: "Could anything have been less expected than to &ee her present Majesty, a lovely young female encouraging the practice of snuffing by allowing herself to be named patron of certain snuff-shops? 'By Special Appointment Snuff Manufacturer to Her Majesty Queen Victoria'! What next?" Alter shaHs like these, shot out dav bv day during the monarch's life, Sir "Sidney Lee s reflections on King Edward the Seventh appear to be as mild as new milk. As «-e have suggested, the British people apparently have fits and fashions m the ways they criticise their monarchs, tor whom, however thev have, on the whole, a cordial affection like Dr Johnson with Boswell, they will allow no outsiders to join them in* their criticisms.