affectionate nature, all the soundness of a most excel-
lent judgment. Brought up from childhood in the
artificial atmosphere of a Court, called while still a girl
to the isolation of a throne ; deprived, when her reign had
yet forty years to run, of the support and counsel of her
husband, she might well have been pardoned if she often
found herself out of touch with large sections of her
people, and had viewed life through a false medium or
262 HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS
in partial aspects. Yet Lord Salisbury probably in no
degree exaggerated when he said that if he wished to
ascertain the feehngs and opinions of the English people,
and especially of the EngHsh middle classes, he knew no
truer or more enhghtening judgment than that of the
Queen. She thought with them and she felt with
them ; she shared their ambitions ; she knew by a kind
of intuitive instinct the course of their judgments;
she sympathised deeply with their trials and their
sorrows.
She could hardly be called a brilliant woman. It is
difficult indeed to judge the full social capacities of any-
one who lives under the constant restraints of a royal
position, but I do not think that in any sphere of life the
Queen would have been regarded as a woman of striking
wit, or originality, or even commanding power. The
qualities that made her so successful in her high calling
were of another kind: supreme good sense; a tact in
dealing with men and circumstances so unfailing that it
almost amounted to genius; an indefatigable industry
which never flagged from early youth till extreme old
age ; a sense of duty so steady and so strong that it
governed all her actions and pleasures, and saved her not
only from the grosser and more common temptations of
an exalted position, but also in a most unusual degree
from the subtle and often half-concealed deflecting in-
fluences that spring from ambition or resentment, from
personal predilections and personal dislikes. It was these
tjualities, combined with her unrivalled experience of
-affairs, and strengthened by long and constant intercourse
with the foremost English statesmen of two generations,
that made her what she undoubtedly was— a perfect
model of a constitutional Sovereign.
The position of a Sovereign under a parliamentary
.government like ours is a singular and difficult one.
'There was a school of politicians who were much more
QUEEN VICTORIA AS A MORAL FORCE 253
prominent in the last generation than in the present one,
who regarded the Sovereign, in political life at least, as
little more than a figure-head or a cipher, absolved from
all responsibility, but also divested of all power, and
fulfilling functions in the Constitution which are little
more than mechanical. This view of the unimportance
of the Monarchy will now be held by few really
intelligent men. Those take but a false and narrow view
of human affairs who fail to realise the part which
sentiment and enthusiasm play in the government of
men ; and no one who knows England will question that
the throne is the centre of a great strength of personal
attachment which is wholly different from any attach-
ment to a party or a parliament.
In India and the Colonies this is still more the case.
It is not the British Parliament or the British Cabinet
that there forms the centre of unity or excites genuine
attachment. The Crown is the main link binding the
different States to one another, and the pervading senti-
ment of a common loyalty unites them in one great and
living whole. In foreign politics it cannot be a matter
of indifference that a Sovereign is closely related to nearly
all the greatest rulers in the world, and in frequent,
intimate, unconstrained correspondence with them. This
is a kind of influence which no Minister, however
powerful, can exercise, and it was possessed by Queen
Victoria probably to a greater degree than by any
Sovereign on record, for there has scarcely ever been
one who included among her relations so many of the
Sovereigns of the world. Future historians will no doubt
have ample means of judging how frequently and how
judiciously it was employed in assuaging differences and
promoting European peace. All the great offices in
Church and State, all the great distributions of honours
were submitted to her ; and though in a large number
of cases this patronage is purely Ministerial or professional,
254 HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS
there are many cases in which the Sovereign had a real
voice, and a strong objection on her part was usually
attended to. In Church patronage and in the distribution
of honours she is known to have taken a great interest,
and to have exercised a considerable influence.
The one subject on which the Queen was not always
in harmony with her people was that of foreign politics.
She and the Prince Consort took a keen interest in them,
and during his lifetime she followed very implicitly his
guidance. The strong German sympathies she imbued
from her own marriage were much intensified by the
marriages of her children, and especially by that of her
eldest daughter to the heir of the Prussian throne. The
influence also of Stockmar, who was the closest adviser
of her early married life, was not wholly for good, and
the theory which the Prince held that the direction of
foreign affairs is in a peculiar degree under the care of
the Sovereign, and that the Prince, her husband, should
be regarded as ' her permanent Minister,' created during
many years much friction. In a constitutional country,
where the responsibility of affairs rests wholly on the
Minister, who is doubly responsible to the Cabinet and
to the Parliament, such a theory can only be main-
tained with great qualifications.
On the other hand, the government of the country
was carried on in the name of the Queen. Foreign
despatches were addressed to her and could only be
answered with her sanction. The right of the English
Sovereigns to be present at the Cabinet Councils of their
Ministers was abdicated when George I. came to the
throne, but every important departure in policy was
submitted to the Queen and required her assent. The
testimony of Ministers of all shades of policy supports
the belief that this was no idle form. The Queen, though
always open to argument and tolerant of contradiction,
had her own decided opinions ; she exercised her un-
QUEEN VICTORIA AS A MORAL FORCE 255
doubted right of expressing and defending them, and even
apart from her royal position, her great experience and
her singular clearness and rectitude of judgment made
her opinion well worth listening to.
The claim put forward by the Queen in her famous
memorandum of August 1850, can, I think, hardly be
pronounced excessive. She demanded only that before
a line of policy was adopted and brought before her she
should be distinctly informed of the facts of the case and
of the motives that inspired it ; that when she had given
her sanction to a measure it should not be arbitrarily
altered or modified by the Minister ; that she must be
kept acquainted with all important communications
between foreign Ministers and her own Foreign Secretary,
and that the drafts of foreign despatches must be sent
to her for her approval in sufficient time for her to make
herself acquainted with them. She complained that
Lord Palmerston was accustomed to send despatches to
the Continent without submitting them, in their last
revise, to the Sovereign ; that in one case he retained with-
out her kuowledge a passage which the Prince Consort
had deleted ; that he paid little or no attention to the
numerous memoranda which were drawn up by the
Prince for his instruction ; that he of his own will and
without any consultation committed his Government,
in a conversation with the French Ambassador, to an
approbation of the coup d'etat of Napoleon III. If the
general line of his policy had been in accordance with the
royal wishes, indiscretions of detail could probably have
been overlooked, but the Queen and Prince were both
undoubtedly on many occasions — and especially in 1848
and 1849 — strongly opposed to the pohcy of Lord
Palmerston. In the interests of peace they objected to
the remarkably provocative character of his despatches,
which excited a degree of animosity and resentment
among the Governments of the Continent that has rarely
256 HTSTOEICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS
been paralleled — on two, if not three, occasions it brought
England into grave danger of a war with France — and
which aroused a very widespread indignation among
statesmen of his own party at home.
The widely different tone which was adopted by Lord
Clarendon and Lord Granville, the open breach between
Palmerston and Lord John Eussell on account of the
way in which the former conducted his foreign policy
without consultation with the Cabinet, and the refusal
of Lord Grey, in a most critical moment, to take oftice
in a Government in which Lord Palmerston held the
seals of the Foreign Oftice, show how fully in this respect
the sentiments of the Queen accorded with those of many
of Lord Palmerston 's own colleagues. But in addition
to mere questions of manner and procedure, there was
much in the substance of the policy of Palmerston to
which the Queen objected. Her dislike to the Eevolu-
tionary element on the Continent, which Lord Palmerston
either encouraged or viewed with indifference, her sym-
pathy with the old governments and dynasties, that were
so gravely shaken in the year of the Eevolution, were
very marked. In the disputes between Germany and
Denmark on the Schleswig-Holstein question her sym-
pathies, unlike those of her people, were decidedly with
Germany, and although she was fully sensible of the mis-
government of some of the Italian States, she was not
favourable to that cause of Italian unity which Lord
John Eussell and Lord Palmerston so strenuously upheld.
Her nature, which was very frank, made it impossible for
her, even if she desired it, to conceal her opinions, and
she devoted much time and pains to making herself
acquainted with the details of every question as it arose.
She made it a rule to sign no paper that she had not read.
She did not hesitate fully to apprise her Ministers of her
views when they differed from their own, and she en-
forced her views by argument and remonstrance. She
QUEEN VICTORIA AS A MORAL FORCE 257
more than once drew up memoranda of her dissent from
the opinions of her Foreign Minister, and insisted on their
being brought before the Cabinet for consideration. In
the formation of a new Ministry she more than once
exercised her power of deciding to whom the succession of
the first places should be offered. After an adverse vote
of the House of Commons, she considered herself fully
authorised to decide whether she would accept the resigna-
tion of a Minister or submit the issue to the test of a
dissolution, and there were occasions on which she
remonstrated with her Ministers on their too ready
determination to resign.
At the same time it is certain that the Queen fulfilled
with perfection that most difficult duty of an able con-
stitutional Sovereign — the duty of yielding her convictions
to those of her responsible Ministers and acting faithfully
with Ministers she distrusted. To a Sovereign with clear
views and a more than common force of character this
must often have been very painful, and to have fulfilled it
faithfully and with no loss of dignity is no small merit.
It is the universal testimony of all who served her, that
no Sovereign ever supported her successive Ministers with
a more perfect loyalty or held the scales between contend-
ing parties with a more complete impartiality. No one
understood better to what point a constitutional Sovereign
may press her opinions and at what point she is bound to
give way ; and while maintaining her rightful authority she
never in any degree transgressed its bounds. In the very
beginning of her reign she showed this quality in a high
degree. She looked up to Lord Melbourne with an almost
filial affection, and there were peculiar reasons why his
great opponent. Sir Kobert Peel, should have been dis-
tasteful to her. The dispute about the removal of her
Ladies of the Bedchamber, and still more the conduct of
Sir Kobert Peel in supporting the reduction of the income
which the Whigs had proposed for Prince Albert, must
s
258 HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS
have touched her feehngs on the most sensitive points,
and the stiff, formal, somevi'hat awkward manner of Peel
seemed very little fitted to ingratiate him with a young
Sovereign. Yet when the change of Ministry arrived,
Peel found no trace of resentment in the Queen. She
gave him her complete confidence, and she fully estimated
his great qualities. Of all the Ministers who served her
there is indeed none of whom she has written in warmer
terms. When Lord Palmerston became Prime Minister
in 1855 it was contrary to her earnest desire, but when
the change was made Palmerston himself acknowledged
that he had ' no reason to complain of the least want of
cordiality or confidence on the part of the Court.' At the
time when she was most opposed to her Ministers, she
fully acquiesced in the principle that she must submit all
letters on public affairs to them and frame her replies
upon their advice. There were constant attempts on the
part of foreign Sovereigns who were connected with her to
carry on affairs by correspondence with her without the
knowledge and sanction of her Ministers, but the Queen
steadily resisted them. Anything, indeed, that in any
way savoured of intrigue was in the highest degree
repugnant to her nature.
She acted in the same way in internal affairs. Few
measures that were carried in her time were more re-
pugnant to her than Gladstone's disestablishment of the
Irish Church. It abolished an institution of which she
was herself the head and which a special clause in the
Coronation Oath required her to uphold, and she foretold,
not without good reason, that it would not pacify Ireland
but would be an encouragement to further agitation.
The question, however, had been submitted at a general
election to the decision of the country, and after that
decision had been unequivocally given in favour of the
policy of Gladstone, she frankly accepted it with the assent
of the Prime Minister. When a great danger of a conflict
QUEEN VICTORIA AS A MORAL FORCE 259
between the two Houses of Parliament had arisen, she
devoted herself actively in preventing it. She employed
for that service the instrumentality of Archbishop Tait —
a great statesman-prelate, whose promotion to the see
of Canterbury was due to her own personal initiative,
contrary to the wish of Lord Beaconsfield, but most fully
justified by the result — and it was largely due to the inter-
vention of the Queen that the Church Bill was not thrown
out in the House of Lords. She acted in a somewhat
similar way with reference to the Franchise Bill of 1884,
though on this occasion she does not seem to have disliked
the measure, which she urged the House of Lords to
accept.
On three very memorable occasions the intervention
of the Queen had probably a great effect on Enghsh
politics. It is well known that at the time when the
issue of peace or war with the United States was
trembling in the balance on account of the seizure of the
Southern envoys on the * Trent,' the Queen, acting in
accordance with the Prince Consort, by softening and
revising the language of an English despatch to America,
did very much to prevent the dispute from leading to a
great war ; that in the proclamation which was issued to
the Indian people after the Sepoy Mutiny, she insisted on
the excision of some most unfortunate words that seemed
to menace the native creeds, and on the insertion of an
emphatic promise that they should in no wise be inter-
fered with, and thus probably prevented a new outburst
of most dangerous fanaticism ; that at the time of the
Schleswig-Holstein dispute she contributed powerfully
and actively to give a turn to the negotiations that
averted a war with Prussia and Austria, which, as is
now almost universally recognised, could only have led to
a great catastrophe.
Whatever opinions may be formed of the merits of
the dispute between Denmark and the German powers
s 2
260 HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS
about Schleswig-Holstein, few persons who judge by the
event can doubt that an isolated intervention of England
on behalf of Denmark against the combined forces of
Austria and Prussia would have been absolutely impotent
to effect the object that was desired, and that even if
France had consented to join in the struggle it would
have led to a military disaster hardly less than that of
the war of Sedan. If, contrary to all probability, the
combined forces of France and England had proved
stronger than those of Austria and Germany, the result
could have hardly failed to be that France would have
been established on the left bank of the Rhine, and that
the treaty of Vienna, which it was one of the great
objects of English policy to maintain, would have been
torn into shreds.
The dangers, however, of conflict arising from the
extreme irritability of English public opinion against Ger-
many on the Danish question, were very great, and there
can be little doubt that the personal influence of the Queen
with the German Sovereign was an appreciable influence,
and it was her desire that a paragraph in the Queen's
Speech opening Parliament in February 1864 was erased.
Words which contained at least a veiled or attributed
threat to Germany were omitted, and instead of them an
inoffensive paragraph was inserted expressing the Queen's
ardent desire for peace and recording the earnest efforts
she had made to maintain it.' At the same time when,
by the Convention of Gastein in August 1865, the Duchies
were severed from the Danish throne and placed in the
virtual possession of Prussia and Austria, the protest of
Lord Eussell against so flagrant a violation of public
right, and especially of the right of the people to be con-
sulted on their own destiny, was drawn up with her full
assent and indeed in a great measure at her suggestion.'^
' Queen Victoria, by Sidney Lee, p. 349.
^ Ollivier, L' Empire Libiral, vii. p. 455.
QUEEN VICTORIA AS A MORAL FORCE 261
On other occasions her remonstrances were disregarded,
and courses were pursued to which she strongly objected.
The surrender after Majuba was in her opinion a pusillani-
mous abandonment of the English flag, and it was with
extreme reluctance that she acquiesced in it. Still more
vehement were her feelings about the long abandonment
of General Gordon in the Soudan. She had been inde-
fatigable in urging on the Ministry of Gladstone the duty
of speedy measures for his rescue, and when, owing to the
long delay of the Ministry, the most heroic of modern
Enghshmen perished at Khartoum, her indignation knew
no bounds. In a letter to his sisters, burning with
mingled pity and indignation, she pronounced his ' cruel
though heroic fate ' to be ' a stain left upon England,'
which she keenly felt. This was one of the few occasions
in which she allowed her sentiments in hostility to the
policy of her Ministers to appear publicly before the
world. In general, she had a profound distrust of the
policy and judgment of Mr. Gladstone, and she fully
shared the dread with which the great body of English
statesmen looked upon the Home Rule policy. It was
no new sentiment on her part, for she had lived through
the Repeal agitation of O'Connell, and as far back as
1843 Sir Robert Peel had somewhat unconstitutionally
declared in Parliament that he was authorised by the
Queen to state that she, like her predecessor, was resolved
to maintain the Union inviolate by all the means in her
power.
There can now be no harm in saying — what when
both parties were alive was naturally kept in the back-
ground—that the relations of the Queen with Mr. Glad-
stone were usually of a very painful cliaractor. She had
personally not much to complain of. Tlu; skill and firm-
ness with which Mr. Gladstone resisted the attempts to
diminish the parliamentary subsidies for her family were
fully and gratefully recognised by the Queen, but the
262 HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS
main course of his politics, both foreign and domestic,
filled her with alarm, and she never appears to have
experienced the attraction M^hich his great personal gifts
exercised over most of those with whom he came in
immediate contact. The extreme copiousness of his
vocabulary, the extreme subtlety of his mind and
reasoning, and the imperiousness of temper with which
he seldom failed to meet opposition, were all repugnant
to her. To those who have experienced the sustained em-
phasis of language with which Mr. Gladstone was accus-
tomed in conversation to enforce his views, there is much
truth as well as humour in the saying which was attributed
to the Queen, ' I wish Mr. Gladstone would not always
speak to me as if I was a public meeting ' ; and a little
episode which is related by Sir Theodore Martin illustrates
the irritation which Mr. Gladstone's methods of business
must have caused to a very busy and overworked lady
who always loved few words and simple and direct
arguments.^ At all times the Queen had decided political
opinions, and the experience of a long reign had given
her a large measure of not unjustifiable self-confidence.
Few persons had studied as she had during all those years
the various political questions that arose, and she had had
the advantage of discussing them at length with a long
succession of the leading statesmen of England. Under
such circumstances her opinions had no small weight,
and although in the Liberal Government she gave her
full confidence to Lord Clarendon and Lord Granville,
she looked with the gravest apprehension on the policy of
Mr. Gladstone.
It was a painful and irksome position, but it did not
lead the Queen to any unconstitutional course. No
â– Sir Theodore Martin was asked by the Queen to give her a precis of a
very long and unintelligible letter of Mr. Gladstone purporting to explain
the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill {Queen Victoria as I knew Her, by
yir Theodore Martin). — Ed.
QUEEN VICTORIA AS A MORAL FORCE 263
public act or word ever disclosed her feelings. It was
indeed in most cases very slowly, and in small circles
and through private channels, that the convictions of the
Queen became known.
At the close of the second Ministry of Mr. Gladstone
she at once offered him an earldom, which he refused,
and on his death she f ally acquiesced in the public funeral
in Westminster Abbey, and the Prince of Wales attended
it as her representative. In an autograph letter to Mrs.
Gladstone she spoke with the deep and genuine warmth
that was never wanting in her letters of condolence
of her sympathy with the bereavement of that lady.
She spoke of his illustrious gifts and of his personal
kindness to herself, but it was noticed that no sentence
in the letter intimated any approbation of his general
policy. ' Truth in the inmost parts ' was indeed a
prominent characteristic of the Queen, and she wrote
nothing which was not in accordance with her true
convictions.
There were occasions when she took independent
steps, and some of these had a considerable influence on
politics. Louis Napoleon was one of the few great
Sovereigns who were not related to her, and to few
persons could the coup d'etat which brought him to the
throne have been more repugnant, but the cordial
personal relations she established with him undoubtedly
contributed considerably to the good relations which
for many years subsisted between England and France.
Bismarck detested English Court influence and was
greatly prejudiced against her, but he has left a striking
testimony to the favourable impression which her tact
and good sense made upon him when he first came into
contact with her. She possessed to a high degree the
power of choosing the right moment and striking the
true chord, and she appears to have been an excellent
judge not only of the feelings of large bodies of men, but
264 HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS
also of the individual characters of those with whom she
dealt. She had a style of writing which was eminently
characteristic and eminently feminine, and it is easy to trace
the letters which were entirely her own. Her letters of
congratulation, or sympathy, or encouragement on public
occasions scarcely ever failed in their effect and never con-