THE COBURG PENSION.
WE write about that wretched debate of Friday week on the Coburg annuity because we believe it is much more important than it seems to be, or than it ought to have been, and because we hold it necessary that somebody of monarchical opinions should speak on the subject with a little frankness. The Radicals were badly represented by men who do not know what courteous reticence means ; but they have a good deal to say for themselves nevertheless. We are Monarchists from a belief that the European peoples are not yet civilised enough to manage Republics, from an intense dislike to plunge into the unknown, and as regards this country, from a conviction that the Royal Standard is the symbol which binds our possessions together, and that with the throne the Empire would depart. But we are also convinced that in every country the most difficult burden which the throne has to bear is the Royal Family. In every country, from Russia to Servia, the story is always the same, that the people dislike the cadets and connections of the Royal House, and regard them with a suspicious aversion which is deepened rather than lessened by the reverence for the Monarch. Whatever the cause, and we shall have something to say on that directly, the fact is proved by a single circumstance ; that you rarely, almost never, hear anything to the credit of a Grand Duke, an Archduke, or a Prince. Any scandal, whether great or trifling, is at once noised throughout Europe ; but any service done or self-suppression carried out under difficult circumstances, is reported for the first time when the Royal personage is dead. Who, outside Austria, really knew anything of the Archduke Albrecht, a man who would have honoured any country, both by his achievements and his character ; and who did not hear of the Crown Prince Rudolph, who committed suicide, or of the Archduke "John Orth," who flung away rank and fortune rather than bear with the obligations and, as he thought, the unrealities of his position The feeling may be—we think is—utterly unjust, but it exists, and it has to be reckoned with as a distinct factor in politics. We believe it arises in all countries from the same source, reasonable and unreason- able, the feeling of the great that "the Royalties " claim a position to which they have no logical right whatever, they being properly only in the first rank of nobles, and the feeling of the masses, that they are supporting somehow a clan upon their shoulders who have not the semi-mystical claim of the Monarch—which is still admitted to a degree Radicals hardly compre- hend—and who do nothing whatever in return for the sacrifices, real or supposed, which, as those masses believe, they are called upon to make for them. As a rule, the opinion of the masses is a muddle of fact and fiction. As we understand the matter, neither in Russia, Austria, nor Germany do they pay a sixpence for their Princes' support, their expenses being met out of the family property ; but no doubt in all those countries they are promoted with a cool disregard of justice, and exercise on affairs an influence which may or may not be beneficial, but which in no case is derived from qualities alone.
In this country the feeling is peculiarly marked, both because the Royal Family is poor and because this country is genuinely monarchical and genuinely democratic. The reverence felt for the Queen is perfectly genuine, is deepest as we go down in society, and is not quite so completely dependent upon the Queen's virtues as it is the fashion to assert. No doubt there is a special passion of loyalty for the individual lady, who, in a reign protracted beyond all precedent, has never once quarrelled with her people, who has been an exemplar of all the qualities Englishmen respect in women, and who will be found when the memoirs of the future are written to have possessed to an invaluable degree that quality of political sense which Sovereigns are so apt to lack. The Queen's judgment in a grave crisis is a, judgment to be pondered by the most experienced statesmen, if only because it is the judgment of a person, who knowing everything, is perfectly detached from party and its prepossessions. For all that, something of the reverence felt for the Queen is reverence for the Throne, and will be transferred in considerable measure to its next occupant, who will on his coronation find, if he pleases, that he has passed through a sort of baptism, all that may have preceded that day and given offence being forgotten and wiped out. That feeling, however, which is the guarantee of Monarchy, is accompanied—reason- ably or unreasonably is not our question just now—by a sort of dislike of the Royal Family. The great and the cultured are annoyed with their pretensions, which in matters of etiquette are for this age and this people really absurd—for example, if a Princess enters a house she is hostess in that house—while the common people have a, notion that they are taxed to support a clan who have no particular claims. The tax is imperceptible in total amount, but it is ex- pressed as regards each individual Prince in thousands of pounds, and the common people do not compare those thousands with the national expenditure, as Mr. Balfour said justly on Friday week they ought to do, but with their own incomes. The Prince or Princess, it is said, is swallowing three or five hundred families. Cases like that of the Duke of Cambridge, who is supposed with absurd unfairness to be sticking not to his office—which is the truth —but to his salary—which is false—add fuel to the flame, until in a whole series of constituencies a Liberal candidate who defends Royal grants has hardly a chance of being re- turned. The only argument which the unlucky candidate who knows the facts, can use with a chance of a hearing, is the one which poor Mr. Rathbone used in all honesty on Friday week, and was scolded for using, namely, that he votes the money as an act of courtesy to the Queen. The average elector thinks there may be something in that, and as he would not be discourteous to the Queen for the world, he may pardon the offending candidate; but in a borough which has got the idea of "Royal paupers" into its head, there is no other argument to which he will listen for a minute. A dozen seats will be vacated at the election because those who hold them voted for the continuance of the allowance to the Duke of Coburg.
And yet that allowance is at least as defensible as any made to any member of the Royal Family, except the Prince of Wales. We think, to speak quite frankly, that the Duke of Coburg, as a foreign Sovereign, hardly consults his own dignity, or that of the Grand Duchess, in retaining the pension ; but the House of Commons certainly would not consult its own dignity in taking it away. A power of revocation was, no doubt, inserted in the statute ; but still the allowance, which is only £10,000 a year, was part of the arrange- ments made to facilitate a marriage thought at the time, quite justly, to be a great one, and there is no sort of grace in taking it violently away. Nobody denies, certainly nobody on the two Front Benches denies, that the House of Commons may take it away if it likes; the question is only of the social impropriety of so doing, and we can, we think, make that a little clearer. Suppose John Smith promises his son an allowance on his marriage of £1,000 a year, reserving to himself a right, if the son gets rich, of ceasing to pay the money. The son does get richer, not rich, and asks the father, who has grown no poorer, to continue the allowance which he wants for this, that, or the other,—to keep up Clarence House, the Duke says, with every appearance of truth. Well, clearly John Smith has a right to pocket his £1,000 a year, and add it to his own fortune ; but he would, under ordinary circumstances, be ashamed to do it ; would consider his daughter-in- law's claim as well as his son's ; and would, probably with some grumblings not intended to mean much, go on paying the money. The grand theory advanced by Mr. Dalziel, that the son might under certain circumstances enjoy the money while fighting a lawsuit about a rever- sion with his father, would not, most people will allow, weigh much either with the parties or their lawyers. The allowance would not make a particle of difference to the suit, and one does not take away a son's watch because he may pawn it to spend on some purpose one disapproves. The House of Commons is just in that father's position, and we therefore hold that its vote of Friday week was the only one which it could pass with any sense of its own dignity or kindliness. At the same time we confess we understand the fear entertained by Radical Members of their constituents, and should gladly hear that the Duke had followed the example of his grand-uncle Leopold, and restored the money year by year to the Treasury. It is his own, and the decision is with him ; but most people have family claims which, if they are contested, they never dream of urging. The whole affair shows that at the next vacancy of the Throne, the possible claims of all Princes and Princesses should be clearly provided for, so that there may be no more contests. The Royalties more than, say, ten steps distant from the Crown should be declared once for all to be Commoners, only entitled to rank if the Sovereign bestowed it on them, not entitled to national money, but authorised to perform any duties entrusted to them by anybody, and to marry any heiresses they pleased. For "the Princes within the succession" there should be a fund created consisting in the main of the Cornwall and Lancaster revenues, to be distributed under a Minister's signature, while the Heir or Heiress Apparent should receive, like the Sovereign, a direct national allowance. There is something very petty and squalid about these squabbles for sums which a dock- yard will waste, without knowing it, in a week; but still we cannot make ignorant people arithmeticians, and if we wish the Throne to be popular we must have done with Royal allowances. It is rather unlucky as things stand that the dynasty is the only one in Europe which has no property, but still we must put up with facts, and remember the great item to be carried to the other side. The Queen has never asked her people for one extra shilling f r herself ; and half this recurrent fuss arises from the delusion that because she has managed to live within the revenues assigned her, she ought to have accumulated wealth sufficient to maintain all her descen- dants to the fourth generation. That is ungrateful nonsense ; and means in plain English that because the Queen has been a good manager, and has rigidly avoided sponging on her people, therefore she ought to be fined. If she had wasted her money, nobody would expect her to do anything for the Royal clan.
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