THE BIRMINGHAM WORKING-MEN ON PRINCE ARTHUR.
are apt as a nation to be severe on the unpractical character of the democratic movements of foreign
countries, and not perhaps without reason. But it is at any rate often easier to appreciate fairly the sentiment of such movements, than it is to appreciate with equal fairness the form which the same sentiment takes when embodied in our own more " practical " ideas. Take, for instance, the agita- tion against Princess Louise's dowry, which has now broken out in a new form as a protest against the vote of the usual allowance to Prince Arthur on his attaining his majority,—a protest endorsed by a crowded and enthusiastic meeting at Birmingham on Wednesday night, called by the Labour Re- presentation League. It is difficult at first to feel anything but resentful vexation at what seems the bad taste and mis- taken form of the resolutions and speeches which proceeded from that meeting, even if we compare them mentally with the resolutions and speeches which the " unpractical " demo-
crats of the Continent would have put forth under like circumstances. And yet it is no doubt the very same "prac- tical " instinct which formerly made the middle-class resist tonnage and poundage more sturdily than the Star Chamber, that, now,in a form appearing to us, no doubt, travestied and gro- tesque, induces the labouring classes to attack monarchical and aristocratic institutions on the seemingly very slender and ill- advised plea of their pecuniary extravagance. As a matter of fact, we do not doubt that the plea is a very poor one. If we had a Republic to-morrow, as we have said before in these columns, we expect it would cost us a good deal more in.more taxation than our present Sovereign, with all the cadet branches of her family. The Birmingham meeting itself indicates as much. While protestingbitterlyagaine,t the grants to princes and princesses, the speakers significantly contrasted the generosity of the Government and Parliament to the royal pensioners, with their niggardliness to poor labourers who want assistance for the purpose of emigration ; and we may be quite sure that any representative Assembly which was minded to reduce the Civil List, would also be persuaded to add a vast deal more than an equivalent amount to the Estimates for various popular loans. But the answerwhich the working-men would perhaps not make, but which it is only fair to make for them, after studying the various speeches made at Birmingham, is simply this :—'After all, the grievance is not an economical grievance, though it finds expression, as English grievances are apt to find expression, in an appeal to the pocket ; it is a purely sentimental grievance, though the seat of the sentiment seems to be in the pocket ; and the sentimental grievance is this,—not that princes cost so much, but that, whereas poor people are told to go to work for their bread, and are reminded that he that will not labour neither shall he eat,' comparatively rich princes—the children, that is, of rich parents,—are told that they have a right to live on the taxes contributed by the poor.' No doubt it may be replied, and we should reply, that if a throne is useful at all to the people at large, it is better worth support- ing handsomely than shabbily,—that the natural and proper alternative is between republican and monarchical institutions, not between shabby monarchical institutions and effective monarchical institutions,—that if a royal family is an advantage at all, it is an advantage to keep it above the fierce and eager competitions of the world over which it is to rule, and that this can only be done by securing it in a position of independence and moderate splendour. But this reply, though we believe it is suffi- cient for its purpose, and ought to make the people feel that it would be far more candid, logical, and generous to agitate for strict political equality before the law, in other words, for a Republic, than for mulcting the Princess Louise or Prince Arthur of a promised allowance, is so far unpractical' that it assumes the form of popular feeling to be quite different from what it actually is. In point of fact, it seems clear that while the real life and essence of this movement is disgust that the working-man should be told he must either work or starve, while the prince is told he is to live luxuriously on the work of others, the disgust would not be felt, or felt in far slighter degree, if you put the same thing in the general form, the form which would rouse Frenchmen to enthusiasm, —namely, that all our institutions ought to be remodelled so as to secure perfect political equality. The real source of the grievance may be and is the existence of a Royal family at all. But that is not what the people see, and keenly feel. They don't mind paying for the throne while the Queen " does her work." The only point they keenly feel is that each of them is to pay some infinitesimal sum yearly in order to enable
Prince Arthur to keep a stud or the Princess Louise to have ladies-in-waiting,—which is not essential, as they hold, to royalty at all. The English way is to attack the most tangible and visible form of the grievance, instead of its root. If you strike at the root,—which is, comparatively speaking, out of sight,—you lose popular sympathy. If you strike at the tangible and visible grievance, the " logic of fact " will soon bring Englishmen to the root. Thus the working- classes are following in the wake of the middle-classes, when they begin by saying, What a shame we should pay more in order that our princes should be supported in luxury and idleness 1 ' That is a very stammering and inarticulate way of saying, ' We will have equality and no favour,' but it is a way that in spite of its stammering and inarticulate manner, is more eloquent to the working-classes than the other. The two really come to the same thing in the end, but the more practical and less explicit way is the plainer and more telling. That we are not misinterpreting the meaning of the Bir- mingham workmen, let the following passage from one of the most effective and best-cheered speeches attest :-
" Supposing any of them had a son, and ho went to the Poor Law Guardians, and he asked for an much por week as long as he lived, what would the latter say? They would say, 'Who is your father?' Where do you coma from ? " Where do you belong to? "They would make a 'marching investigation before they handed over ds. per week, It was right that such inquiries should bo made ; and when another person went before the House of Commons and asked for £15,000, it was right for the House to make similar inquiries and ask, 'Who are you, Prince Arthur? Who do you belong to? Who is your father, and who is your mother?' And after it was shown that his parents were in good oircumstances, ho should be told to go back to thorn, and ask them to support him. If they wore to ask what he should say were he Prime Minister of the country, and Prince Arthur came to ask him to supply him with £15,000 a year out of the public purse, his simple answer
would be, home to your mother.' " Or take this, again, from the language of another speaker :— " Here was a young man asking for, in round numbers, £300 per week for doing nothing. Were there not 300 men in that hall who had to maintain themselves, their wives, and families on a similar sum? The young gentleman would do nothing for the £300 per week, but the 800 mon who bad por week for the maintenance of their families were producing something towards their own maintenance and the sup- port and comfort of their fellow-men. Going into the agricultural districts and giving to the labourer an average of 10s. per week, what was the result? They had an army of 600 men only receiving per annum the same amount of money which this estimable young man ' asked them for, and that for doing nothing at all. He thought the time was oome when the sons of toil in their great centres of industry should raise their voices against such gigantic robberies as those."
Now, every one may sea at once that the real drift of both these speeches is pure Republicanism. To our minds, the working-men would do themselves far more credit if they attacked the institution of Royalty on the ground of the inequality it recognizes, instead of leaving that an open ques- tion, and somewhat unjustly and unfairly holding up to repro- bation its most natural and legitimate consequences. What these speeches really attempt is in principle analogous to an assault on
the House of Lords that should be directed not against its princi- ple, but the superfluous expense of its legislative apparatus, its clerks, its books, and its trappings ;—for though one of these speakers chose to assert that you might very well have poor princes as they have in Germany, he probably forgot that the poor princes of Germany are, relatively, not so very poor, indeed very much in the position of our nobles, and are provided for out of landed estates which belonged to the prince as prince, but the equivalents of which in England have been resumed by Parliament. Practically, this attack on the princes and princesses and their incomes is most unfair to the individuals who are the special victims, for if it succeeds it will sweep away royalty altogether ; and if it does not succeed, it will leave the junior branches of the Royal Ilouse very much in the position of privilege which they now occupy. But however strongly we may feel and press this,—and we do maintain that to put an argument for a republic in the form of a sort of petition to a Parliamentary Chancery to grant an injunction against allowing Prince Arthur's claim on the Exchequer, is a shabby business,—it is impossible to deny that the people realize their sentimental grievance much better in the shabby and concrete form than they do in the generous and more abstract form,—nay, that if our Royal Princes were to take fright and relinquish half their claims on the nation, offering to earn the rest by their own exertions, they would probably put a serious check on the agitation which has so recently begun and spread so rapidly, and prevent for a con- siderable time the emergence of the abstract issue between a monarchy and a republic. The working-classes have, then, as wo admit, this reply to our criticism. They may say, We cannot deny the justice of your remarks, but politicians must put a popular grievance in its most effective popular form, and if wo wore to begin an agitation against the monarchy, instead of against the allowances to princes and princesses, we should puzzle our people, and not get half the support we do ; the English poor feel worse when they see rich allowances voted to idle persons, than theY do when they are told that there is no real equality in England ; we regard that feeling as natural, and must use it, even though we admit that it logically involves a much wider change ;—nay, the very annoyance our method causes to Members of Parliament shows that we are right ; for they have to answer us by going into the abstract merits of monarchy and republicanism, and they feel that their answer has not the graphic force of our vulgar practical illus- tration.' To this we confess we can see only one reply,— namely, that the justice of the case requires the larger view, that the narrower view is essentially unfair and unjust, though unquestionably telling ; and that, after all, no principle is more truly and nobly democratic than strict equity even in the region of political reasoning,—even when it offers an apology for princes, and shows the people that they are meting out to princes more than their proper share of popular odium.
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