PRETENDERS.
ONE wonders a little why the claimants of thrones—the word " Pretender " begs the question of moral right too completely—are so often persons of second-rate, or even third-rate, capacity and character. They must spring from families which have risen, mainly by hard fighting and states- manship, to the top of the world, and have kept there usually for some generations, and should therefore have the making of strong men in them, while their situation should, on all modern theories of training, be calculated to bring out any strength latent in their characters. They have before them a supreme purpose, one which can never change, and which therefore saves them from dissipating energy, one which they inevitably think it right to pursue, and one which, by its very conditions, should develop audacity, energy, and perseverance. They are saved from the flatteries which are supposed to weaken Princes—but which strengthen them, we suspect, quite as often—they see much wider varieties of society, and they are free, as Kings are not, to learn what they will. They are saved usually from toiling for a living, the social worship which surrounds them gives them dignity, and they have the means of intercourse, sometimes indeed a compulsion to hold intercourse, with some of the ablest men in the world, the chiefs of the defeated party in their own country, and the statesmen of all parties in the country they adopt. Yet they are generally men whom even their followers do not reckon as men likely, apart from birth, to win distinguished positions. Robert Bruce, it is true, and our own Henry IV. and Henry VII., were men of unusual force, but the first hardly comes within the category of Pretenders at all. Bruce was a patriot called on by his birth to expel a foreign enemy, and ranks with Gustavus Vasa rather than with any ordinary claimant to a throne. Henry IV. and Henry VII. were no doubt while in exile strong men, and must be allowed to be exceptions to the rule, though the latter had about him too much of the glorified attorney taint. Charles II. also was an able man, with much of the ruse ability, as well as the lascivious- ness, of his grandfather, Henri Quatre, but he never greatly troubled Cromwell, nor would he have returned had his return depended on himself. But the later claimants have been rather poor creatures. Neither of our own two " Pre- tenders " had anything particular in them, unless it were expressed, as regards Prince Charlie, by the word charm." He must have possessed that, or the tradition would not have obtained such a hold in Scotland, but except that and a certain boyish energy, he gave no evidence of the capacity that either wins or keeps thrones. He could not control the Highlanders, though so many of them died for him, and his incapacity to secure an effective party in England, when a third of the people were with him, was posi- tively phenomenal. Once left to himself, he turned debauchee and drunkard, and ceased to be even an object of fear to the " Elector's " Government, though it took the trouble to boycott him by treaty. His father had been still weaker, a dreary, disappointed, cadaverous man, a feeble copy of his very stupid sire. Cardinal Stuart, who was as much King of England on the Jacobite hypothesis as either of the others, was a nonentity who accepted a pension from his rival, and died without a follower or a foe. In France the brothers of Louis XVI. disappeared so completely after their expulsion that they were positively forgotten, so that their restoration was rather the result of accident than of any influence they exerted, —a fact the more remarkable because Louis XVIII. was a cool, placid, long-headed man who died in his bed, and Charles X. had some of the strength and firmness which once marked his great line. The true character of the Comte de Chambord is still a mystery, it is so excessively difficult to understand why he did not accept the throne when it was practically offered him by the group round Marshal MacMahon ; but, except dignity, and perhaps a power of forgiving foes, he showed no kingly qualities, and never for a moment caught hold on France. The Comte de Paris is best described as a Prince hopelessly without " go " in him, while his son, though he may of course have great qualities, has exhibited nothing except a certain fearlessness and schoolboy dash. Don Carlos is a sort of trooper with some energy, but none of the qualities, except courage, which make a great King, and with innumer- able good chances has lost them all. The world has not yet made up its mind about Napoleon M.; but it is certain that, as a Pretender, he was regarded as an imbecile, that the energy necessary to his grand adventure was imparted by others; that he was a poor organiser (as witness the state of his Army when the supreme hour came), and that the re- flection of eighteen years did not enable him to do what he most desired to do, devise some immense coup for the benefit of the masses of France. The training, which on all modern theories should be so good, has in fact always failed, and the claimants to thrones have shown themselves weaker men than they probably would have been, had they been brought up and reigned in the ordinary way. We should like to know what is the cause of that failure, which may after all be accidental, for the class has been very limited.
One cause of the feebleness of Pretenders is undoubtedly their misreading of information. That has been re- marked of statesmen in exile, and is still more true of banished Princes. They hear only from one side, they judge all events under the influence of what are really personal interests, and they are, we suspect, though we have no means of knowing, much more protected from hearing rough truths than Kings are. You must speak truly to a King if defeats, and insurrections, and human lives are dependent upon his action, but it is not necessary to be so abrupt with a claimant to a throne, and it is felt to be a little ungentlemanly to be so. It may be doubted whether the Comte de Chambord, for instance, even if it is true that he never really wished to regain his throne, ever quite under- stood what effect his adherence to the White Flag would have upon the masses of France, and especially upon the conscripts. Pretenders are deceived, as George III. was deceived about America, and as we fancy English statesmen are often deceived about Colonial opinion; they hear of everything except the governing factor, which is patent perhaps even on the spot to but few eyes, and those belonging to men who do not communicate their knowledge. That, how- ever, accounts for blunders rather than for character, and the explanation of the Pretenders' failure in character is we suspect, this. Thrones are founded or regained by men of action, and the whole situation of Pretenders tends to make them anything rather than men of action. They are, to begin with, beaten men, men who have lost enormously in the ram, and who are penetrated with a certain hopelessness, visible, it is said, in the very faces of the Old Pretender and the Comte de Chambord. They take to resignation a good deal, and resigna- tion does not make fortunes. They are precluded from action, and action is the gift of the Royal Houses, and such mental strength as they have is spent upon reflection. Their reflective- ness is very much wasted, for they have not by nature reflective intellects, and only increases their readiness to see obstacles and shrink from the kind of action—action as of the forlorn hope—which produces grand results. They hesitate at the supreme moment, as Napoleon III. would have done had his half-brother permitted him, and they are lost. It is a curious fact arising from this " sickliness," as Shakespeare called it, that they are constantly suspected of want of courage, that they themselves perceive this, and that almost every Pre- tender—we cannot recall an exception except the Comte de Chambord—does something a little bizarre or oat of the way to show that he is not afraid of fire. They are not afraid of fire, but of something indefinite which will follow either to themselves or others if they adopt any decided or irrevocable course. They shrink from great enterprise as men of re- flection who see many sides almost always must ; and men of reflection are not the kind of men who found or refound dynasties. Louis-Philippe would have died in the Tuileries if he had not been so reflective a man, and had not thought quite so much of what might happen if he ordered the troops to fire and the troops did not obey. There was no doubt about his courage; but he had lived too long in exile, and exile, while it had probably sharpened his perceptions, had eaten away his decisiveness. An ordinary stupid Prince would have taken the rising of 1848 as an incident in the ordinary way of business, would have shot a few hundred "rioters," and would have died in his bed King of the French. "Pretending" is not a business which develops competence of character.
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