THE BETROTHAL OF PRINCESS MARY. T HE readiness with which the
King has consented to the betrothal of Princess Mary to Lord Lascelles, Lord Harewood's son, interprets exactly the feelings of the British people. The popular wish is unquestionably that the Royal Family should become more British in its alliances, as it is already British to the core in its thoughts and ways. Lord Lascelles belongs to a dis- tinguished family, and nothing could be of happier augury than that Princess Mary should marry not some foreign prince but an Englishman of the " country gentleman " type who has served his country very gallantly, and who, according to type, has taken part in public work and has stood for Parliament. His family have the right tradition in recognizing their obligations. By an unforeseen piece of good fortune he inherited the wealth of his great-uncle, Lord Clanricarde, and he is therefore in a position not merely to support such dignity as is proper for the future life of Princess Mary, but to help her in the kind of service to the nation to which she has already devoted herself, and which is known to be dear to her. He is a lucky man who gets for his wife a Princess trained in the ways of duty, work and unaffectedness by one of the most wise and careful mothers in the whole of Britain.
For some two hundred years a theory of the British Monarchy has been encouraged under which it was necessary to excuse, or to justify by a special reason, the marriage of any member of the Royal Family to a subject. This theory did not hold in earlier times, and we want to make the occasion of Princess Mary's betrothal the opportunity of declaring, what we have long felt, that the theory is now obsolete and had better be abandoned. In the Middle Ages, and later still—notably in the persons of Henry VIII. and James IL—English Kings or heirs-apparent had no hesitation in marrying a subject. The reason why they did not hesitate is, when one comes to think of it, plain enough. The King, even if not ruling precisely by divine right, was nearly enough in the position of one who could do no wrong. His choice was free because his position was supreme. He could throw his handkerchief, so to speak, to any favoured one without challenging either injurious criticism or dangerous jealousy. No other person, or official, or class was in competition with him. He could raise the lady of his fancy to the throne as easily as he could create dukedoms for favourites. Freedom of choice was, indeed, almost one of the most admired prerogatives of supremacy. The assertion of that freedom was just one of the kingly victories which were always attributed to the sovereign, whether he deserved the praise or not. We are reminded of that delicious piece of nonsense in Love's Labour's Lose about King Cophetua :- " The magnanimous and most illustrate king Cophetua Bet eyes upon the pernicious and indubitate beggar Zenelophon and he it was that might rightly say, Veni, vidi, vici • which to annothanize in the vulgar-0 base and obscure vulgar videlicet, He came, saw, and overcame s he came, one ; saw, two ; overcame, three. Who came ? the king why did 110 come ? to see : why did he see ? to overcome : to whom. came he I' to the beggar : what saw he ? the beggar. who overcame -he ? the beggar. The conclusion is victory on whose side ? the king's."
But a great change in the theory of the English Monarchy gradually came about after the Revolution of 1688. From that time onwards till the succession of Reform Acts, Great Britain was virtually governed by the Venetian oligarchy of the great ruling families. The idea -of affiance between the Royal Family and auble.5 came more and more to be disapproved of, not because the oligarchs disapproved of such marriages on any ground of principle from the point of view of the Royal Family, but because they disapproved of them from their own point of view. All the principal families were, in fact, jealous of one another. None of them could tolerate the thought. that power and great dignity should be bestowed on any other by virtue of an affiance with the Royal Family. It would be a nice question to decide whether a particular Whig family would have been more jealous in this matter of another Whig family than it would have been of a Tory family. Possibly the truth is that a Whig would have been green with jealousy at the elevation of another Whig, but he would have been inarticulate with fury at the elevation of a Tory. The Peers, who were the representatives of these ruling families, did not really exercise their greatest political power in the Ho of Lords. They found it much more effectual to applf their influence by maintaining the rotten boroughs and sending their nominees to the House of Commons. It was also because of what may be called their inter-tribal jealousy that they never allowed a Prime Minister to have a definite official position. True, he formed Governments and put political programmes into effect, but there was no constitutional term to describe his exact position. In the order of precedence he was officially unknown—and so, indeed, it remained until quite recently. The result of all this was that the Monarchy was, as it were, put in blinkers. It came to be assumed that the principal function of Royalty was to contract diplomatic foreign marriages and thus to help in setting up a system of checks and balances throughout the world. No one would deny that very useful purposes were served by this arrangement. A hostile foreign Court might be turned into a community of friends by a discreet and opportune marriage. When the Prime Ministers of two countries which were on the verge of conflict saw no hopes of agree- ment, matters were often enough settled by friendly ex- changes between the sovereigns, who, not being like the German Emperor, William II., remembered that after all they were cousins. Yet another great change has come, and we no longer have our former Venetian oligarchy, but a full-fledged democratic system. The King is hereditary President of this crowned republic, and in our opinion the time has come to release every member of the Royal Family, whether on the male or female side, and even though in the direct line of succession, from the trammels which were in effect imposed upon it for their own purposes by the oligarchs. Logic and common sense seem to us to coincide with the bare facts of the situation. What are the facts ? Thrones have tumbled down all over Europe and there is no longer a variety of reigning families abroad from which members of our own Royal Family may take their choice. Moreover, diplomacy and the aforesaid checks and balances no longer require such alliances. Marriages between persons of the Royal Family and British subjects—of course within seemly limitations—should, in fact, be regarded as in the natural order of things. There are very few foreign princes to marry, and even if there were the nation would be far more pleased with such an affiance as has just been announced for Princess Mary. Of course, we do not mean that foreign marriages should be ruled out, for it might happen that such a marriage would be desirable from every point of view, including the point of view of the British Prince or Princess—a matter by no means to be left out of account if Royal marriages are to be what the public would like them to be. All we mean is that there is no longer any reason whatever for fettering the choice. With all sincerity and respect we would say that the complete freedom which we are advocating applies quite as much to the Prince of Wales as to any other member of the Royal Family. \Ve know perfectly well that what we have said lays itself open to the criticism of those who will foresee endless social embarrassments and inconveniences in no longer treating the Royal Family as a close corporation. It may be said that such embarrassments were experienced in the case of Lord Lorne, and that if the Duke of Fife had not preferred a remote life they would have appeared in his case too.- But we would ask.the critics to remember that the sources of such embarrassments are, in the nature of things, very much fewer than they were. The satisfaction with which the marriage of Princess Patricia to Captain Ramsay was received, and the absence of all inconvenience attending it, are symptoms of a new order of things. After all, the number of persons who would be kept awake at nights wondering how they could bring themselves to make the necessary genuflexions to one who had been their niece, or their cousin, and had now become their Queen, is very small indeed. The vast majority of people would be heartily pleased and gratified at a union which was known to have a touch of romance, and that is the thing which humanly matters.
Still, it may just as well be admitted that there would be some difficulties. Suppose, for example, that an heir- apparent were to marry an English girl belonging to a family of great position in the land. It might well happen that the head of such a family would be called upon, sooner or later, to fill a very important Ministerial office. We do not say the office of Prime Minister—though even that might happen—because some people declare that there will be no more Prime Ministers in the House of Lords, and it is more likely than not that the head of such a family as we are imagining would be a. Peer. It would certainly be very anomalous for a powerful Minister to be the father-in-law of the heir-apparent, or even of the King. It would be so anomalous indeed that it would be utterly undesirable, and it would have to be avoided. The father- in-law, we are supposing, would have to put out of his mind all thoughts of occupying high official positions. This would be a disadvantage for him and the loss of service to the country might possibly be considerable. But, on the whole, the advantages to the nation of making the Mon- archy more truly British than it is even now would be far greater than the disadvantages. Finally, it should not be forgotten that the popularity which the Royal Family enjoys with the manual workers and with the very poorest classes is a thing worth tracing to its origins and well worth perpetuating by acting on certain rules when the examination of the origins has been made. The reason, we believe, why the King is so popular is that he obviously never spares himself and is absolutely simple ; he is devoid of all the arts of advertisement ; he never interferes unconstitutionally ; and he is known to be a first-rate sportsman. Thirty years ago revolutionary orators on Tower Hill or in the parks used always to begin by denouncing the Royal Family. It seemed to be thought that the first thing to do was to haul down " the swells " from the top. Now one practically never hears such demands. The responsible Labour leaders, at all events, know that in our hereditary President we have the most accomplished and the most efficient possible chairman of the nation. They know that from the mere money point of view he costs the nation less than Repub- lican nations pay for their elected Presidents. Further, they know that we have the good fortune to get on without all the terrific turmoil of intermittent Presidential elections and the political unsettlement which follows them. The man in the street has therefore come to the conclusion that if there is to be a President—and of course he admits that there must be one—we are never likely by any other methods to get Presidents better than we get now. Not a single ounce of political power is taken away from the people by our hard-working constitutional Monarchy. And if the man in the street were asked how the perman- ence of this very happy state of affairs could be ensured he would say that it could be done by means of well- considered marriages which would bring the Monarchy closer to the people, and make it, if possible, more British than ever in blood and instinct and habit.
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