Royal in any European country, however remote from the chance
of succession, have any freedom of action in this the most important of the relations of life. It is always open to them, of course, to renounce their blood and become private citizens, in which case their liberty of choice is unfettered. But so long as they are members of a reigning house the State reserves a right to supervise their alliances. The so- called " morganatic " marriages on the Continent are nominal renunciations of rank, but in practice such ties are broken whenever the Prince concerned comes into the direct line of succession. It is rare indeed that we have a case of a member of a Royal house who voluntarily renounces his succession and remains constant to his renunciation.
We believe that this State surveillance of Royal marriages is just and equitable, and based on sound reasons of policy. There is no barrier placed upon a Prince indulging his fancy as he pleases, but he must pay a price for the right of behaving like an ordinary human being. The privileges of Royalty are so great that the corresponding responsibilities must be emphasised. The first and most important reason is diplomatic. The reigning houses of Europe are a vast family party, and they form perhaps the greatest of the safeguards of peace. A Royal marriage is like a treaty. It must be negotiated delicately, with a full understanding of the con- sequences involved, for in it may be bound up the fates of millions of citizens. The part which a country is to play in the diplomacy of the world may be largely determined by the alliances of its rulers; and what is true of Kings is true of those who may in time be Kings, or whose children or grand- children may succeed. A Royal family is therefore a corps diplomatique, and its marriages are more significant than the appointment of Ambassadors. The greatest safeguard of peace in our modern world is the interconnection of the various reigning houses. Of old wars were the creation of the ambition of Kings and statesmen—quidquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi—but now it is the Achivi who are the chief makers of war, and the Kings who are apostles of international harmony. To renounce this safeguard by making Royal alliances subject only to the caprices of Royal persons would be to part with one of the most valuable results of the heredi- tary principle. Another strong reason is the necessity for maintaining the Royal caste. In olden days, when the King was merely the first of the nobles, prima inter pares, King Cophetua could espouse the beggar-maid, and no one have a word to say against it. But nowadays we live in an elaborate society of which the Royal house is the topmost tier. The divisions between all alas see are well marked, but far greater than the barrier which separates the labourer from the middle class is the barrier which separates the Royal family from all others. In a Constitutional Monarchy there is need of this exclusiveness, and though the barrier may reasonably be passed now and then, it must be with the full cognisatnce and consent of the nation. If a Royal personage were to be free to marry whom he or she pleased in any rank of life, then Royalty would in the long run be merged in aris- tocracy, and the great spectacular value of a Royal house in a democratic nation would be destroyed. Royal marriages with the nobility of a country were difficult affairs three hundred years ago, when politics were still the game of a few great houses, and the choice of a wife from one of them gave it an undue power with the King. Nowadays this danger has gone, but it is still true that anything which tends to merge the Royal caste into the upper classes of society detracts greatly from the Royal prestige. But the main objection lies in the kind of taste which Royal personages might be expected to show in their marriages if their choice were free. Marriages with the daughters of great nobles would be a mistake, in our . opinion, but a comparatively harmless one. But would this be the direction of Royal inclinations ? Living in an atmosphere of adulation, remote from the criticism or the competition of his fellows, a Royal Prince cannot be expected to judge by the same standards as his subjects. Delicate social dis- tinctions, which have a very real value, must seem non- sensical to one who looks down on them from above. The qualities which the ordinary man expects in the ordinary} woman would not appeal to one who does not share the ordinary man's responsibilities or ambitions. We may be sure that the wives chosen by Princes, if their choice were free, would be handsome and amusing, but the odds are
greatly in favour of their being also silly, possibly vulgar, and almost certainly low-born. History has a great deal to say about the tastes of Princes, and, save in a few shining exceptions, their taste has not commended itself to their sub- jects. Being above rank or class, living in a world of their own, having no ordinary ambitions and no professional work, and having at the same time an exceptional appetite for enjoyment—Royalty being a profession which bores—and every opportunity for its indulgence, the odds are in favour of most of them choosing their wives rather from the stage or the ballet than from cultivated society. There are august precedents, to be sure, for one who remembers Justinian ; but to any student of the last quarter of the eighteenth century George III.'s policy must seem a wise one. The free choice of Royal personages is not to be depended upon, and the case is certain to arise when the nation must interfere in its own interests to annul a marriage, and so make the nominal freedom only a means of misfortune for innocent people.
We believe the present system to be, on the whole, a wise one, but we are not blind to certain dangers which attend it. It is essential on this side to keep the Royal class a caste, a thing apart, as necessary as other societies have found it to make a Levitical caste cut of their priests, though for very different reasons. The old doctrine of the divine right of Kings had this much truth in it, that a Royal house can only exist if it is in some vital way kept distinct from other people. Old writers talked of divine appointment; we talk of grounds of policy. But in perpetuating a caste there is a danger of the deterioration of its members. If the commonest of human feelings are thus checked and compelled to run in fixed channels, there is a chance that in time certain high qualities which the common man possesses may come to be atrophied in Royal natures. It is part of the weight which they who take up the almost unthinkable burden of Royalty have to bear. Do the many people who talk glibly of the advantages of a limited hereditary Monarchy realise bow much must be sacrificed by those who have to live a semi-scenic life, ordered and determined in its smallest details by the interests of the nation, and the coercive etiquettes which have grown out of them ?
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