PERSONAL RULE: A REJOINDER.

I HAVE no reason to complain of Mr. Kebbel's reply to my article on the Progress of Personal Rule.' On the contrary, I have every reason to be well content. A man does not like to be argumentatively demolished, and an apprehension that the attempt may succeed is enough to spoil the literary enjoyment which it would otherwise inspire. But when either a salutary grain of self-confidence or a reasonable persuasion of the goodness of his cause suffices to ward off any such dread, he is at leisure to admire the tactics of his assailant. In this respect I should be ungrateful if I did not tender my warmest acknowledgments to Mr. Kebbel. He has given me an hour's suggestive reading, and after following him without any sense of mortal hurt through the ratiocinative part of his essay, I have had the supreme gratification, not unmixed with wonder, of finding towards the close that he makes me a present of nearly all for which I had contended. His estimate of the political aims of the Premier is much the same as mine, the principal difference between us being that whereas he approves of them, I do not; and that while he sees in them a probable remedy for what he chooses to regard as the besetting ills of the commonwealth, I, on the other hand, view them with detestation as a quack's nostrums for imaginary evils, and as fraught with peril to the liberties of England.

A sensation of curiosity is natural on meeting for the first time with an opponent whom by some mischance one has not the honour of knowing. One watches his words and seizes with eagerness upon every bit of self-revelation in order, if possible, to pick up some acquaintance with the strange personality whom it is your fortune to confront in arms. Reading Mr. Kebbel's essay with such feelings, I could not help being charmed with my opponent. He seemed to wear such an air of obviously unstudied simplicity, and to be so clearly a stranger to the devious ways of political life. I accepted him at once as the 'simple outsider' he professed to be, without a brief, without any overpowering partialities, and unacquainted with the statesman he undertook to defend, save through the force of his literary intuitions. The fact that after his attention had been attracted by the growing outcry against personal rule, which, if it

meant anything, meant much, he should have thought very little further about the matter till he discovered, one day, that Mr. Goldwin Smith took it seriously, wrought in me the highest respect for a nature so ingenuous and calm. When I also learned that, in his eagerness to be enlightened, he ran to my essay for information, nothing else could well be wanting to fix him in my admiring esteem. I was even, for the moment, led to reckon it among the good results of my adventure in the Nineteenth Century, that it had induced such a man to abandon a life of contemplation, with its attendant temptations to indolence and cynicism, and had led him to devote his genius to the improvement of his countrymen.

It will be understood that these were my first impressions. A little reflection made me doubt whether Mr. Kebbel was quite the novice he seemed to be. I even began to suspect that his ignorance was a graceful affectation, and that a certain easy perfunctoriness discernible in his treatment of the question might conceal a purpose which went much further than the confutation of my arguments. It certainly seemed rather odd that he should so quickly have exchanged the character of a sceptical observer for that of a zealous advocate, and should have felt himself, above all other men, called to prove that the charge I brought against Lord Beaconsfield had broken down, when he tells us that he has never yet been able to understand what the charge meant. The paper to which Mr. Kebbel replies dealt quite as freely with Baron Stockmar and the Prince Consort as with Lord Beaconsfield. But Mr. Kebbel declines to throw his shield

over the reputation of the dead. His sole care is to establish the political blamelessness of the living statesman. As I read on, these incongruities seemed to receive an explanation in the scope of his argument, which is in favour of personal rule, and, so far as Lord Beaconsfield is concerned, simply goes for a verdict of 'not proven ' on the charge of attempting its revival. It may well be held desirable that public opinion should not be needlessly alarmed nor be defied too soon. Why should a promising development be spoiled by indiscretion? But if, in spite of every precaution, an outcry should be raised, it may then be prudent to insist upon the strictest proof and pin the accuser to the very letter of the law. In this way at least a plausible case may be made out for the defence, the rising storm of popular indignation may be appeased, and time won for carrying the process a little further.

The conditions of political life in England afford one argument which is always at hand for discrediting an opponent, and for throwing odium on an unpalatable truth. Say that a cry is inspired by party zeal, and you have done your best to close against it the ears of half the nation. Mr. Kebbel says that the cry against personal rule is a party cry, and in one sense the assertion is true. It is a party cry, inasmuch as it is raised mainly, though not exclusively, by the Liberal

party, and there are two reasons why it should be so. In the first place the particular acts alleged in justification of the cry are the acts of the Government now in power, and the Tories cannot take it up without incriminating their own leaders, an unusual sacrifice for them to offer at the shrine of political truth. In the second place, whatever may be the worth of the considerations adduced to prove that the present Government has displayed a leaning towards personal rule, they are sure to be most carefully scanned, and, so far as they seem to be true, most keenly appreciated by that party which owes its existence to a jealousy of the prerogatives of the Crown.

The Tories at the commencement of their career took part with the Whigs in protesting against the dispensing power usurped by James the Second, but that was because the laws with which he wished to dispense were the bulwarks of their church and creed. When their vested interests and their tenderest prejudices were not too flagrantly outraged, they have always shown a weakness for personal rule, and are not likely to be unduly suspicious of it now. The Liberals, on the other hand, have inherited the traditions of the Revolution, and broadened them into a foundation on which, so long as it is faithfully preserved, the fabric of public freedom may securely rest. They are the hereditary guardians of the Constitution, and any attempt, or any suspicion of an attempt, to disturb it in the interest of the Crown, they regard as the infringement of a solemn compact, and are reminded by it that they may have to do the work of their fathers over again. In this sense the cry against personal rule may well be a party cry; but that is not the sense intended by men like Mr. Kebbel. They wish us to believe that the cry is adopted without any conviction of its truth, but simply as a means of rousing indignation against the party in power, and assisting their opponents to the Treasury Bench. Mr. Kebbel would have done well to furnish proofs of the truth of an accusation which assails the honour and the conscientiousness of a host of distinguished men representing every shade of Liberalism. He might also have borne in mind that there may be such a thing as party silence, party connivance, or party condonation, as well as a party cry, and that the one is at least as disreputable as the other.

Mr. Kebbel quotes with great glee a passage in which I attempted to describe the feelings of Englishmen after a three years' taste of personal rule, and he finds a parallel to it in the sayings of Imlac. He does not seem to be aware that some of the words he quotes are from the kindred pen of a Quarterly Reviewer, but I admit the justice of his criticism, and have only one thing to say in excuse. I had lately been reading those tentative reveries of an original mind' of which he speaks with such profound respect, and which remind one a little of the Abyssinian sage. Having plunged into these reveries,' I may perhaps flatter myself that I had caught for a moment the soft infection of their style, and so ventured upon a

tentative reverie' of my own. But Mr. Kebbel has no mercy for any reveries other than Lord Beaconsfield's. The paragraph he quotes from my paper was expressed rather too emotionally, and the instinct with which he singled it out for his gentle satire gave me a great idea of his skill as a controversialist. My respect for his adroitness was increased when I found him professing to scan it for information, and founding upon its obvious inadequacy for that purpose a complaint that my explanation needed explaining. As it escaped my pen it was a sort of wail over departing freedom, but, on the chance of its encountering a critic like Mr. Kebbel, I took some pains to tone down its original pathos, and intermix with it a few didactic expressions. Unfortunately the change seems to have been too complete, and Mr. Kebbel mistook my elegy for a bill of

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contents.

Mr. Kebbel's argument seems to fall under three heads. In the first place I take him to say that he is unable to understand what is or can be meant by the charge of attempting a revival of personal rule, so long as the particular acts complained of appertain to the 'unquestioned prerogatives' of the Crown, and have been done by ministers responsible to Parliament. In the next place he maintains that, as a matter of fact, no acts have been done on behalf of the Crown during Lord Beaconsfield's Administration which do not fall within the joint category just described. Finally, having closed his account with me, he proceeds to explain what he takes to be really the views of Lord Beaconsfield as deducible from his novels, and as fortified by the strong approbation of Mr. Kebbel himself. These are the points I now proceed to deal with.

The first question we have to discuss is what are we to understand by 'personal rule'? Mr. Kebbel says: What I have always understood by personal rule is the claim of the sovereign to dictate the policy of the Government, to require that his ministers shall recommend it to Parliament with their united authority, and to dismiss them if they decline to do so. But it is not asserted to my knowledge that her Majesty has done anything of the kind.' Certainly the Queen has not dismissed her ministers. What may have happened in connection with any particular measure or line of policy it is impossible to affirm or deny. We are simply in ignorance, and it is not easy to see how we can be enlightened unless some one commits perjury. Whether, for example, the proposal of a grant in aid of the people in the Rhodope district originated with the sagacity of the Crown or with the Parliamentary prudence of the minister is a matter of which Mr. Kebbel and I must be equally ignorant. Hence on this point there can be no discussion. If we are to argue, it must be about things we can see and test. We must be content to reason from the known to the unknown, and draw such conclusions as the case admits of. Mr. Kebbel says that 'personal rule

is government by the sovereign in person.' Taken by itself I should have to confess my inability to understand the meaning of this expression. Government in person' suggests government by proxy, the two corresponding to the immediate and the mediate exercise of power. But the one is just as personal as the other, so far as the present question is concerned.

Personal rule may flourish quite as luxuriantly through the interposition of a minister as when it is solely exercised, if indeed it can be so exercised, by the sovereign himself. A sovereign in his council chamber has no more power than any other mortal, but through the force of opinion or of law he is able to command the services of ministers, who shine in his reflected lustre, and often become great at his expense. Our own history supplies us with the names of several monarchs who wielded personal power, but they wielded it through ministers who did their bidding. There was a practical concurrence of opinion' in each of the legislative or administrative acts associated with their names between Henry the Eighth, and Wolsey, and Thomas Cromwell, between Charles the First and Buckingham, Strafford, and Laud, between George the Third and Lord North. But though everything was done by ministers, the series of acts to which they lent their names are recognised as instances of personal rule. To reverse the picture, it is possible to imagine a sovereign more careless of the prerogative than is the minister he employs. The sovereign may be fond of ease, of retirement, of aesthetic pleasures, of rural retreats, and may leave the minister to gather into his own hands the scattered threads of power, to exalt and exaggerate in his own person the attributes of the Crown, and to play the part of monarch by deputy; or a sovereign by no means careless of his prerogatives may find them so handsomely tended and so splendidly magnified by the minister whom political chances have thrown in his way, that he may leave him to do as he likes, subject to the condition of having to fight his own battles with a suspicious and irritated Parliament. A minister so placed may come to look upon the patrimony of the Crown as his own; he may cultivate it and try to exhaust its possibilities as zealously as if he had received it from his ancestors and could transmit it to his heirs. Small indeed to the interests of the Constitution or to the welfare of the nation is the difference between one and another of these methods of personal rule. The result of all alike is that the people are ruled without their own concurrence, or against their own will, and that the rights of self-government have disappeared.

The definition I should give of personal rule is more comprehensive than Mr. Kebbel's. I should call it government by the will of individuals in defiance of the laws and usages which have been settled by consent, and, as regards this country, in disparagement of the