SIR CHARLES DILKE 
 
 AT 
 
 NEWCASTLE. 
 
 Price Id. 
 
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 At a densely crowded Public Meeting held at 
 
 Newcastle-upon-Tyne, upon the 6th November, 
 
 1871, Mr. Joseph Co wen, Jun., in the chair, 
 
 Sir Charles Dilke, M.P., delivered the 
 
 following Address. 
 
 I am announced, I see, to speak to-night on 
 " Eepresentation and Koyalty," and if I say more 
 of Eoyalty than I do of Eepresentation, it will 
 be for two good reasons. The one is, that I 
 believe that many of you have seen a report of 
 a speech I delivered the other day, at Manchester, 
 upon Eepresentation, and that you know some- 
 thing of my views upon that subject. The other 
 is, that I hear that you are exercised in your 
 minds about Eoyalty, and want to compare notes 
 with me upon that serious subject. As to repre- 
 sentation, I intend next session to ask the House 
 of Commons to declare that an attempt ought to 
 be made, and made soon, to give equal weight
 
 to the votes of electors in whatever part of the 
 jountry they reside, and that the scandal of 13,000 
 electors in Newcastle (and 40,000 in Hackney) 
 having only 2 members, while 136 in Portarling- 
 ton have a member to themselves, should cease. 
 I showed that divisions often took place when 
 the minority represented more voters than the 
 majority. I showed that in the division upon the 
 election expenses, we who voted with Govern- 
 ment, and were beaten by 96, represented never- 
 theless more voters than the majority, who 
 voted for excluding poor men from Parliament. 
 I showed, too, that certain tiny minorities, when 
 examined from this point of view, often reveal 
 the fact that, although very few in number, the 
 members who voted in them represented all the 
 populous and intelligent towns. The vote against 
 the annuity to Prince Arthur is one of those 
 which show a far greater real support when 
 examined in this way than when counted roughly 
 by the number of members ; and this is indeed 
 so markedly the case that I may be perhaps ex- 
 cused if I wander somewhat into a defence of 
 those who took that course. The 53 who voted 
 with Mr. Dixon for reduction represented 766,000 
 voters, and the 11 who voted root and branch 
 against having these grants at all were mostly 
 members for large towns. It has been attempted 
 to show that the question was one not worth
 
 3 
 
 raising, and as it has even been put by some, 
 one which it was shabby to raise. The first 
 statement rests upon the belief that the whole 
 cost of the Eoyal Family is £385,000 a-year, 
 and the second upon an idea that there was an 
 arrangement at the beginning of the reign, by 
 which such annuities and dowries as have been 
 lately applied for should fall upon the Consolidated 
 Fund. Now, as I believe both these statements 
 to be erroneous, but as both the ideas are, at the 
 same time, widely spread, it would not be alto- 
 gether out of place if I were to show that those 
 who in the large constituencies objected to this 
 grant seem to have had strong arguments on 
 their side. In the first place, let us consider what 
 in this country Eoyalty may be supposed to cost ; 
 and, when we have done that, then let us turn 
 to the arrangement which it is believed was made 
 and by which we are said to be morally bound. 
 We have first to deal with the sum of £372,000 
 a-year expended upon the Privy Purse and upon 
 the Household, to which I add the Eoyal Bounty 
 and Eoyal Alms, which amount to £13,000, 
 making up the sum to £385,000. We next 
 have £131,000 of annuities of a similar kind to 
 that which we lately had to consider ; the income 
 of the Duchy of Lancaster, £32,000 ; that of 
 Cornwall, £63,000 ; the interest on lump sums 
 which have been paid to the various members of 
 
 A 2
 
 4 
 
 the Family still living, about £10,000 — making 
 up £621,000. Steam packets, insignia, presents 
 (such as those given by Prince Alfred in India 
 and Australia), pensions to Royal servants, ranger- 
 ehips of parks not borne upon the Civil List, make 
 £7,000 more ; and military and naval pay to 
 various members of the Family, about another 
 £20,000. The palaces, omitting Hampton Court, 
 which is a public show-place, are £47,000 more. 
 I speak now only of the yearly charge on us, but 
 sometimes sums which should by rights have 
 come to the nation have been swallowed up in 
 the palaces, — for instance, in 1849, £53,000 
 obtained by the sale of the Pavilion at Brighton 
 was sunk in Buckingham Palace, as vast sums 
 had previously been sunk by George IV. On 
 Windsor Park there is a deficit in the Woods and 
 Forests' account, and that deficit, of £12,000, about 
 represents the cost of the keepers, game, and other 
 royal as contrasted with public expenses in refer- 
 ence to the park. This makes £707,000, which 
 is the end of the figures that are of a certain and 
 very tangible character. Beyond this, we have 
 two large sums, as to one of which we can be 
 fairly accurate ; as to the other of which we can 
 give nothing but a guess. The first of them is 
 the cost of the Guards. It would be totally unfair 
 to set down anything like the whole cost of these 
 regiments to the account of Eoyalty ; because the
 
 infantry are good troops and are available as part 
 of the regular army. I regret that it is not in 
 my power to say as much for the cavalry of the 
 Guards — the Life Guards and Horse Guards, as 
 they are called. I do not speak of the stampede 
 of their horses when the geese sounded the alarm 
 at Chobham, but their cumbersomeness and un- 
 suitability to modern war were amply demon- 
 strated in my presence on several occasions during 
 the Hampshire campaign, and especially in the 
 first battle, at Seale. I calculate that the cost of 
 the Guards, over and above the cost of an equal 
 number of the Line, including an increased expen- 
 diture caused by the expensive nature of the 
 sites of two of their barracks, in the immediate 
 neighbourhood of Royal palaces, would be about 
 £100,000. I believe that it is not easy to over- 
 rate the evil effect upon any army of the existence 
 of privileged corps. The first act of the French 
 Republic, after the demoralized Empire was upset 
 
 no, not the first — the first was the abolition of 
 
 the Senate, the French House of Lords— but the 
 second, was the abolition of the privileges of the 
 Imperial Guard, and its fusion with the regular 
 army. At Sedan they had had painful experience 
 of the value of corps d elite, and things had come 
 to such a pass that the troops used to hiss when 
 the cent garde went by. Even the Royal Warrant 
 on promotion in the army, issued last week, con-
 
 tains traces of the evil of which I speak. The 
 Guards are excepted from the Warrant, and the 
 Pages of Honour to the Queen are carefully 
 allowed by special favour to enter the army with- 
 out that examination to which less favoured 
 mortals have to submit. You have been told 
 that the army has been " bought back from the 
 officers" at a cost of eight or ten millions : that 
 purchase has been abolished : that it is of vital 
 importance that entrance to the army should be 
 by open competition, and then you have at once 
 an exception made in favour of these young 
 gentlemen, which destroys the whole moral 
 value of your rule. The other of the sums 
 is, as I believe, the largest of all the separate 
 items of expenditure connected with the Eoyal 
 Family, and that is the cost of the Royal yachts. 
 We all of us have heard the stories of the 
 harm done to the naval service at the time of 
 the Crimean war — both actual and incidental 
 harm of a moral nature — by the diverting of the 
 service of men who ought to have been employed 
 upon our war ships, to the finishing for the Queen 
 of one of the Royal yachts, the Victoria and 
 Albert, I believe. But few of us are aware of 
 the vast expenditure which still and at all times 
 goes on upon Royal yachts — expenditure for 
 building, for repairs, for coals, for seamen's wages, 
 for pensions to the late officers and seamen of
 
 the yachts — an expenditure which at the least 
 cannot be less than another £100,000 a-year, 
 and which, having taken great pains to ascertain 
 the facts, I believe very largely indeed to ex- 
 ceed that sum. Several able-bodied men I found 
 employed all the year round at painting the orna- 
 mented fire buckets for these yachts. This makes 
 the total figure £906,000, and I think that, 
 speaking roughly, you may say that the positive 
 and direct cost of Eoyalty is about a million 
 a-year. The indirect cost, in the harm, for 
 instance, done to the army by the privileges of 
 the Guards, I of course cannot assess. In addi- 
 tion to the increase that I have mentioned, it 
 is worth remembering that the Eoyal Family 
 are the only persons in the kingdom who pay 
 no taxes ; and even those annuities which we 
 have lately granted are expressly freed from 
 all taxes, assessments, and charges. It is strange 
 with regard to the Queen's income that this 
 should be the case, seeing that Sir Eobert Peel 
 stated to the House of Commons, when about 
 to introduce the Income Tax Bill in 1842, 
 that Her Majesty, " prompted by those feelings of 
 deep and affectionate interest in the welfare of 
 her people which she had ever manifested, stated 
 to him that if ... Parliament should 
 
 . . , . subject all incomes to a certain charge,
 
 8 
 
 it was her determination that her own income 
 should be subjected to a similar burden." 
 
 I need hardly say that all these enormous sums 
 of money are not well spent, and it is almost 
 worth a few minutes' time to see in what kind of 
 manner they do contrive to disappear. The 
 salaries in the Koval Household, which amount 
 to £131,000 a-year, include a vast number of 
 totally useless officials — Chamberlains, Comptrol- 
 lers, Masters of Ceremonies, Marshals of the 
 Household, Grooms of the Kobes, Lords-in- Wait- 
 ing, Grooms-in- Waiting, Gentlemen Ushers, and 
 a few persons who appear to perform services, 
 but who ought to be paid for those services as 
 they perform them, and not be made permanent 
 officials with great titles of honour, such, for 
 instance, as the Historical Painter to the Queen, 
 Portrait Painter to the Queen, and the Litho- 
 grapher-in-Ordinary. Under the Lord Steward's 
 department, and the department of the Master 
 of the Horse, we have such officers as the Coroner 
 of the Household, and the Chief Equerry and 
 Clerk Marshal, whose duties are not of a very 
 burdensome description. Nothing is more singular 
 than the constitution of the medical department. 
 You would hardly credit the number of medical 
 gentlemen who are required for the service of 
 the Household, but I am aware that some of 
 them are unpaid. There are three Physicians
 
 9 
 
 in Ordinary, three Physicians Extraordinary, one 
 
 Sergeant-Surgeon Extraordinary, two Sergeant- 
 Surgeons, three Surgeons Extraordinary, one 
 Physician of the Household, one Surgeon of 
 the Household, one Surgeon- Apothecary, two 
 Chemists of the Establishment in Ordinary, 
 one Surgeon-Oculist, one Sui^con-Dcntist, <>in' 
 Dentist in Ordinary, and one. other Physician 
 — or 21 in all; while the Prince of Wales has 
 for his special benefit three Honorary Physicians, 
 two Physicians in Ordinary, two Surgeons in 
 Ordinary, one Surgeon Extraordinary, one Chemist 
 in Ordinary — or 11 more, making 32 doctors 
 in the Family. I should be almost afraid of 
 tiring anybody who listened to me when I went 
 over the list of strange oflices of which the 
 Household is made up — Lord High Almoner, 
 whose duties consist, I believe, in giving away, 
 on certain mysterious days, silver twopenny 
 pieces, made on purpose for him at the Mint ; 
 Sub-Almoner, Hereditary Grand Almoner, Master 
 of the Buckhounds, Clerk of the Check, Clerk of 
 the Closet, Exons in Waiting, and last, but not 
 least, the Hereditary Grand Falconer — the Duke 
 of St. Albans — who might perhaps with advan- 
 tage, if he is to retain his salary of £ 1,2 00 
 a-year,be created Hereditary Grand Pigeon Shooter 
 in Ordinary. If we turn to the Lord Steward's 
 department, we come at once upon a mysterious 
 
 B
 
 10 
 
 Board of Green Cloth, as it is called, at the head 
 of which are the Lord Steward, the Treasurer, 
 the Comptroller of the Household, and the Master 
 of the Household, with a perfect army of secre- 
 taries and clerks, and with special secretaries, 
 with special offices, and with special salaries, 
 in each of those sections of the department. 
 In the kitchen department, we have a Chief 
 Cook and four Master Cooks, receiving salaries 
 of between £2000 and £3000 a-year between 
 the five ; and a host of confederates some 
 of whom have duties that I cannot even guess 
 at — such, for instance, as the two "Green 
 Office" men. There are whole departments the 
 duties of which cannot be very considerable, 
 one would think, or, at all events, not con- 
 siderable enough to warrant their being made 
 r into departments of the Household — for instance, 
 the confectionery department and the ewer de- 
 partment, while the duty of table-decking employs 
 no less than five persons, who have salaries of 
 between £500 and £600 a-year in all. Now, I 
 have said already that a great deal of this expen- 
 diture brings no benefit in any shape to members 
 of the Royal Family, and that it is largely an 
 expenditure upon mere sinecures, but at the same 
 time the expenditure could be curtailed. No one 
 can doubt but that the Queen might abolish these 
 offices if she chose, and that if, as I believe, she
 
 11 
 
 has no right to abolish them and take over the 
 consequent savings to her own use, Parliamentary 
 powers for the abolition of the offices — taking the 
 saving to the public — would gladly be given to 
 the Treasury and the Crown. Indeed there can 
 be no doubt, as it seems to me, but that it is the 
 duty of those who are the responsible ministers 
 of the Crown to advise the Queen to abolish 
 them ; because many of the chief offices in the 
 Household are notoriously made use of for political 
 purposes, and those members of the Household 
 who have seats in the House of Commons, are 
 expected to vote against independent members, 
 just as steadily as though they were political 
 members of the Government. The bad tone, 
 moreover, that is set by the retention of these 
 ridiculous sinecures extends far beyond the limits 
 of the Household, and does much towards con- 
 tinuing the political demoralization in high places 
 which all of us deplore. To come back, however, 
 to where we were. We have shown an expenditure 
 of nearly a million a-year upon the Eoyal Family, 
 and the question with which we started still remains 
 — whether, in the face of so large an expenditure 
 by the nation, it is necessary or even just to ask 
 for more ? In considering this question, we can- 
 not, I think, put out of sight the fact that, besides 
 the great sums which the Crown draws from 
 Parliament, the present occupant of the throne and
 
 12 
 
 her eldest son are both known to be possessed of 
 considerable property. The Prince of Wales when 
 he came of age received, it is said, £750,000, the 
 accumulations of his income during his minority ; 
 and the Queen received on one occasion a legacy 
 of two-thirds of that amount — sums which 
 together ought of themselves alone to produce 
 an additional income of £50,000 a-year. Be- 
 sides the Crown lands which they do not enjoy, 
 the Koyal Family are owners of private lands, 
 which are in fact that which the Crown lands are 
 said to be, but in fact are not — namely, the private 
 property of the Queen, in the sense in which 
 Belvoir Castle is the property of the Duke of 
 Rutland. Of course, if there were a positive 
 understanding that annuities should be granted 
 to the sons as they came of age, and annuities 
 and dowries to the daughters, that understanding 
 miffht be held to bind those who had con- 
 sented to it, although it is questionable how far, 
 after a lapse of five-and-thirty years, it would 
 bind those who had become the voters of the 
 country since that time. But we deny that any 
 such understanding can be found ; and I believe 
 that now it is pretty much given up, and that we 
 have heard the last of it, although Mr. Arthur 
 Peel last week at Warwick spoke of it as a 
 "solemn compact." But the argument that is 
 now relied upon is, that the Crown lands should
 
 13 
 
 be set off against these grants. This is a large 
 subject to go into, but I will state briefly my 
 reasons for thinking it a pernicious heresy. These 
 lands are not the lands of the King as an indi- 
 vidual, but of the King as King — that is, they 
 are public lands. They do not include the 
 lands which various members of the Family or 
 the present Queen have bought with money saved 
 out of the votes of Parliament, or out of the 
 revenues of the Duchies — such as Sandringham 
 and Osborne, lands which in my opinion it is, for 
 political reasons, most undesirable that the Eoyal 
 Family should possess. The Crown lands, if ever 
 they were private property at all, have been 
 confiscated ten times over. If they were not 
 confiscated at the great Eebellion and only con- 
 ditionally restored at the Eestoration, they were 
 thoroughly confiscated at the time of the flight 
 of James the Second. Hallam, in writing of the 
 first Parliament of Charles the Second, says that, 
 " they provided various resources," of which one 
 branch was the Crown Lands, which he classes 
 with the ordinary revenues, such as Customs and 
 Excise. The fact is, that no one who has ex- 
 amined the tenure of these lands can possibly 
 come to any conclusion except that they are 
 lands wholly within the authority and control 
 of Parliament. If they are private lands of 
 the Crown, and there is a contract lasting only
 
 14 
 
 for the reign ; if at the end of this reign they 
 are to be given over to the Prince of Wales, then 
 I want to know why these annuities we are 
 granting now are to be made perpetual. If all is 
 true that is said by the Court about these singular 
 arrangements, then I say that these annuities 
 should be granted only up to a demise of the 
 Crown and no further. If indeed all be true that 
 has been said of late about the private character 
 of the interest of the Crown in these lands, then I 
 say that we should be justified in refusing to 
 plant with oak timber any of those lands that 
 are now in our possession ; because those trees 
 cannot in the nature of things grow into value 
 before the next settlement of this question comes 
 to be made. 
 
 Those of the Crown Lands which are not used 
 either for the public recreation or for purposes 
 of revenue, should in some shape be charged to 
 the Crown — for instance, many of those in London 
 and at Windsor ; but I shrink before the difficul- 
 ties of assessing their money value, and merely 
 name the matter in order that it may be seen that 
 I have by no means exhausted the question of 
 expenditure. 
 
 So much as I have said up to the present time 
 has been founded upon public documents, which 
 are or may be in everybody's hands. But I have 
 now to go somewhat further, and to inquire into
 
 15 
 
 the credibility of statements which have lately 
 been made, which are only partly founded upon 
 proof, and which rest in part upon assertion. 
 In a pamphlet which has been lately published, 
 it is clearly shown that the Civil List was 
 carefully allotted by Parliament to various dis- 
 tinct branches of expenditure, and not fixed 
 as a compensation for any revenues that the 
 Crown has given up, but upon a calculation, 
 derived from the expenditure of the last reign, 
 of the probable future amount of the salaries 
 of the Household, and of tradesmen's bills. The 
 Committee of the House of Commons which 
 sat to settle the amount of the Civil List at the 
 beginning of the reign never took into account 
 the revenues of the Crown lands, and, indeed, 
 never seem to have heard of the doctrine with 
 respect to those lands which has lately been laid 
 down by Liberal Ministers. As is shown by the 
 pamphlet to which I refer, and shown, I know, 
 with accuracy, the Committee considered only the 
 actual past expenditure of former Kings, and the 
 probable future expenditure of the present Queen. 
 So much is a matter of fact, and capable of proof. 
 The House of Commons went further than to fix 
 the amount as a whole. It divided it under the 
 various heads, and fixed the amount in each divi- 
 sion ; and so careful was the House of Commons 
 as to put these divisions into the schedule of the
 
 1G 
 
 Act. A clause in the Act lays it down that 
 the saving in any one class at the end of the 
 quarter cannot be carried to any other, and 
 the powers given to the Lords of the Treasury 
 to apply savings at the end of the year clearly 
 contemplate only trifling variations in the ex- 
 penditure from year to year, its general character 
 for the reign having been immutably fixed by the 
 House of Commons at the bc^innine; of the reisrn 
 itself. This, again, is a matter of fact, and capable 
 of proof. Now, in answer to a question by Mr. 
 Dixon, Mr. Gladstone stated, not long ago, that 
 some of the sinecure offices in the Household 
 had been abolished. To whom has the saving 
 gone ? Is it to the Privy Purse of the Queen ? 
 If not, where else ? The amounts are not voted. 
 They go straight, under the Act, out of the Con- 
 solidated Fund. The saving, therefore, cannot 
 reach the public. All this again is a matter of 
 fact. But what is only a matter of strong suspi- 
 cion is of a far more serious character, because 
 the amounts in question are much larger : that is, 
 the saving upon menial offices and upon trades- 
 men's bills. The £172,000 and odd a-year, for 
 instance, that used to be spent on tradesmen's 
 bills when the Court kept up great splendour — 
 how much of that is spent now, when there is no 
 Court at all ? Where does the £100,000 a year, 
 or whatever may be the amount, saved under this 
 head — where does that go to ? Does it go to the
 
 17 
 
 Queen for her private use? — that is to say, for 
 her private saving, because the money is not and 
 cannot be spent. And, if so, looking to the fact 
 that the money was allotted by the House of 
 Commons with the distinct object of maintaining 
 that former state, has there not been a diver- 
 sion of public moneys, for which the advisers of 
 the Crown are responsible, almost amounting to a 
 malversation ? Now, that is the question which 
 rests, not upon absolute proof, but only upon very- 
 strong suspicion ; and, as it has now been stated 
 with great ability in a pamphlet that has been 
 widely circulated, it is about time that some 
 investigation into the facts should take place. All 
 that I can say is, that I have read the pamphlet 
 with care, having already had considerable ac- 
 quaintance with the subject of which it treats, 
 and that I am able to declare that the writer has 
 made out a prima facie case which requires the 
 most careful and complete answer, if it is not to 
 be held good ; and, speaking for myself, I think 
 that he has proved his position, that it was in- 
 tended that the money allotted by the House of 
 Commons to the Crown should be spent, and that 
 it should not accumulate to form a private fortune 
 for Queen Victoria as an individual. I think that 
 he has shown that there is the strongest proba- 
 bility, almost amounting to a certainty, that large 
 accumulations have taken place, and that, if so,
 
 13 
 
 those accumulations, made by the connivance of 
 the Treasury, are directly in the teeth of the Act 
 of Parliament. 
 
 It now becomes my duty to offer to you certain 
 remarks of a more general character, and, indeed, 
 of more moment, as it seems to me, than those to 
 which you have been willing to lend your atten- 
 tion. It is impossible to discuss this subject 
 without referring to Mr. Disraeli's speech to the 
 inhabitants of a village near his house, made not 
 long ago in proposing the Queen's health. Speak- 
 ing of the duties of the holder of the Crown, he 
 said that an erroneous impression was prevalent 
 with respect to them. He said that they were 
 "multifarious," that they were "weighty," and 
 that they were "unceasing." Now, we knew 
 that they were " multifarious," and that they were 
 " unceasing," but very few people had any idea 
 that they were " weighty." Weighty means more 
 than laborious. Air. Disraeli went on the next 
 moment to call them " laborious," and he never 
 uses two words which mean the same thing. 
 He explained what he meant by "weighty," 
 and these were his most serious words : " There 
 is not a despatch received from abroad nor one 
 sent from this country which is not submitted to 
 the Queen. The whole internal administration of 
 this country greatly depends upon the sign- 
 manual ; and of our present Sovereign it may be
 
 19 
 
 said that her signature has never been placed to 
 any public document of which she did not know 
 the purport, and of which she did not approve." 
 Now, I call these most serious words, and I think 
 if you consider them you will say that they are 
 such. They divide themselves into two parts — 
 Foreign and Home — and the statement is much 
 stronger with regard to Home affairs than with 
 regard to Foreign. No despatch received or sen I 
 that is not submitted to the Queen. Well, it may 
 be, of course, that this word " submitted " means 
 only here that the Queen is made aware of that 
 which is spoken to the Foreign Minister by Foreign 
 Powers, or by him to them. It may mean this, 
 or it may mean more ; but the statement with 
 regard to Home affairs is so much stronger that 1 
 prefer to dwell on that. I will repeat the word - : 
 " The whole internal administration of the country 
 greatly depends upon the sign-manual, and of our 
 present Sovereign it may be said that her signa- 
 ture has never been placed to any public docu- 
 ment of which she did not approve." Now, 
 what does this mean, if it is true, but personal 
 government ? I cannot believe that it is true. I 
 do not believe it as a fact. But here is Mr. 
 Disraeli — a man no doubt of fine imagination, 
 and who may perhaps unconsciously colour things 
 in stating them — here is Mr. Disraeli saying that 
 nothing in this country can be done without the
 
 20 
 
 Queen's sign-manual, and that the Queen signs 
 nothing she does not approve. What does the 
 Emperor of Eussia do more than that? What 
 occurs if the Queen does not approve ? You 
 would answer that, the country being under 
 a constitutional monarchy, the minister resigns, 
 and that the Queen is forced by the constitution 
 to find a minister who agrees with her before she 
 can carry out her views; that if the late minister 
 was backed up by the country she would be un- 
 able to do this, and that, therefore, no harm can 
 be done. No doubt this is very true of all great 
 matters, but how about small ? When have we 
 ever heard in modern times of a minister resigning 
 because of the expression by the " Sovereign," to 
 use Mr. Disraeli's favourite word, of a will adverse 
 to his opinion ? Never. Yet he tells us that the 
 Queen never signs anything that she does not 
 approve, and that nothing can be done without 
 her signature. Does, then, the minister give way 
 when she does not approve ? and are things left 
 undone that would otherwise have been done, and 
 things altered that are done, because of the per- 
 sonal will of the monarch ? Or, are we to accept 
 the opposite alternative, that, whatever minister 
 is in office — Conservative, Whig, or Eadical — the 
 Queen's political conscience is of such a nature as 
 to admit of her fully approving of everything 
 that he does ? For the life of me, I cannot con-
 
 21 
 
 ceive what Mr. Disraeli means. If we adopt the 
 latter alternative, it is one little nattering to the 
 intelligence of the Sovereign whose character Mr. 
 Disraeli has described; and, if we adopt the 
 former, it affords ns a view of constitutional 
 monarchy in which it is impossible to distinguish 
 it from the autocracy that all of us condemn. 
 
 Let us consider, again, how greatly Mr. Disraeli's 
 theory of our administative system, if we are to 
 accept it as a correct one, increases that waste of 
 time and labour which arises from the circum- 
 stance that Her Majesty, neglecting the Palaces 
 which are maintained for her at the public cost, 
 prefers to dwell at her private residences— Osborne 
 and Balmoral. At one or other of these distant 
 places a member of the Government has to be 
 constantly in attendance, and thither every des- 
 patch, however pressing, must be sent. 
 
 To return for a moment to the considerations of 
 cost with which I began this speech ; I have 
 shown that it is enormous, and that the expendi- 
 ture is chiefly not waste but mischief. What are 
 the two departments, for instance, over which we 
 have not as yet succeeded in establishing a sound 
 parliamentary control ? The army for one, and 
 the woods and forests for another. In both of 
 these cases the influence at work which has 
 hitherto proved too strong for the House of Com- 
 mons is that of the Court. In the latter instance,
 
 22 
 
 we stand still with folded hands before the pro- 
 fligate waste at Windsor ; and speechless in the 
 face of the Minister's declaration of adherence to 
 opinions which were obsolete in the times of the 
 Stuarts. In the former — that of the army — we 
 have a Royal Duke, not necessarily the fittest 
 man, at the head of it by right of birth, and the 
 Prince of Wales, who would never be allowed a 
 command in time of war, put to lead the cavalry 
 division in the autumn manoeuvres, thus robbing 
 working officers of the position and of the train- 
 ing which they had a title to expect. 
 
 Now, institutions are not good or bad in them- 
 selves, so much as good or bad when judged by 
 their working, and we are told that a limited 
 monarchy works well. I set aside, in this speech, 
 the question of whether in this country a republic 
 would work better; but I confess freely that I 
 doubt whether, if the charges to which I have 
 to-night alluded are well founded, the monarchy 
 should not set its* house in order. There is a 
 wide-spread belief that a republic here is only a 
 matter of education and of time. It is said that 
 some day a commonwealth will be our govern- 
 ment. Now, history and experience show that 
 you cannot have a republic without you possess 
 at the same time the republican virtues ; but you 
 answer, Have we not public spirit ? have we not 
 the practice of self-government ? are not we gain-
 
 23 
 
 ino- general education ? Well, if you can show 
 me a fair chance that a republic here will be free 
 from the political corruption that hangs about 
 the monarchy, I say, for my part — and I believe 
 that the middle classes in general will say — let 
 : t come. 
 
 G. SHIELD, PKENTLR, SLOANS SQUARE, S.W.
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
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