THE HEALTH OF THE QUEEN.

Dunstan Times, Issue 508, 12 January 1872, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE HEALTH OF THE QUEEN.

( New York Herald-)

•—0 A special cable despatch to the Herald from London conveys a singular and startling piece of intelligence, Tne Right Hon. Benjamin Disiiaeli gave a grand dinner at his scat—Hughenden Manor—and delivered a speech in the course of which he referred to the alarming condition of Queen Victoria's health, and made the startling assertion that the. Queen is physically and morally incapable of longer performing her public duties This announcement, coining from the exPriuie Minister and acknowledged favorite at Court, and one of tho shrewd est politicians in England, has naturally. caused an intense excitement throughout the country, amounting in reality to a national panic. Some of the London journals, following the ostritch-like instj.net, which prompts them to bury their heads in the earth in the belief that they are thus secure from observation, suppress the information ; but others publish it) and its transmission through the cable shows that it must be well known among the people. There plight really to he nothing new or unexpected in Mr. Lisraeli’s statement. The common talk in England for three or four years past has been to the same effect. The secluded life chosen by the Queen, her persistence in the grief which has clouded her later days ; her almost entire withdrawal from the duties of her position as well as from its ordinary enjoyments, could not fail to call forth comment and to excite speculation. humour has not nnfrequently whispered that the Royal hull's mind had become affi ctcd, and slander has constantly invented causes for the calamity., But now that the ceitainty is brought home to the public, we might almost say officially, that a change of rulers is imminent, the whole nation stands aghast. The terrified journals may suppress the news but the people, who remember Air Di-raeli’s relation's to the Court, the great favors he has been nnavailingly offered and those which he actually received, believe that he has a cause and a meaning tor the announcement he has made, and regard it only as the politic precursor of the more momentous intelligence of the abdication of their Queen. There must be something more than the natural sympathy of the nation in the personal sufferings of a bo’oved Sovereign to account for (his widespread alarm at the impending crisis, and it may bo found in the general apprehension that the accession of the Prince of Wales to the Tin one will he the signal for disturbances and convulsions which all men dread, and the result of which it is impossible to foretell Upon the first i announcement of the Queen’s serious; ind sposition, a few weeks ago. the 1 Radicals immediately commenced an j organised agitation and put forth } their platform of principles, looking to the actual overthrow of tho existing Government. At the meeting of Internationals, Communists, and other Radical revolutionists in London, it has long been the custom to declare that Queen Victoria must Lethe last of the British monarchs, and the ef forts of all the Uadi cal organs have been persistently directed towards ex’eiting a prejudice in the minds of the labouring masses against the heir-ap-parent to the British Throne. Circumstances have favored their endeavors. Tho Sovereign who expects to rule over a people in the present ecu tiny should possess, at least, an appearance of that “ divinity ” which “ doth hedge a king;" hut divorce courts and police bars are not conducive to that attribute. There is no doubt that dread of the seething mass of poverty, vice, and crime underlying English society, and of the dangerous use to which it may be put by reckless political agitators, is tho immediate cause of the terror conjured up before the minds of Englishmen when the idea- of Queen Victoria’s heath or incapacity is forced upon them. VVe have said that the announcement, coming from Air. Disraeli, is very significant. Alany, doubtless, will question the truth of the report, and many will attribute the words of the expremiev to disappointed ambition or political enmity towards the present Alinistry. Air. Disraeli is too old a politician, too cool and able a statesman, to imagine that he could make capital against Gladstone and his friends by such a statement, if ho had not good authority for making it. We should rather incline to tho belief that it is a quasi official utterance, and that Air. Disraeli is especially favored in high quarters in being chosen as the instrnimait for breaking the startling intelligence to the people of England.