SIR CHARLES DILKE AND THE QUEEN.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VII, Issue 28, 1 February 1872, Page 4

SIR CHARLES DILKE AND THE QUEEN.

■ o fFrom i^e Pa// Jl/aff Budget, "Kovembev 10_). Sir Charles Dilke has given the Queen notice to quit. It need not be said that this eminent young man has not taken this momentous step without full consideration. He has calculated the cost of the monarchy in pounds sterling and determined that it is not worth the money paid for it. In the plentitude of his civil, military, and naval knowledge he has condemned the Royal household, the Royal guards and the Royal yachts. They, are all so bad that he is willing to welcome a Republic if there is only a cbance that it will give us something better. Upon every one of these points Sir Charles Dilke speaks with the advantage of intimate personal knowledge. He can tell us how many cooks there are in the Royal kitchen and what salaries are paid to the servants who deck the tables. He knows which officials are " totally useless," and which ought to be paid by the piece. He has sought and found the able-bodied seaman who painls the lion and the unicorn on the Queen's yachts, and he is shocked to find that he i 3 " maintained all the year round." The personal labor entailed by these researches is beyond reckoning; indeed, we fear that Sir Charles Dilke's whole vacation — perhaps the whole of some former vacations as well — must have been spent at Windsor. Probably there is not a public-house in the Royal borough which cannot tell of a mysterious stranger who has haunted the parlor for months back and listened in silence, broken only by an occasional question of startling pertinence, to the gossip of the Queen's footmen. It was well for bis health both of body and mind, that the autumn manoeuvres called him away to judge and sentence the cavalry of the Guard. He passes over the Btampede at Chobham because the troops knew that bis eye was not upon them. But on several occasions during the subsequent campaign their cumbersomeness and unsuitability to modern war were amply demonstrated " in my presence." What condemnation could surpass this in quiet severity ? In Sir Charles Dilke's very presence, with the chacce of being mentioned in a note to a future edition of " Greater Britain " constantly before their rainds, these miserable troopers could only demonstrate their cumbersomeness. No wonJer that the Great Civilian rode away with wrath in his heart and notes for his speech at Newcastle dropping from his pencil. The historian of the fall of the English monarchy may some day speculate whether it was the sight of the Guards in a ploughed field or of the able-bodied seamen painting the lion and the unicoru which finally nerved Sir Charles Dilke to constitute himself the fugleman of the middle classes and to say to the Republic, " Let it come ! " Considering the universal knowledge and the penetrating insight of Sir Charles Diike, it is a little strange to find him at fault when trying to interpret Mr. Disraeli's late description of the Queen's political duties. He is intellectually prostrated by the statement that the Queen signs nothing that she does not approve. " What," he asks, " does the Emperor of Russia do more than that ?" If Sir Charles had that experience of personal government which, were he only a Russian subject, he would be no long time in gaining, he wonkl understand that there is a great difference between signing everything that you do approve and signing nothing that you do not approve. The Queen has had a longer and a more intimate acquaintance with constitutional government than Sir Charles Dilke, ahd also probably finds no difficulty in approving anything that is placed before her as the deliberate expression of the national will. Greet matters of home policy rarely come under her Majesty's eye until they have been so throughly sifted in Parliament as to leave do doubt that the nation has made up its mind about them ; and to an English Sovereign who is satisfied upon this head there can be no question as to the course which the Crown ought to take. And as to those ''small matters" which so trouble Sir Charles Dilke, what barm is there in the Queen having a voice in the settlement ? They do not involve questions of principle— if they did they would cease by that very fact to be small matters ; and where principle is not concerned it seems to us only an advantage that the Cabinet should possess, so to speak, one permanent member, who can give to Us action something of that traditional unity which is given to the action of the several departments by the presence of a permanent staff.