ROYALTY AND LOYALTY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4577, 20 November 1875, Page 2 (Supplement)

ROYALTY AND LOYALTY.

(From the Indian Daily News and Bengal Hurharu .) . In all the savage criticism that has assailed the throne during the last ten or twelve years, there has been nothing perhaps that, has rankled more in the minds of thoroughly loyal people than the dry arguments and drier figures in which the practical usefulness of royalty has been quietly challenged. For the brutal onslaughts of the more unscrupulous type of democrats,' cultivated society has no other answer than mute contempt. And for the cultivated but wild Republican, who goes about demolishing royalty in speeches which are really as sentimental and silly in their own way as the artificial loyalty of Court flunkeys, society reserves that good-natured ridicule that is sometimes more killing than contempt. But the unsentimental Republican, who tots up the value of royalty in figures, and assesses it in a strictly utilitarian' fashion, is rather a thorn in the side of cultivated society, which is a good deal given to loyalty in a general way. The age itself is strictly utilitarian, demanding a reason from most persons for any faiths that may happen to be in them, and giving short shrift to popular notions that can offer no decent excuse for their existence, And the Republican who puts himself into harmony with the spirit of the age, and after balancing money and power against human happiness, declares more or less clearly against all royalty that cannot justify its existence, such a Republican, we say, causes a good deal of commotion amongst the respectable societies of the world. For, after all, it is felt everywhere, or at all events among most educated persons, that if there is any justification for royalty at all, kings and queens, and in due proportion princes and princesses, ought to have some very distinct and very important mission in the world ; and when kings and queens, or princes and_ princesses, live as though they had no particular mission, or as though they made it the business of their lives to frustrate the particular mission with which popular fancy has invested them, even sensible advocates of. monarchy are compelled to acknowledge that their principles are in danger. The difference between an English sovereign who fails, in his duty and those European tyrants who were lately swept off in bushels from the thrones which they dishonored in Italy and elsewhere, involves a question of degree, and not a question of kind. All royalties of this stamp are failures, though one may fail rather more or less than another. Accordingly, when, in the supreme crisis of her life, the moat popular sovereign who has ever sat on the English throne neglected some of her social duties, and the public commenced to growl , about the neglect, the most loyal journals in England seriously took her Majesty to task for conduct which involved a threefold wrong—a wrong to the nation, a wrong to the principle of monarchy, and a wrong to herself and her family. Amongst the Oourt flunkeys who worshipped the ground which royalty touched with its boots, there were doubtless some choice spirits who considered all such criticism gross impertinence. The divine right of kings still held high revel amongst their most iwecious religious beliefs, and the mere fact of a king or queen having acted in some particular manner, of necessity invested that manner, and its ‘ fact, with a special sanctity.' But in these days, devotion of this sort is exceptional; and for the most part thoroughly loyal persona admitted the justice of the criticism of the better portion of the press, and deplored the conduct that seemed to' make that criticism necessary. These incidents of a past day possess a Value which is not, wo fear, sufficiently recognised to-day—when royalty is as human as ever, and loyalty is just as diversified as then. And the value of these incidents seems to us to lie in this—that they established at once and for ever the justice of that rule of criticism by which power and wealthy are balanced against human happiness, and

judgment is given on scientific grounds and with scientific precision, quite irrespectively of the social position of the bosom which may feel wounded by the results. We doubt, indeed, whether any one felt more keenly the shafts that were some years back planted in Queen Victoria’s breast than those calmly and reasonably loyal subjects who acknowledged the justice of the assaults. And even the ease and readiness with which mere flunkeys can fling the charge of impertinence and disloyalty at really loyal people, whoso real feelings such flunkeys are incapable of fathoming, entirely failed to suppress a kind of criticism, the existence of which was an unquestioned public good. Now, most large truths are eternal, and carry lessons down all the streams of time ; and whenever we hear of any special fuss that may be made about any specimen of royalty, we feel very much disposed to balance the good of it against the money which it is going to cost ; and, as a rule, not even charges of impertinence or disloyalty succeed in diverting our attention from a mental exercise, which most sensible persons who try it will find both healthy and instructive. Naturally enough, the approaching visit of the Prince of Wales has given occasion for the repetition of this process, which, if good at all, is good for all occurrences. The Viceroy, having invited the son of the sovereign to become his guest for some months, the visit itself may be said to have been removed for the present from the sphere of discussion. But' so long as money, wrung by taxation from a burdened people, is spent on this visit of pleasure, we cannot consent on any consideration, to be silent in regard to certain great principles, which cannot be safely neglected by even Viceroys and Kings—and still less by provincial rulers, police commissioners, and other small fry of that stamp. It may, indeed, be a question whether the visit of the Prince of Wales can be justified on the highest moral and political grounds; but if it would be churlish to raise this question after it has been practically closed, we feel that there can be no impropriety in appealing to the Viceroy so to take this visit and the necessary arrangements out of the hands of pettifogging officials, as to give the people at large the chance of deriving what benefit can be extracted from it. It will not do, we fear, to answer that the Prince will be, the guest of the Viceroy. That is not the fact. But even if it were, the expenditure of public money introduces into the matter an elementwhioh cannot now be ignored. The utmost discontent prevails in Calcutta about all that has hitherto been done; and we think it only right to appeal to the Viceroy to say whether, in his opinion, the possible elevation of a common-place provincial ruler to the baronetcy, and the probable elevation of a police commissioner to some one civil distinction or another, are not matters of complete insignificance, in comparison with the large duty of letting the public at large derive as much good, real or imaginary, and at any rate, as much satisfaction, as can be got out of it by any sort of illusion. We fear that a good deal of illusion of one kind or another must be encouraged during the next four or five months, and we call upon the highest official in the country—probably the only official whom the people trust—to place the ordering of these illusions into trustworthy, i.e., thoroughly disinterested hands. Having made this appeal, we shall await a reply in a practical form before making any further protests.