THE QUEEN'S ABSENCE.

Southland Times, Issue 986, 15 July 1868, Page 2

THE QUEEN'S ABSENCE.

The ' Times' (20th May) draws attention to the strange circumstances that at the very hour when a most important debate was proceeding— a debate on which the question of life and death to G-overnment or to Parliament might turn— the first person in the State, to whom recourse must be had in every momentous conjuncture, was hurrying at full speed from the neighborhood of the capital to a remote Highland district, 600 miles from her Ministry and Parliament. It was an act of culpable neglect on the part of the Minister not to inform the Queen that the political prospects of her Government were so doubtful as to demaud her presence at or' near the seat of the Legislature. The Queen has always shown herself ready to fulfil her constitutional duties, and no one can doubt that, had the case been fully laid before her, she would willingly have remained at Windsor at a peribd of such paramount importance. It would be a questionable innovation if we were to come to resignations by telegraph, and correspondence by messengers, instead of Royal councils. No one can say what misunderstandings and what constitutional derangements may be the result of such an incomplete transaction of the highest business. The matter, indeed, does not need argument. The Soverign is an. essential part of the Legislature, as much as the Lords or the Commons, and when Parliament is summoned for the dispatch of business, it is but reasonable that the Sovereign should be at hand.