Current Copies AT HOME AND ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 5, 31 January 1901, Page 1

Current Copies AT HOME AND ABROAD.

The first year of the reign of the late Queen Victoria introduced the era of constitutional sovereigns. William IV., whom she succeeded, was the last English monarch who exercised actual personal rule. He claimed, and on occasion, exercised, the right to dismiss his Ministers — as one of his commoners might dismiss a cook or hodman — ' when he pleased and because he pleased.' When ' royal tarry-breeks ' — as he was called in his sailor days by Robbie Burns — slipped away to the Other Side on June 20, 1837, the f finis ' was put to the long history of personal government in England. The late Queen was the first constitutional sovereign that ever wore the crown of England. ' And she was,' says Justin McCarthy in the recently-published latest volume of his History of Our Own Times, 'on the whole, the best English sovereign that ever reigned.'

Her reign, according to the same distinguished Irish Nationalist historian, was ' a reign productive of reform in political, in economical, and in social life. Especially we should say it has been successful in domestic retorm and in domestic advancement. About the policy of some of our foreign wars, our annexations, our expansions of territory,' he continues, 'the writer of this book has never hesitated to express his full and trank opinion. But the advance of political and social reform has been so clear and so beneficent as to give little or no chance to the most carping controversialist. No one could possibly say that Queen Victoria does not find a happier Britain now than she tound when she came to the throne, hardly more more than a child, in 1837. Never once during her time has the strength of the monarchy been shaken, or even threatened. Many monarchies, even some republics, have gone down within that time. The French Republic of 1848 was upset by Louis Napoleon, and the Empire of Louis Napoleon went down on the battle-field of Sedan. A German Empire has been founded, although not exactjy on the ruins of the Holy Roman Empire ; and Austria has been driven outside the sphere of Germany. Italy has become one single kingdom, and Greece is at the present moment thrilling to complete what she not unnaturally thinks her national destiny. The Empire of Brazil is gone, and a sort of Republican Government works along its way in the place of the deposed sovereignty. But the monarchial system of Great Britain has not been seriously threatened in the slightest way since Queen Victoria came to the throne. Of course, nobody could suppose for a moment that all this was owing to any inspiration or any effort of the Queen herself. But it may be assumed, and it must be assumed, that the wisdom with which, as a constitutional sovereign, she discharged her duties, and acted in the end on the advice of her Ministers, has had much to do with the stability of the Empire and the rule. This,' adds Justin McCarthy in the closing paragraph of his work, ' is the history of a time, and not of a sovereign, but it would be unjust even to the history of the time, not to give a word of praise to the steady, constitutional action of the sovereign.'

THE FIRST CONSTITUTIONAI SOVEREIGN.

In the early years of her reign the head of one kind of the young Queen lay on a pillow bestrewn ' loyalty.' with carpet-tacks and full-grown nettles. She was a comparatively unknown maiden then — for she had been kept by the watchful care of a good mother far removed from the contamination of a court whose manners — as Justin McCarthy says in the first volume of his History of Our Own Times — ' had a full flavor, to put it in the softest way, such as a decent taproom would hardly exhibit in a time like the present.' The first task of the sweet young royal maiden of eighteen summers was the arduous one of cleansing the Augean stable of the court. This was no easy task so long as the abode of royalty was cumbered with the presence of that brutal, profligate, foul-mouthed, and treacherous creature, the Duke of Cumberland, who — as we have shown elsewhere in this issue — had endeavored, by the aid of his following of armed Orangemen, to prevent her accession to the throne of England. As we have also stated elsewhere, the old ducal roue and his fellow-conspirators endeavored to raise a popultr clamor against the young Princess— whom they deposed in advance — by persistently spreading the report that, it permitted to mount the throne, she would become a Papist and would thus destroy the Protestant succession. Cumberland and his dark-lantern associates escaped the fate which their treason merited — suspension on a gallows as high as that of Aman, or a safe and permanent lod^in^ in Norfolk Inland or Botany Bay. But the hollow echo of their party cry was heard long after the young Queen had ascended the throne ; and the London Times went so far as to roughly warn its sovereign, in the course of a ponderous and evil-tempered leading article, that for her to turn Papist, to marry a Papist, 'or in any manner to follow the footsteps of the Coburg family,' would involve an ' immediate forfeiture of the British crown.'

The Irish people, as Disraeli admitted, are naturally inclined to be devotedly loyal. Irish Catholics welcomed with joyous acclamation the accession of the young Queen. Daniel O'Connell was at that time 'the recognised leader and dictator of the whole Catholic and Nationalist population of Ireland.' When rumors of a renewal of the Cumberland conspiracy went flitting about, he declared in a public speech, amidst thunderous applause, that if it were necessary he could get • five hundied thousand brave Irishmen to defend the life, the honor, and the person of the beloved young lady by whom England's throne is now ruled.' English Orangeism was dead and buried six feet deep when Queen Victoria began her long and happy reign. Irish Orangemen viewed her accession with sullen ill-humor. The attitude of the fraternity towards her ever since has been one of alternate professions of unbounded loyalty and of vigorous and undutiful abuse. Many of our readers can recall the angry outcry of the brethren against her Majesty during the Disestablishment agitation in Ireland in iß6Band 1869. Prominent Orangemen warned her that if she dared to exercise her constitutional right of signing the Disestablishment Bill she would have *no longer a claim to the throne.' And the great watchword of the brethren — the invention of the Rev. ' Flaming ' Flanagan — was this : that if the Disestablishment Bill received the royal assent they would ' kick the Queen's crown into the Boyne.' At Rochester, Kyneton, Melbourne, and in other places in these colonies the

late Oueen and the present King and Queen were, within the past Tew years, made the objects of virulent public attack by prominent members of this oath-bound fraternity and by one, at least of its chief organs in the Press. The Orange institution evidently styles itself ' loyal ' on the same principle that the trembling coward Bob Acres called himself ' Fighting Bob.'

THE LATE ttIJEEN AND CATHOr ITS.

But the kindly old Queen went serenely on her beneficent way, not knowing- or particularly caring that a few of her undutiful «;nbjpcts were dislocating their supple tongues in vehement protests against the spirit of Womanly sympathy which she displayed towards her Catholic subjects. Some time ago as many as six Catholics were members of her Privy Council. Catholic Generals, such as Butler, Dillon, etc., won battles for her. A Catholic Admiral (White) helped to ' rule the Queen's navee. 1 A Catholic statesman (Lord Ripon) ruled India in her name better than any of his predecessors. One of her favorite Lords Chamberlain was a Catholic. Cardinal Vaughan was invited by her and the present King to Royal garden parties. The late Queen was a frequent purchaser of pictures from the Catholic, artists, Mr. Herbert, R.A., and Miss Alice Havers. In 1895, and again in 1896, she presented vestments to Catholic churches. She was a constant friend and patron of the great orphanage and home for aged poor conducted by the Nazareth Nuns at Hammersmith, London. And from time to time messages of kindliness and good-will passed between her and that other grand old monarch who from the Vatican rules over an even wider empire than that which owned allegiance to the EmpressQueen who has so recently passed away.

ONE DARK SPOT.

The long reign that has just closed was one )f unexampled prosperity for the Empire. The one blighted spot within its broad boundaries was the poor Cinderella nation, the step-sister isle, Green Eire of the Tears. 'Of course,' as Justin McCarthy points out in his chapter on the Jubilee of 1887, 'no educated Irishman imagined for a moment that the Cjueen was responsible for the long denial of good laws to Ireland, or for the introduction of coercion measures, any more than she was for the enormous financial overcharges put upon Ireland, which the inquiry of the late Parliamentary Commission has disclosed. It is not likely,' he continues, ' that there was one single man or woman in Ireland who had not a thorough feeling of respect for the Oueen personally. She was regarded everywhere in Ireland as a noble example to wives and to mothers.'

But the period covered by the record rei^n was one of phenomenal disaster for the Green Isle. The unhappy country was searched as with I, imps by all the concentrated evils of Pandora's box. It was swept by an artificially created famine — one of the most fearful of which history bears a record. In sixty years, according to Mulhall's National Progress (p. 4), no fewer than 4,0.50,000 Irish people emigrated from their wretched country to the United States, Australia, and Canada; and the population, which stood at 8,200,000 in 1841, dwindled down to 4,550,000 in 1896. The same distinguished authority points out that during the sixty-two years, 183^-1895, ' England quadrupled, Scotland trebled, her wealth, while Ireland declined £100,000,000.' And yet the taxation on Ireland has increased out of all proportion to that of the flourishing sister countries of the British Isles. Between 1846 and 1890, says Mulhall, ' the rates and taxes on farmers increased 60 per cent. in England, 100 per cent, in Scotland, and 145 per cent, in Ireland. 1 ' The incidence of taxation per inhabitant in Great Britain is the same (1897) as at the beginning of the (late Queen's) reign,' Mulhall says in the same work (p. 61), 'but in Ireland it has more than doubled. In Great Britain each inhahitant pays now (1897) one shilling more, in Ireland twenty shillings more, than in 1840. This inequality has arisen simply from the fact that all fiscal legislation since 1840 has been on the assumption of an increasing population, whereas in Ireland the number of inhabitants has declined 45 per cent.' The Royal Commission of 1897 was, says Justin McCarthy, 'as nearly as possible unanimous in the opinion that Ireland had been taxed far beyond her due proportion. Her condition of povprtv rendered her only liable to pay a rate of one-twentieth of English taxation, and she was actually taxed to the amount of rather more than one-twelvth. Therefore, the net result of the inquiry was that for a great many years Ireland had paid annually morethan two millions beyond her just proportion of taxation.'

The >oung and strong are ever flying the land as from a place stricken with the plague, leaving an undue proportion of children and aged to the population. And, says Mulhall, 1 while pauperism steadily declines in Great Britain, it is unhappily on the increase in li eland.' The number of paupers in the country increased from 74,000 in 1870 to 99,000 in 1895, and the cost of their maintenance rose in the same period from

£819,000 to £1,050,000. Commenting on this subjuct in his National Progress, Mulhall says (pp. 87-88) : ' The number of paupers has risen 34 per cent., while population has fallen 15 per cent., and thus it comes to pass that the burden which falls on the public is 55 per cent, more than it was in 1870, having risen in the interval from 36 to 56 pence per inhabitant. These figures show that while the condition of the masses is* improving in Great Britain the same cannot be said of Ireland.'

The root of the trouble is just this : that successive British administrations have adopted a policy of tinkering at the government of Ireland by endeavoring to rule it in accordance with the views of rack-renting absentee landlords and of the section of noisy and disloyal Orange fanatics in the north-east corner of the Ulster. Thackeray says in his Irish Sketches that Englishmen never overcome the difficulty of riding on an Irish jaunting-car. It is evidently not the only Irish difficulty that they have been unable to overcome.