Legitimacy and Government
It is an unguarded idea of some public writers that “the Sovereign holds her crown not by hereditary descent but by the will of the nation.” This doctrine is too frequently stated in and out of Parliament; and without qualification or explanation it would be apt to breed mischief in the minds of an ignorant and excited multitude, if the instinctive feelings of common sense did not invariably correct the popular errors of theorists.
“They who have studied the Constitution attentively hold that her Majesty reigns by hereditary right, though her predecessor in 1688 received the Crown at the hands of a free nation. To refer to the right of election, which can be exercised only during a revolution, and to be silent on hereditary right, is to lower the Regal dignity to the precarious office of the judges when they held their patents durante bene placito. Suppose a nation so divided that one casting vote would carry a plebiscite, changing the form of government, or the dynasty, and there would be a practical illustration of a principle—if principle at all—which, when taken as a broad palpable fact, is undeniable in the founder of a dynasty, but when erected into a legal theory it becomes neither more nor less than a permanent code of revolution. Hence the successor of that founder, if his power be not supported by military despotism, is invariably a staunch advocate of his indefeasible hereditary right, though originally derived from the consent of the nation.”—Saturday Review.
The Press has been described as the Fourth Estate of the realm; but it is not so. If we remember rightly, it was Lord Stanley who characterized it as a second representation of the Third Estate. This is nearer the mark, though it is not exactly true, seeing that the press represents, or professes to represent, all the three estates. Its influence on the State is a fact either not acknowledged at all or acknowledged as an evil to be held in check by stringent laws and safeguards. Its place of power is not defined by any written Constitution, and its acts are in our day controlled, for the most part, by no written statute, but only by its own good sense. In its modes of expression, the newspaper press of our country usually keeps far within the bounds which the law prescribes; it voluntarily prescribes for itself a law which has no authority save that of taste. There is not a greater power under the Constitution than this press, which is indeed the source of power to much besides itself. What would public meetings be without the press? Within the present century the method of influencing public opinion by means of great gatherings of the people under the direction of leagues and associations has been perfected. It is a method which derives its momentum from the multiplication of reports. It is a matter of indifference to an orator what or where is his audience, provided through the reporters he can address all England. The Press has thus neutralized one of the evils of democracy as it was known in the olden time. A democratic Assembly meant a rabble, a packed multitude of noisy citizens into which the more quiet and thoughtful class of people did not care to venture. In the democratic Assemblies now every man in England virtually sits. We have good seats, for we are at our own firesides with the newspapers in our hands. In the quiet of our chosen retreats we listen to the “cheers,” and the “hear, hear,” and the laughter which the speech of the orator evokes, and we can calmly measure the words of the demagogue. Upon the very manner of public speaking, too, we imagine that the system of newspaper reporting has had some effect. If we may judge by the very imperfect reports which we have of speeches delivered in the last century, orators were then more inflated and inflammatory in their style than they are now, the momentary impression which they created was beyond anything we can now conceive, and if eloquence is to be judged from its immediate effect they were greater masters of the art than any we can now boast of. If this appears a hard thing to say, when we have such orators among us as Lord Derby, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Disraeli, let us remember the other side of the question—let us take into account that our contemporary first-class orators speak with the full knowledge that in cool blood their speeches will be read word for word on the morrow. They know right well that much of the bombast which might safely be addressed to an admiring and heated audience will expose them only to ridicule when it is reduced to print. Insensibly a more sober standard of oratory is thus established, to the great gain of our deliberative assemblies, and acting as some check upon rhetorical demagogues.—Times.