510 Right Hon. Viscount Eslier [March 5, 



year, until publicists came to believe that what was in reality the 

 outcome of unique circumstances, and moral conditions dependent 

 mainly upon the sex and characteristics of the Queen, was inherent 

 in the Constitution itself. It was Mr. Gladstone who pointed out 

 how considerable in amount was " the aggregate of direct influence 

 normally exercised by the Sovereign upon the counsels and proceed- 

 ings of her Ministers." He was alluding to the direct influence of 

 the Queen, and not to her indirect influence, which he well knew 

 was greater still. 



Mr. Gladstone's language, according to his habit, was guarded, 

 but he was making no reluctant admission. Although during his 

 long public life, especially in later years, he was often impeded, and, 

 he may have sometimes thought, harassed, by the desire of the 

 Sovereign to know and to question, he was to the end of his days 

 fully alive to the valuable influence of the Crown in public affairs, 

 and always anxious to safeguard the prerogatives of the Sovereign. 

 " In office or in Opposition," says his biographer, " he lost no oppor- 

 tunity of standing forth between the Throne and even a faint shadow 

 of popular or Parliamentary discontent." Nor, it may be added, 

 did he hesitate to appeal for support, as in the case of Irish Dis- 

 establishment, to the influence of the Queen ; nor, as in the case of 

 the abolition of purchase in the Army, did he shrink from advising 

 the use of her prerogative. 



Mr. Gladstone and the Queen. 



If Mr. Gladstone, with his popular sympathies, his masterful 

 disposition, and his wide experience of public affairs, considered it 

 one of his special duties as Prime Minister, as distinguished from his 

 Cabinet, to watch and guard the relations between the Crown and 

 the people of this country, it can only have been because he was 

 keenly alive to the value of the Crown to the country. If, as has 

 been said, he stood in awe of the Crown as an institution, and if his 

 standard for the individual who represented it was exacting, it could 

 only have been because he shared the Queen's fervent belief in the 

 essential good whicli the Throne and the occupant of it could exercise 

 in the interests of the people. I do not choose Lord Melbourne to 

 bear witness to the character of Queen Victoria, or to the uses of the 

 Crown, for Lord Melbourne was too much under the charm of the 

 young girl, whose early steps, she herself has told us, he guided, and 

 whom he cherished, if the word is permissible, as a father might a 

 daughter. He could never quite forget the figure of the girl-Queen, 

 stepping, as it were, from innocent sleep, with bare feet and dazzled 

 eyes, upon the slippery steps of her Throne. 



I do not choose Lord Beaconsfield, for just as the imagination of 

 the author of " A letter on a Eegicide Peace " was inflamed by a 

 glimpse of the French Queen at Versailles, so was the imagination of 



