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Ceremony and Politics: The British Monarchy, 1871–1872

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

William M. Kuhn
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Extract

Walter Bagehot divided the English constitution into two parts, the “dignified” and the “efficient.” The sovereign and the House of Lords were the dignified or the showy parts, imposing spectacles designed to serve as reminders of a glorious past and to impress an uneducated populace with the authority of the state. The cabinet and the House of Commons were the efficient parts, where the real work went on, where men of business transacted affairs of state using the authority obtained by the dignified parts. So he wrote in the years preceding the second Reform Bill, when it was conventional to speak of the rudeness and unruliness of an uneducated people and of the hazards of admitting them to the franchise. Yet his book, animated in such large measure by the debates on parliamentary reform of the late 1860s, remains a much-quoted authority on the English constitution today.

Perhaps one among the reasons for its enduring popularity is that he expressed so neatly a notion that certainly existed before as well as in his time and that survives today, namely, that governmental activity can be divided into ceremonial and political parts. The one is opposed to the other as pleasure is to business, as emptiness is to substance, as illusion is to reality, as artifice is to plain speaking. In affairs of state, the adjective “ceremonial,” when attached to words like “head of state” or “official,” has come to mean empty figurehead or powerless placeholder. Ceremonies of state—coronations, jubilees, openings of Parliament—are picturesque and pleasant but essentially ephemeral, devoid of anything powerful other than that which is powerfully sentimental, colorful, and evocative.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , April 1987 , pp. 133 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1987

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References

1 Bagehot, W., The English Constitution (London, 1963), p. 61Google Scholar.

2 Geertz, C., Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton, N.J., 1980), p. 122Google Scholar.

3 Hardie, F., The Political Influence of Queen Victoria, 1861–1901, 2d ed. (London,1938)Google Scholar.

4 On patriotic sentiment, see Colley, L., “The Apotheosis of George III: Loyalty, Royalty and the British Nation, 1760–1820,” Past and Present, no. 102 (February 1984), pp. 94–129Google Scholar; on the invention of tradition Cannadine, D., “The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the ‘Invention of Tradition’ c. 1820–1977,” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar; on mediating local conflicts, Cannadine, D. and Hammerton, E., “Conflict and Consensus on a Commercial Occasion: The Diamond Jubilee in Cambridge,” Historical Journal 24, no. 1 (January 1981): 111–46Google Scholar; on subject nations, Cohn, B., “Representing Authority in Victorian India,” in Hobsbawm, and Ranger, , eds.Google Scholar; on the capital and imperialism, F., Harcourt, “The Queen, the Sultan, and the Viceroy: A Victorian State Occasion,” London Journal 5, no. 1 (May 1979): 35–56Google Scholar; finally, on ritual and the working classes, R., McKibbin, “Why Was There No Marxism in Great Britain?” English Historical Review 99 (April 1984): 297–331Google Scholar, esp. 310–16. Also of interest is Laqueur, T., “The Queen Caroline Affair: Politics as Art in the Reign of George IV,” Journal of Modern History 54, no. 3 (September 1982): 417–66Google Scholar.

5 Colley, pp. 95–96, 102, 121; McKibbin, pp. 311–12; Cannadine, , “The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual,” pp. 120–21Google Scholar, but see also p. 107, n. 18.

6 E. Hobsbawm has appended Disraeli's name to the remark that ceremonial innoations “were perhaps more deliberate and systematic, where, as in Britain, the revival of royal ritualism was seen as a necessary counterweight to the dangers of popular democracy.” See his “Mass Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870–1914,” in Hobsbawm, and Ranger, , eds., p. 282Google Scholar. Gladstone certainly wished to revive royal ritual as well, but, as will be seen, he did not intend it to serve as a counterweight to popular democracy. Nor does his imperfect and contingent control over ceremonial justify the conspiratorial overtones Hobsbawm has used in connection with Disraeli.

7 See, e.g., Ensor, R., England, 1870–1914 (Oxford, 1936), pp. 26–27Google Scholar; or Longford, E. , Victoria R.I. (London, 1964), pp. 376–90Google Scholar. Antimonarchical agitation is treated in Gossman, N., “Republicanism in Nineteenth-Century England,” International Review of Social History 1 (1962): 47–60Google Scholar. An extended account of the ceremony itself is in Lant, J., Insubstantial Pageant (New York, 1979), pp. 26–33Google Scholar. F. Harcourt sees the thanks giving as an element in the “combination of circumstances between 1868 and 1874 [that] allowed monarchism and imperialism to emerge as the foundations of a modernized national ideology,” in “Gladstone, Monarchism, and the ‘New’ Imperialism, 1868–74,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 14, no. 1 (October 1985): 20–51Google Scholar“Monarchism” is also examined, primarily as a tool of imperialist propaganda, in MacKenzie, J., Propaganda and Empire (Manchester, 1984)Google Scholar. However, none of the participants in the events of 1871–72 used the word “monarchism,” nor, one suspects, did they anticipate the sort of imperialist ideology the word implies.

8 Among those who objected to granting the money were P. A. Taylor (Leicester) and G. Dixon (Birmingham). Hostility to the grants “out-of-doors” is alluded to in Parliamentary Debates (PD), 3d ser., vol. 204, cols. 359–62, February 16, and vol. 208, cols. 583–86, July 31, 1871.

9 PD, vol. 204, cols. 172–73, February 13, 1871.

10 PD, vol. 204, cols. 175–78, February 13, 1871.

11 PD, vol. 204, col. 175, February 13, 1871. Princess Augusta Sophia had £15,000 a year, Princess Elizabeth £14,000 a year, and Princess Sophia £13,000 a year. Gladstone admitted, however, that the larger annuities of the daughters of George III were funded on a somewhat different basis.

12 PD, vol. 204, col. 176, February 13, and vol. 208, col. 575, July 31, 1871.

13 PD, vol. 204, col. 180, February 13, and vol. 208, col. 572, July 31, 1871.

14 PD, vol. 208, col. 157, July 24, 1871.

15 PD, vol. 208, cols. 156–58, July 24, 1871.

16 Temple, S., What Does She Do With It? Tracts for the Times, no. 1 (London, 1871)Google Scholar. For the attribution to Trevelyan, see, e.g., Jenkins, R., Victorian Scandal: A Biography of the Rt. Hon. Gentleman Sir Charles Dilke, rev. ed. (New York, 1965), p. 68Google Scholar.

17 Weaver, J., ed., Dictionary of National Biography, 1922–30 (Oxford, 1937), p. 854Google Scholar. On theantidowry agitation, see Gwynn, S. and Tuckwell, M., The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles Dilke (London, 1918), 1: 145Google Scholar.

18 Dilke's speech was published in his pamphlet Sir Charles Dilke on the Cost of the Crown (London, 1871)Google Scholar; see p. 23. The text of the speech shows that Dilke's comments on the monarchy were not “incidental,” as Harcourt has indicated in “Gladstone, Monarchism, and the ‘New’ Imperialism” (n. 7 above), p. 29. Rather, they appear to have been the whole point of the speech.

19 Matthew, H., ed., The Gladstone Diaries (Oxford, 1982), 8: 29Google Scholar.

20 There is ample proof of this in Gladstone's diary. He read What Does She Do With It? on September 9 and copies were ordered secretly for the cabinet (see Matthew, ed., p. 32 and n. 8). He brought the pamphlet to the lord chancellor's attention on September 21 (p. 39, n. 1). Gladstone noted Dilke's speech on November 9, and, as the editor of the diaries points out, there are clippings from various newspapers on the speech among his papers at the British Library (p. 60 and n. 2). On November 13 he read Sargant's, W. L. “The Princess and Her Dowry” (p. 61, n. 6)Google Scholar. Sargant argued that the poor ought to be exempted from paying taxes to support royal children. Instead, a special fund raised by taxation of the rich ought to be used for royal portions and annuities. See Sargant, W., Essays of a Birmingham Manufacturer (London, 1871), 3: 167–90Google Scholar.

21 British Library (BL), Additional (Add.) MS 44617, fols. 159–60, contain “observations” on What Does She Do With It? The pamphlet itself is preserved among miscellaneous documents in BL, Add. MS 44760, fols. 143–68.

22 BL Add. MS 44617, fol. 161. According to the chancellor of the Exchequer's figures, the sum was £509,937 with an annual average since 1837 of £15,452; see BL, Add. MS 44301, fol. 220. The transfer of savings to the Privy Purse did not go on indefinitely. Toward the end of the reign, the queen annually made up deficits in various classes of the Civil List out of her private income.

23 BL, Add. MS 44540, fol. 176.

24 Ibid.

25 BL, Add. MS 44301, fols. 217–18.

26 BL, Add. MS 44301, fols. 219–20, 225–26.

27 BL, Add. MS 44301, fols. 221–24.

28 BL, Add. MS 44301, fols. 227–28.

29 Ramm, A., ed., The Political Correspondence of Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville, 1868–1876 (London, 1952), 2: 286–87Google Scholar, letter 604.

30 The Times (December 6, 1871).

31 Ramm, ed., p. 289, letter 610.

32 Sir Joseph Cowen received the knighthood. Joseph Cowen, Jr., was in the chair at Newcastle. Gladstone's letter to Halifax is in Matthew, ed. (n. 19 above), 8:73.

33 Guedalla, P., The Queen and Mr. Gladstone (reprint, New York, 1969), p. 341, letter 338Google Scholar.

34 Martin, Kingsley, The Magic of Monarchy (New York, 1937), p. 47Google Scholar.

35 Saturday Review (February 4, 1871), p. 133Google ScholarPubMed.

36 Dilke (n. 18 above), p. 11. For an account of the eighteenth-century arguments about abuses of the Civil List, see Reitan, E., “The Civil List in Eighteenth-Century British Politics: Parliamentary Supremacy vs. the Independence of the Crown,” Historical Journal 9, no. 3 (October 1966): 318–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Ramm, ed., pp. 284, 286–87, letters 598, 603, 606.

38 BL, Add. MS 44185, fols. 250–51.

39 Ibid.

40 Rubinstein, W., “The End of ‘Old Corruption‘ in Britain, 1780–1860, Past and Present, no. 101 (November 1983), pp. 55–86Google Scholar.

41 Matthew, ed., 7:lxix; Blake, R., The Conservative Party from Peel to Thatcher (reprint, London, 1985), p. 115Google Scholar.

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44 See also the app. in Hardie (n. 3 above), p. 248.

45 Gladstone's memorandum of his conversation with the queen is in Matthew, ed., 7:514–15.

46 One of Gladstone's private secretaries, E. W. Hamilton, hadan interesting reflection on Gladstone's refusal to threaten resignation: “Many were the times when, if Mr. G. had chosen to cross her and take his own line on threat of resigning, she would have had to give way to him or have run the risk of bringing the crown into odium. But sooner than this, he would give way—he attached such great importance to the maintenance of the monarchy as a popular institution, and he felt that much was due to [the throne' s being occupied by] a woman.” BL, Add. MS 48677, fol. 98.

47 PD, vol. 204, col. 173, February 13, 1871.

48 PD, vol. 208, col. 790, August 3, 1871.

49 Bassett, A. Tilney, ed., Gladstone to His Wife (London, 1936), p. 187Google Scholar.

50 Ibid., p. 188.

51 Gladstone learned about the question on August 8, 1871.

52 Bassett, ed., p. 188.

53 Guedalla (n. 33 above), pp. 327–33; see esp. letters 319, 327.

54 Gladstone's, W. “Kin Beyond Sea” first appeared in the North American Review (September 1878)Google Scholar and is reprinted in Gleanings of Past Years, 1875–78 (London, 1879), see esp. 1:229Google Scholar.

55 Henry Ponsonby to William E. Gladstone, December 17, 1871, BL, Loan 73, vol. 11. (Gladstone' s correspondence with the court is deposited on loan at the British Library and volume numbers should be considered provisional. As there are no folio numbers, I have noted the correspondents for purposes of identification.)

56 BL, Add. MS 44432, fols. 304–5, 312.

57 Gladstone's memorandum of his discussion with the queen is in Matthew, ed. (n.19 above), 8:81–84. A list of precedents in his handwriting is in BL, Add. MS 44618, fols.47–48.

58 These other lists of precedents are in the records of the Lord Chamberlain's (LC) Office at the Public Record Office (PRO), LC 2/91/4/11, 13.

59 Cannadine, “The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual” (n. 4 above).

60 Ibid., p. 108. J. C. D. Clark has also cast doubt on the notion that large-scale royal ritual aimed at a mass audience was a late Victorian “invention” by pointing out the regularity with which such events were staged in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. See his English Society, 1688–1832 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 167–68Google Scholar. This view appears to be supported by the evidence examined in Colley (n. 4 above).

61 BL, Add. MS 44185, fol. 241.

62 Gladstone to Queen Victoria, February 4, 1872, BL, Loan 73, vol. 12.

63 Ibid.

64 Matthew, ed., 7:lxviii.

65 Gladstone to Viscount Sydney, January 19, PRO, LC 2/91/4/9; Gladstone to Robert Church, BL, Add. MS 44541, fol. 48.

66 See Matthew, ed., 7:513; 8:3, 19, 21, 75, 80, 96–98, 101, 106, 111–12, 115.

67 BL, Add. MS 44318, fol. 447.

68 BL, Add. MS 44451, fol. 62.

69 The queen to Gladstone, February 1 and 2, 1872, Gladstone to the queen, [February 2, 1872?], Ponsonby to Gladstone, February 2 (two letters) and February 3, 1872, and Gladstone to Sir Thomas Biddulph, February 23, 1872, BL, Add. MS 44541, fol. 63, and Add. MS 44640, fol. 19.

70 BL, Add. MS 44127, fol. 144; PRO, LC 2/91/4/97, 107, and LC 2/91/7/78.

71 Ponsonby to Sydney, [February 2, 1872], Biddulph to Gladstone, February 2, Gladstone to Ponsonby, February 22, and Gladstone to the queen, February 22, 1872, BL, Loan 73, vol. 12; BL Add. MS 44318, fol. 453. Also of interest is correspondence in Bruce, H. A., Letters of the Rt. Hon. Henry Austin Bruce G.C.B. Lord Aberdare of Duffryn (Oxford, 1902), 1: 328–30Google Scholar.

72 Ponsonby to Gladstone, February 15, 1872, and Gladstone to Ponsonby, February 15, 1872, BL, Loan 73, vol. 12; BL, Add. MS 44640, fol. 25; also Bruce, pp. 328–30.

73 BL, Add. MS 44541, fols. 71, 74. See also Matthew, ed., 8:84.

74 PRO, LC 2/91/4/82G.

75 PRO, LC 2/91/7/12C.

76 PRO, LC 2/91/4/31; on this subject, see also fol. 26.

77 This attendance figure is somewhat smaller than that in Harcourt, , “Gladstone, Monarchism, and the ‘New’ Imperialism” (n. 7 above), p. 31Google Scholar. It is taken from records of the number of tickets issued—11,876 in all—in the Lord Chamberlain's papers, PRO, LC 2/91/7/546.

78 Guedalla (n. 33 above), p. 367, letter 392.

79 Matthew, ed., 9:xxv. Harcourt has an account of Gladstone's views on the monarchy that, though it gives little notice to religion, seems in other respects accurate; see “Gladstone, Monarchism, and the ‘New’ Imperialism,” pp. 22, 30–32.

80 Matthew, ed., 8:81–84.

81 Ibid., p. 82.

82 Gladstone's review of vol. 3 of Theodore Martin's biography of the prince consort appeared in the Church Quarterly Review (January 1878) and is reprinted in Gleanings of Past Years (n. 54 above), p. 98.

83 Matthew, ed., 9:32, n. 8, and lxxxv.

84 Ibid., 7:514–15.

85 Gladstone, , Gleanings of Past Years, p. 47Google Scholar.

86 Ibid., pp. 37–42.

87 Ibid., pp. 43–45.

88 Ibid., pp. 46, 96; Matthew, ed., 8:83–84.

89 Gladstone, , Gleanings of Past Years, pp. 44–46Google Scholar.

90 “Gladstone, Monarchism, and the ‘New ‘ Imperialism” (n. 7 above), p. 30; but she also points out the way in which Gladstone thought royal influence would filter down the social scale, p. 22.

91 Brooke, J. and Sorensen, M., eds., W. E. Gladstone, Prime Minister's Papers Series (London, 1981), p.20Google Scholar.

92 Buckle, G., ed., The Letters of Queen Victoria, 2d ser. (London, 1926), 2: 181Google Scholar.

93 Matthew, ed., 8:81. On differences between the religious views of Gladstone and the queen, see Bahlman, D., ed., The Diary of Sir Edward Walter Hamilton (Oxford, 1972), p. xlviii and n. 2.Google Scholar

94 Harcourt, , “Gladstone, Monarchism, and the ‘New’ Imperialism,” p. 27Google Scholar.

95 The contrast between Gladstone and Bagehot should not be overdrawn. Bagehot also thought that the monarchy had some influence on the upper classes, though he gives this considerably less emphasis than its influence on the people at large. See Bagehot (n. 1 above), pp. 90–96. Nor was Bagehot a great admirer of Disraeli.

96 Cannadine, D., “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” New York Review of Books (June 12, 1986), p. 15Google Scholar.

97 Matthew, ed., 7:c.