parental instincts, and to set free the sexual appetite for indulgence without care of provision for offspring: endeavours which consisted sometimes in the employment of drugs to prevent conception, or of contrivances after the type of that with which Jacob's grandson (Onan) displeased the Lord,' or sometimes in the use of medicaments or mechanical means to procure abortion of the uterine fruit.

6

With regard to the fact that early tribe-life took upon itself to restrict by means which it judged appropriate the numbers of those whom the tribe should be required to feed, it has to be recognised that a tribe, waging difficult struggle for means of subsistence, would certainly find its difficulties lessened in proportion as it undertook only to feed such strong and effective members as would bring home more food than they consumed. In extreme difficulties of struggle, the question whether ineffective lives should be admitted to privilege of food might practically be question whether effective lives should starve; and thus the tribe, for its own preservation, might in last resort be summoned by Nature to apply the extreme rule of eliminating all life which could not support itself. The tribe, however, which thus exercised prerogatives of life and death could not exempt itself from the common conditions of morality, but must at least by degrees learn standards of right and wrong for its estimate of difficulties and its application of expedients; and to adjudicate between life and life, between expedient and expedient, would soon lead human thought into the depth of morals. When tribes or families had begun to consider under what pressure of exterior circumstances they would be ready to leave their weaker kinsfolk to starve, or would abandon first dictates of Nature in the relations of sex to sex, and of sexes to progeny, the moral questions before them were essentially of like kind with the questions which engage modern thought; and it may safely be assumed that, as soon as such questions arose, lines of cleavage, such as are now familiar to us, began forthwith to reveal wide distinctions in the moral structure of mankind. In contrast with the rude egotism which accepts at any cost to others the expedients it finds of service to its own appetites, natures of nobler type would practise and proclaim the altruism which identifies the welfare of others with its own; instincts of individual affection would plead in tribuary councils against the ruthless putting away of old and young; and tribes of improving quality would more and more think it shameful to draw strength from the life-blood of the weak, or to thrive by cruel and obscene practices against Nature. Slowly, too, but surely, would come the time when considerations like the above must apply themselves to the relations of tribe with tribe; and for reasonable tribes a future could be foretold when many peoples would have as it were but one conscience, and would cease from inflicting cruelties on each other.

JOHN SIMON, K.C.B.

THE QUEEN

AND HER PERMANENT MINISTER'

STRONG as the mutual feeling undoubtedly was which bound Sir Robert Peel to the Court, it differed in quality from that which the Queen had experienced towards the Minister under whose guidance, as a young and friendless girl, she had assumed her great office. Peel, however, if he had not exactly occupied Lord Melbourne's place, could distinctly claim to have established himself upon a firm and enduring footing in his relation to the sovereign. To the Queen he was not only a Minister, but a friend. When he fell from power, Lord John Russell, who succeeded to his office, did not succeed to the position which he held at Windsor or at Osborne. Owing to the tact exhibited by the Queen and Prince Albert, there was no very noticeable difference, in so far as the public was concerned, between the place occupied at Court by the new Prime Minister and that which his predecessor had filled. A difference, however, there was, and the finer shades of it appear very clearly by the light of the Queen's journals and the Prince's correspondence. The detachment of the Queen from political partisanship was as complete as ever. As in duty bound, so in reality, her sympathies seemed henceforth always at the command of her Minister, be his party Whig or Tory. Although the training of a Stockmar may induce in a sovereign absolute loyalty to a political leader who happens to be the servant of the Crown for the time being, it cannot command affection or create intimacy. Neither Lord John Russell nor Lord Derby ever complained of the support accorded to them by the Sovereign. Lord Aberdeen, who had been Foreign Secretary under Peel, and had shared to some extent with him the affectionate esteem of his royal mistress, certainly had no cause to complain, and when he was forced to relinquish his post, even amid the chilly atmosphere of that Crimean winter, the Queen stood almost alone in assuring him of her continued 'personal affection and regard.' One Minister, it is true, found himself in antagonism to the Crown; but Lord Palmerston's troubles culminated while he still held subordinate, though very high, office; and from the day he became Prime Minister he himself

recorded his satisfaction at the 'cordiality and confidence' with which he was treated by the Queen.

In point of fact, from the fall of Peel, in 1846, to the fatal 14th of December, 1861, the relation between the sovereign and the Prime Minister was recognised to be wholly different from what it had previously been. A marked and remarkable personality had come between the Ruler and the chief of her 'confidential servants.' During the five years of Sir Robert Peel's Administration, while public attention was fixed on parliamentary conflicts and fiscal changes rousing the wildest animosities, popularly supposed to be pregnant by enthusiasts of national salvation, and by critics of national ruin, silently and unwatched there was developed an influence which altered fundamentally the whole relation of the Crown to the people, and moulded the Monarchy into the shape which it has now assumed. During those five eventful years the Queen's husband passed from boyhood to manhood, and from prince in name became king in fact. From the moment of her marriage the Queen had recognised, as was natural to a young wife, the intellectual quality of her husband's mind and the moral force of his character.

When she failed to make him king consort, she was determined that he should not be forced into obscurity. In a most curious memorandum, written by the Queen's own hand, she refers to 'Prince George of Denmark, the very stupid and insignificant husband of Queen Anne,' who 'never seems to have played anything but a very subordinate part' in public affairs; and it is clear that it was not her intention that any such derogatory phrase should ever justly be applied to her own consort. Although the Queen may have believed it to be true that Prince Albert owed his initiation into public life to Sir Robert Peel, in point of fact the Prince was indebted to the Queen herself; for even if Peel was attracted by the ardour and keenness of the young Prince's mind, it never would have occurred to him-fully aware as he was of the political risk he ran-to bring the Prince forward unless he had been conscious that in so doing he was establishing an important hold upon the regard of the Queen. A very acute observer has remarked that before he became her Prime Minister there was probably no man in her dominions whom the Queen so cordially detested as Sir Robert Peel; but that he found means to remove all her prejudice against him, and to establish himself high in her favour; and that when he resigned office the Queen evinced a personal regard for him scarcely inferior to that which she had manifested to Lord Melbourne. At the time it was not so plain as it has since become to what special adroitness Sir Robert Peel owed this remarkable revulsion of feeling on the part of the Queen. It is now clear that it was due to his recognition of Prince Albert as de facto coequal sovereign. Lord John Russell was the first with adequate opportunity, as well as

sufficient previous experience, to take note of the change which had occurred in the relation of the Sovereign to her Ministers. When he succeeded Sir Robert Peel in office, he found that he could no longer expect to see the Queen alone. At every interview between the Sovereign and her Prime Minister the Prince was present. Although, if he had desired to enforce it, Lord John Russell's right to exclude every one from these audiences was incontestable, prudence and tact convinced him at once that the new procedure must be accepted. He stated in confidence to a friend his astonishment at the great development which had taken place. The Prince had become so identified with the Queen that they were one person; and it was obvious to him that, while she had the title, he was really discharging the functions of sovereign, and was king to all intents and purposes.

At this time the Prince was in years almost a boy. Although barely six-and-twenty, he seems to have experienced no difficulty in holding his own with Lord John Russell, in spite of the Minister's age and experience, extending over many long years of public life. The qualities to which the Queen had yielded exercised a powerful influence over the minds of all those into whose close companionship, whether for business or pleasure, her husband was thrown. If Sir Robert Peel had been impressed by the young German prince, Lord John Russell and Lord Aberdeen were not less moved by his grave and intense individuality. The effect produced upon successive Ministers by intercourse with him was so marked that groundless suspicions and jealousies, bidding fair to be dangerous, were excited in the minds of politicians who were outside the sphere of his influence. It began to be said that there was a power behind the Throne,' and there was but a step between this suggestion and the wilder assertion that this power was used in a sense hostile to the interests of England, and on behalf of foreign States to whom by blood and birth the Prince was more closely allied. From whispers in drawing-rooms and club-windows rumours spread into provincial town-halls and country market-places. Ignited by the public Press, suddenly the flames of unpopularity were fanned into a blaze, and Prince Albert became the object, not only of abuse and attack, but almost of public impeachment. At one moment it was even credited that he had followed in the wake of former traitors to the State, and had been immured in the Tower. The storm broke, and was allayed in the House of Commons. Then the curious and somewhat unusual spectacle was observed of a Prime Minister, together with his predecessors and successors in that office, agreeing to support each other in an apparently unpopular cause.

Attempts have been made to analyse the causes which underlay the Prince's unpopularity. His dress, the cut of his clothes, his manner of shaking hands, his seat on horseback-all these contributed

possibly to the prejudices of the aristocracy against him. In the Scotsman newspaper, in 1854, there appeared an article accounting for the hostility to the young German Prince on the score of his virtues; that as a 'moral reformer' he was bound to be obnoxious to all who, 'conscious of their own stinted capacities and attainments, tremble for their social position should the lower and middle classes be thoroughly instructed and civilised.' By some he was thought a dangerous metaphysician, and by others a prig. His reserve was a standing grievance in higher spheres of society. He was altogether lacking in freedom and ease of manner; and he never conformed to the ways of the so-called 'fast' people in the fashionable world. Above all, he was a 'Peelite malgré lui,' and offended thereby the oldfashioned Tories on the one hand and the advanced section of the Liberal Party on the other. If he was not accused of attempting openly to trench on the privileges of the sovereign, he was credited with exercising a secret and baneful influence. As he himself put it to the Duke of Wellington, he

shunned ostentation, and sank his own individual existence in that of his wife; he assumed no separate responsibility before the public, but he became her sole confidential adviser in politics and assistant in communication with the officers of the Government, the father of the royal children, the private secretary of the Sovereign, and her permanent Minister.

Herein lay the gravamen of the charge against him, apparently admitted by himself. A Prime Minister supported by a parliamentary majority had a right to the support and intimate confidence of the Crown, but a 'permanent Minister' was a wholly novel and unconstitutional personage. Lord Melbourne had congratulated the Queen on the inestimable advantage she possessed in the counsel and assistance of her husband. Under Peel the Prince's position had become clearer, and he was duly installed as private secretary and intimate counsellor' of the Queen, taking part in all affairs regarding the Crown or bearing on foreign policy, with the privilege of being present at all audiences between the Sovereign and her Ministers. The internal dissensions of Lord John Russell's Cabinet, the constantly recurring difficulties with Lord Palmerston, the dismissal of that Minister from the Foreign Office in 1851, and his retirement again in 1853, all contributed to give colour to the reports of unconstitutional interference on the part of the Prince. That his influence, brought to bear upon the vacillating will of Lord John Russell, effected the dismissal of Palmerston in 1851 no one, by the light of documents now revealed in the Life of the Prince Consort, can doubt. Lord John Russell's biographer has also, probably with some reluctance, but in the interests of truth, made this plain. Yet, when the debate in Parliament took place in January 1854, in which the attacks on the Prince culminated, no one who had been Prime Minister, or had any hope of becoming so, was found to support the