The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-03-11 00:00:00

ENGLISH LOYALTY.

Ms Times of Wednesday has the following eader on the
Queen's visit to the London Hospital :

English life has always been, and still remains, an
unsolved enigma to the most earnest and impartial of
foreign critics. The practical reconciliation of respect
for established institutions and vigorous independence
of character is inconceivable by Continental thinkers.
To such observers the pageant yesterday, and the
attitude of the people towards it, would be a riddle
not easily solved; yet we venture to say that the solu-
tion, if it could be reached, would be worth any pains
spent on reaching it. English" loyality "is a key to the
whole mystery of the English nature, of English society,
and of English institutions. Nowhere else do we
find so strange a mingling of bold freedom and warm-
hearted reverence, of Liberal criticism and Conserva-
tive respect, of attachment to Constitutional tradi-
tions and determination to work out those traditions
in harmony with modern ideas. But this blending of
opposite currents of thought is the effect of no political
system, it is unconsciously and irresistibly opera-
tive. The visit of the Queen to the East-End of
London yesterday put once more to the test a theory of
the political equilibrium that has been repeatedly tried
before, and always with the same result. Loyalty,
judged by nave logic, is in modern Constitutional
Democratic England an unreal, if not an im-
possible, state of feeling. Laws, we know, are made
by Parliament, and Parliament is the creature and
instrument of the dominant majority of small house-
holders; so that manifestly it would be absurd for the
ultimate depositaries of political authority to retain a
superstitious veneration for the office and person of the
Sovereign. This argument, which is theoretically
accepted by a small minority of the English people,
breaks down altogether in practice. Englishmen,
whether yielding the sovereignty of the householders'
franchise or not, know well enough that the Queen
does not exercise the powers of a despot, and that
she would not, were she to be graced with all
the titles of the Austrain Hapsburgs or the Spanish
Bourbons. Yet, when an opportunity offers, the Eng-
lish people, without official organization or interested
motives, reveal a depth and fervour of affection for the
Royal Family beyond anything that the servility of
Continental homage could produce, or the arrogance of
,Continental tyranny demand. The Queen's progress
yesterday from Buckingham Palace to the London
!Hospital was in no way comparable as a pageant with
ithe gaudy magnificence of the late French Empire or
,the Imperial splendour of Germany; but neither Paris
'noy Berlin could show a sight to match the
miles; of streets lined with eager and joyous spec-
tators through which the Queen passed on her way to
,the East-End. London in all its phases of activity
Was there to meet and cheer her. The fashionable
criticism that prevails in the neighbourhood of the
Palace, the brisk middle-class trading of the shop-
Ireepers in the o 3ntral streets, the speculative audacity
,and the immem a resources of the City—all these sent
their contingent, to the crowd which pressed around
the Royal party; but they were all outnumbered and
outstripped in zeal by the working people, by those
to whom the 'Queen's visit to the East-End was a
special honour, accepted with gratitude and apprecia-
tion.

Although for fully half a generation the Queen's
progresses thrc nigh London ..Liave been rare and brief,
they are not a 'holly unfamniar to the inhabitants of
the West.end and the City. But the people of the
East-end hardly . know of Royalty except by name,
and tarp who s. %re aware of the curiously immobile
disposition of tiva English working classes will readily
believe that of 1 ha hundreds of thousands of lookers-
on who gather od on the road side in Whitechapel
and Mile-end not one half in all probability ever
had an opportunity of seeing the Queen on
any of her vft,..its to the Mansion House or
the Houses ofl Parliament. The sentiment of the
occasion was thus sharpened in a great number of
cases by curio' Jity, Out it was not the curiosity which
merely gathey :8 a Crowd to gaze at splendid carriages,
gorgeous live fries, and the pomp of a military escort, a
feeling quit a consistei. it with a cynical scorn of the
central ligr mes in the pa geant.
rlf the people in White-
shapel we're curious yeseo3r4sY about the Queen, and
caught ty,p and retailed with amusing eagerness any
scrap of personal gossip a, bout her health and spirits
that fl'uated in the atmoliphere of roadside talk; if
they s'crained their necks am I pushed their neighbours
ruthlessly to veeify by actual observation the rumours
and coujecturen in villiob th i
e•Y had ,ntereeted them.