The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-08-28 00:00:00

Eke stouriity 61)$erber.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 28th, 1875.

ROYALTY AND THE PEOPLE.

"THE Divinity which cloth hedge a king" is a
saying that has often bop quotes, and the truth
of which has well-nigh passed into a proverb.
In days gone by monarchs have, it is true, been
sometimes assassinated as the result of deeply.
laid conspiracies; at others they have suffered
execution for alleged high crimes and misde-
meanours against the State. But these are ex-
ceptional cases, and where life is taken by in-
tention the death is of course removed from the
region of accident or casualty. Sovereigns and
princes are human; yet they in most instances
manage to escape the ills which befal so many
ordinary mortals. The Great Napoleon, after
he was called to the Throne of France, was quite
as prominent in battle as when he was the Little
Corporal; yet he was spared to languish and die
as an exile upon the distant rock of St. Helena.
In the spring of 1854, just after the English
Fleet had proceeded to the Baltic as a conse-
quence of the declaration of war against Russia,
the squadron took up its station at a convenient
distance from the redoubtable fortress of Cron-
stadt. One evening a little boat was observed
cruising very near one of our vast three-deckers
its occupants scrutinising the monster with the
most evident interest. A single shot from the
grim man-of-war would have sent the boat and
all whom it contained to the bottom of the sea.
But the shot was not fired, because it was not
the ruission of a mighty ship to crush a defence-
less cockle-shell of a boat. The people in the
latter, after leisurely rowing about for some
time, returned to the protection of the fortifica-
tions, leaving the giant ship motionless upon the
waters. Who was in the boat? Who, but the
Czar Nicholas himself, the master of seventy
millions of souls, the author of the war! He
had thus ventured forth to see something of our
armada, the sailors on board the war vessels
little dreaming of the precious freight which the
boat bore. Even had they known it, they would
not have fired upon an unarmed man; they
would rather have Put off their long boat,
manned by sturdy sailors, who would have en-
deavoured to make the Czar a prisoner. What
a prize he would have been! With such a host-
age in their hands, the allies might have made
their own terms, and the war would have been
over almost before it had been commenced. In-
stead of that it cost thousands of lives and
enormous quantities of treasure. The present
Emperor of Germany, in that last great political
convulsion iii Europe, was at Courcelles and
Vionville, at Gravelotte and Sedan. He passed
unscathed through the manifold perils of that
tremendous conflict, and to-day is at the head
of one of the greatest military monarchies in
the world.
Our own Queen is a very considerable traveller
In every journey to Scotland her Majesty is car-
ried over twelve hundred miles of ground; and
she is constantly moving about between London,
Windsor, and Osborne. Of course extraordinary
precautions are taken to secure the safety of the
Sovereign. There is no reigning monarch who
is more encompassed round with desire for her
safety than the Queen of these islands. To save
her from pain her subjects, almost to a man,
would be ready to sacrifice their own comfort.
Yet although very recently, her Majesty, while
crossing the Solent, was the spectator of a very
terrible accident, it can scarcely be said thatithe
person of the Sovereign was in peril. The rela-
tive size of the vessel which came into collision
would seem to render such a proposition highly
Improbable. The Queen has, indeed, been re-
markably free from even the minor accidents of
life, in the earlier years of her reign one or
two silly youths seemed desirable of obtaining
an unenviable fame by discharging fire-arms at
the Sovereign; but the application of the whip
to such offenders speedily put a stop to such
freaks. The late Emperor Napoleon was fired
at more than once in his own capital; yet, like
his uncle, he died an exile in a foreign land.
An attempt was made to assassinate the Emperor
of Russia when he visited Paris in the month of
June, 1867; but this failed, as it deserved.
Whatever of truth there may be in the saying
that a king or queen is hedged by Divinity, there
can be no doubt as to the great interest which
the people of this country take in anything
which relates to the safety of the Royal Family.
Primarily there is of course the Queen herself.
The fierce light which, according to Tennyson,
beats upon the Throne, holds up every act and
deed of the reigning House to the public gaze.
The Sovereign is the centre—certainly the or-
namental centre —of the national life. When
the Prince of Wales was so dangerously ill in
December, 1871, and seemed to linger for days
upon the mysterious borderland between life
and death, the pulses of the national heart al-
most stood still amid the suspense which then
prevailed. The anxi..'y of the watchers round
the sick bad at Sandringham was shared by an
entire people. Coming at the most gloomy
period of the year, when the wintry wind
whistled through the streets, when the snow lay
for miles and miles round anout Sandringham
House, and when the forests of leafless trees
seemed to swing their gaunt bare. arms in the
ice-laden breeze, that time of waiting for news
will never be forgotten by those who passed
through it. The merest scrap of intelligence
was eagerly caught up by the throngs who
gathered to scan the official bulletins, and a
sigh of relief arose in multitudinous unison when
it was known that the severity of the crisis had
passed. The natural interest of the people in
anything which affected the welfare of the
reigning House, and the reflection that with the
death of the Prince of Wales more than a dozen
years must elapse before the next
.direct heir
could reach man's estate, was sufficient to ac-
count for the feeling of sympathy which was
then evinced by all classes. It is not wonderful
that this should be so. The monarchy has
survived the storms and vicissitudes of eight
hundred years. It has retained its hold in this
country while dynasties and empires abroad,
after having reel( d in the throes of revolution,
have staggered, fall( n, and been swept away. It
is the embodiment of stable institutions, which
discontent may menace, but cannot seriously
shake. People arctic, not unnaturally, that it
must have something substantial abcut it to
wrestle time for centuries, and to withstand the
grt-sts of revolution which often enough mark a
nation's history. The Sovereign is the living
embodiment of substantial prosperity, and long
ui.ky she worthi 37 fill her responsible and t:x-
sited position !

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