HEAD OFFICE: MONTREAL, MAY 1953

THE CROWN

W HEN the curtain rises on the coronation itwill be a curtain rising on a deep vista ofhistory.

Not the least of the benefits of this ceremony is thatlife in the present takes on a profounder meaning inthe larger context of time which its pageantry recalls.

The coronation is an act of the highest poetry inthe Commonwealth’s life, saddened on this occasionby the death in March of Queen Mary -- widow of aKing, mother of two Kings, and grandmother of thereigning Queen.

In relation to the Crown we are mystics. Our Queenis not a person exalted above us by Divine Right, nora person of our own choosing. We have a part in herdignity, but she does not achieve that dignity at ourwill.

The Queen is the unimpeachable figure of all thatis good in government; her crown is a symbol stand-ing above creeds and parties. In a materialistic age,when the world is threatened by dangers never beforeknown, the British Monarchy endures in noble strength.It is, in essence, the exaltation of dutiful exampleas opposed to the hazards of ruling by the mailed fistand the fleeting greatness of dictatorship.

One virtue in the coronation rites is that they areout of date. How could the stability and continuityof the national history be more impressively shown?Our Queen is crowned with the same ritual as thatwith which her predecessors have been crowned formore than a thousand years.

This is the oldest state ceremonial in Britain, andperhaps the oldest in the world. The first preservedritual of an English coronation dates from the eighthcentury. There is one attributed to St. Dunstan, saidto have been used by him at the coronation of KingEthelred in the year 978.

The forms are ancient, but the spirit embodied inthem never grows old. That spirit is the solemn recog-nition of the sacred character alike of royalty andloyalty.

The Constitution

The coronation service epitomizes some salientfeatures of the constitution, that unwritten constitutionabout which generations of philosophers, lawyers,historians and politicians have marvelled.

Our institutions, with all their unbroken historicalcontinuity, are still extraordinarily flexible. A Frenchwriter remarked: "The English have left the differentparts of their constitution just where the wave ofhistory had deposited them." He might have carriedon his metaphor by remarking that succeeding wavesand ripples modify the constitution imperceptibly,so that only he who watches closely can detect changesor tell when and how they occur.

Out of all the beating of history on the shores oftime has come for commonwealth countries thephilosophy of responsible government: not represen-tative government only, but that sort of responsiblegovernment which is given by. an executive account-able to a parliamentary majority, bound to heed theadvice it receives from parliament.

As head of such a government, the Queen has threerights, according to Walter Bagehot in his authorita-tive work The English Constitution. These rights are:the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, andthe right to warn.

The acts, wishes and example of the sovereign are areal power in government. Parliaments and ministerspass, but the wearer of the Crown abides in life-longduty. W. E. Gladstone, who was four times PrimeMinister of Britain, put it eloquently in his GleaningsoJ Past Years: "The Sovereign, as compared with herministers, has, because she is the Sovereign, the ad-vantages of long experience, wide survey, elevatedposition, and entire disconnection from the bias ofparty.

"There is not a doubt," Gladstone continued, "thatthe aggregate of direct influence normally exercisedby the Sovereign upon the counsels and proceedingsof her ministers is considerable in amount, tends to

permanence and solidity of action, and confers muchbenefit on the country without in the smallest degreerelieving the advisers of the Crown from their in.dividual responsibility."

Casual readers of history may think that the sover-eignty of the Crown has been whittled down to thevanishing point, but apparent encroachments uponthe Crown have added to its true dignity. The formalpowers of the Crown under Queen Elizabeth II arevirtuaIly the same as those which belonged to itunder Edward VI. The Queen is still the supremeexecutive authority; the Queen in Parliament is stillthe supreme legislative authority; the Queen is still the"fountain of honour" and the "fountain of justice";the Queen is still commander of the military forces ofthe realm.

It is pointed out by J. A. R. Marriott in EnglishPolitical Institutions that the monarch’s judgment inforeign affairs is "ripened by a continuous experienceof affairs, such as no minister can possibly, under ourparty system, hope to enjoy."

The Crown has a unifying function in home affairs.It often provides a golden bridge for retreat of agovernment from some hastily-conceived or injudi-cious bridgehead. Sir Charles Petrie says in Monarchyin the Twentieth Century, writing about the time whenKing George VI came to the throne: "on all sidesthere was a deplorable lack of unity; everywhere thepoliticians were stressing what keeps men apartrather than what brings them together, but KingGeorge VI saw to it that the Crown was at once theemblem and the hope of a more sane state of affairs."

In plain terms, the executive, represented by theCrown, is sufficiently strong to ensure the peace andorder of society, and yet not sufficiently strong todisregard the wmhes and happiness of the community.

The Queens oj England

Wearing the Crown is no sinecure. It entails work.Queen Anne caviled herself "a crowned slave." AndShakespeare referred to the Crown in these words:"O polished perturbation! golden care! That keep’stthe ports of slumber open wide to many a watchfulnight!"

The queens of England have not been the shadowyqueens of tragedy or romance. In her mammothwork Lives oJ the Queens oJ England, published in 1853,Agnes Strickland tells the stories of 34 queens be-tween the death of the last monarch of the Anglo-Saxon line, Edward the Confessor, in 1066, and thedeath of Queen Anne, last sovereign of the royal houseof Stuart, in 1714. Thirty of these wore the crown-matrimonial as consorts, and four the regal diadem ofthe realm. Two more have been added as queensregnant -- Victoria and Elizabeth II -- and nine asconsorts.

What changes are involved in the nearly 900 yearsspanned by the lives of these 45 women! Their reignsextend over the ages of feudalism, of chivalry and

romance, of splendour and misery, the crusades, theattempts to add the crown of France to that of Eng-land, the wars of the Roses, revolution, the rise of theparliamentary system.

The Commonwealth now has a new Queen, whocomes to the throne, Hke Elizabeth I and Victoria, inthe freshness and vigour of youth.

Her Hfe up to now has given Queen Elizabeth IIthese advantages: a happy childhood, in which shewas tended by parents free from the pressing dutiesof state; a liberal education, in the sense that it was notconfined to insular points of view; and practicalcontact with the world, similar to that received byprinces during their services with the armed forces.

She has much of her father’s strong moral sense, itwas pointed out by Hector Bolitho in the British VogueExport Book Supplement, blended with her mother’scharm. She has also something of Queen Victoria’swill ~ "the will that made the old Queen declare toa minister: ’I was brought up to know what was rightand what was wrong m never let me hear the word"expedient" again’."

The Rule o] Law

The function of the Crown as the fountainhead ofjustice is one of its greatest virtues. No matter howelaborate the machinery of legislation and adminis-tration might be, the life of the individual citizen couldbe rendered miserable by any defect or delay in theadministration of justice.

The Queen cannot at her pleasure alter the laws ofthe land, but in her coronation vow she sets the stan-dard for all those who are charged with making andmaintaining the law. The charge given her is in me-morable words: "Be so merciful that you be not tooremiss; so execute justice that you forget not mercy.Punish the wicked, protect and cherish the just, andlead your people in the way wherein they should go."

It took many centuries to mature the law which isadministered under the Crown. Among the mostnotabie advances were the Habeas Corpus Act whichprovided the necessary guarantees for safeguardingthe individual, and the Act of Settlement, which tookjudges from under control of the executive and madethem irremovable except on a joint address from bothHouses of Parliament.

By these, and hundreds of minor gains, that rule oflaw was established which is still a pattern for theworld. The forward march of legal processes may betraced in continuous line from King Alfred’s Dome-Book or code of laws of the ninth century, and the lawsand customs of these ten or eleven centuries have beenabsorbed into the lives of many countries.

Crown and Parliament

In government, the sovereign acts only upon theadvice of constitutional advisers responsible to parlia-ment. Herein is a paradox: while the powers of the

Crown have been increased, the power of the Crownhas been curtailed. Marriott explains it by pointingto the development of an administrative system mwhich the chief officials, while nominally the servantsof the Queen, are in reality politicaUy responsible toParliament.

The most significant clause in the Grand Remon-strance of 1641 required the King to choose coun-sellors and ministers in whom Parliament had con-fidence.

Eight years later, the Rump of the Long Parliamentpassed an Act abolishing the office of king. By 1688 acompromise had been reached: the king continued toreign, but he ceased to rule. Sir John Eliot, who diedfor his views on parliamentary independence a half-century earlier, had said pithily: "Parliament is thebody: the King is the spirit."

There may have been fits of absent-mindedness inthe long course of development of relations betweenthe Crown and Parliament, but the British have followeda shrewd political sense that showed itself even in theearliest historical times. The British system of govern-ment strikes its roots so deep into the past that scarcelya feature of its proceedings and powers can be madeinteUigible without reference to history, and yet theend result is an institution fitting perfectly the temperof the times and the needs of the people.

Crown and Commonwealth

The Crown has acquired overwhelming significanceas the core and symbol of Commonwealth unity.

The formal centralizing institutions of the Empirehave disappeared one by one as Empire developedinto Commonwealth, but the status of the Crown hasbeen progressively exalted. Last year saw varietyintroduced into the Queen’s titles, but the Crown’sunique unifying influence remains.

The parliamentary institutions of the common-wealth countries are the guarantee of democraticstrength, and it is a tremendous stabilizing influenceto have at the head of these institutions a monarch whois independent of, and outside, politics.

It was under the Crown that Britain’s free institu-tions were born and brought up. Magna Charta,signed five hundred and eighty years before the libertyvaunting French Revolution, was, it is true, a forcedconcession. But it did not shatter the Crown, onlycertain arbitrary powers then exercised by kingsunder the Crown.

As things stand today, the Commonwealth is aaassociation of people, as weU as of countries. Thereare spiritual, psychological and inteUectual forcesdrawing them together despite their differences ofrace, religion, language, literature, law and economicinfluences.

The prime ministers of the Commonwealth whoassembled in London in January, 1951, were guiltyof no exaggeration when they said that this historicCommonwealth, under the Crown, is "singularly wellconstituted to enable it to study and in some measureto comprehend the vexed questions which beset theworld."

Unity in Diversity

Broadening of the Commonwealth, by inclusion ofrepublics for example, does not diminish but ratherenhances the importance of the symbolism whichindicates its sense of unity and common purpose.

The Commonwealth has no spider-web of contrac-tual relations. It is held in no parchment bonds orhard steel shackles. The unique relation of the Crownto all the self-governing nations, the republics, theterritories and the colonies, makes possible theirequality of status and enables them to advance in self-government without violent constitutional changes.

Strange it is to people not of the Commonwealth torealize that here is a galaxy of nations which functionswithout a central constitution or executive authority.Its binding force is loyalty to a Crown, and it is socohesive that this Commonwealth, alone in the world’shistory, has dared to decentralize three powers whichwere always before jealously guarded and tenaciouslyheld by central authority: framing .tariffs, controllingimmigration, and creating and maintaining navies.

In a moving address that won applause from allparties in the House of Commons in February, PrimeMinister Louis St. L-aurent hailed the Commonwealthas "an effective instrument for the good of free man-kind throughout the whole world."

He was speaking to a bill changing the Royal Styleand Titles for use in Canada, under which the Queenbecomes "Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of Godof the United Kingdom, Canada, and Her otherRealms and Territories Queen, Head of the Common-wealth, Defender of the Faith."

This biU results from the Prime Ministers’ confer-ence last year, when it was agreed that each memberof the Commonwealth should use the form of title itdecided to be most suitable. What mattered at thatconference was that the Commonwealth should con-tinue to display vigour and vitality in adapting itselfto new situations. As Nicholas Mansergh said in arecent issue of the Westminster Bank Review: "’Had itsPrime Ministers adhered to customary and conven-tional usage they would in fact have set a limit to thedevelopment of the Commonwealth."

Diversity in Unity

An American ambassador called the British Empire"a school of government that inevitably leads to self-government." On the way up the ladder from de-pendency to nation, there is great diversity.

The principle underlying the diversity in forms ofgovernment which we see today is that governmentshould be adapted to the conditions, the needs and thestage of political development of the people in eachparticular state or territory.

Whatever its present condition politically, in everycountry of the Commonwealth there have been plantedseeds of freedom, civilization and culture. To everycountry under the Crown have been carried freeinstitutions and the rule of law.

It is manifest that strong national feeling is not in-compatible with free association under the Crown.This was nowhere more clearly shown than in the caseof India. About to become a republic, that countrypositively expressed a desire to remain a full memberof the Commonwealth.

A new concept was born six years ago when Canadatook the lead in enacting legislation from which, Mr.Mansergh points out, a new pattern of citizenshipderived. The British Nationality Act of 1948 endorsedthe new conception, in which the emphasis had shiftedfrom a fundamental common status to fundamentalnational citizenships. The common status of Common-wealth citizen was thereafter to be derived from in-dividual national citizenship, so that a Canadian wasto be a Commonwealth citizen because he was aCanadian, and not, as formerly, a Canadian becausehe was a British subject.

Every development like this has brought forthlamentations from some who see in it a sign of dis-integration. Sceptics viewed in this way the Statuteof Westminster, which gave the Dominions status asfree and independent nations. It was far from beinganything of the sort.

As John Drinkwater wrote under the title The King’sMajesty in the Jubilee Trust Coronation Souvenir Pro-gramme in 1937: "It was as fine an achievement ofimaginative statesmanship as any that the modernworld has seen. This association of free peoples was,as has been well said, ’a league of nations, with anunwritten, yet inviolable covenant, making peace cer-tain for a very considerable section of the world.’ Thatinviolability is proclaimed in a specific reference inthe Statute: ’the Crown is the symbol of the free asso-ciation of the members of the British Commonwealthof Nations, and . . . they are united by a commonallegiance to the Crown’."

Those noble words mean that in their free associa-tion these commonwealth countries look to theQueen, each with the right of direct appeal, and throughthe Crown they proclaim their brotherhood. "It is,"said Drinkwater, "a majestic conception, and it has aunique spiritual sanction in the world of politics."

The Crown and the U.S.A.

All the world has a part in the past which is broughtto life by the coronation, but most of all the Westernworld. Viscount Bryce, one time British ambassadorin Washington, wrote to his friend John F. Jamesonof the Carnegie Institution: "... the singular fact that

the semi-educated don’t seem to realize [is] that thehistory of the United States before the eighteenthcentury, and, to a considerable extent, down to 1776,is the history of England."

It was from Britain that the colonists carried theirbias in favour of freedom, and it was upon a Britishbase that the political liberties of the world have beenbuilt.

In a booklet published to commemorate the 150thanniversary of the inauguration of the first presidentof the United States, Dr. John C. Fitzpatrick said this:"The Englishman’s understanding of liberty had beenwoven into his being by the struggle through thecenturies; it was the most precious possesmon broughtto America by the first English colonists."

The peoples of the English-speaking democracieshave a great advantage in their common heritage. Thelegacy of political ideas and practical co-o.peration isnot alone to the commonwealth countries but tomany where the Queen’s writ does not run.

No Decadence Here

Those who visit Britain for the coronation wil! seea country dotted with war wreckage, but theywill see roses amid the ruins. They will be im-pressed by the way participants from all the Common-wealth seem to say through the coronation ceremony,in the mood of Fitz-James in Scott’s Lady of the Lake:"Come on Future; we’ve our back against the Past!"

Today, the Royal Crown encircles not only theancient glories of a particular people, but the hopeand promise of a broadening life for hundreds ofmillions of others.

The Commonwealth over which the Queen reignsis far from perfect, but it is being constantly improvedbecause of criticism by its own people throu.gh .theirlegislatures, their press and their msututtons.Throughout all its affairs blows the cleansing wind ofdemocracy, based on freedom of speech, of religion,of the press and of association.

Having dedicated herself to maintenance of thesefreedoms, the Queen will receive the Crown. She willreceive it, as it is given, in a spirit free from ancientgrudges, as the symbol of her unity with her people,and as an emblem of the unity of her people.

The Queen’s duties will be formally assumed in anatmosphere of dignity, and her people will partakein the dignity with her, conscious of the tremendouspast embraced and mirrored in the brief coronationceremony, and of the high hope they hold for peaceand advancement during this reign.

The British, said Comte Serge Fleury, remind us ofthose personages the Renaissance artists show posedon walls and in paintings -- "figures draped in gorge-ous mantles, stepping slowly forward, as if they knewthey had eternity ahead of them in which to realizetlaeir important schemes. They walk straight ahead,guided in full night by stars that belong to themalone."

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