§ THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON)My Lords, I rise to move that the following Address be presented from your Lordships' House to Their Majesties the King and Queen—
"Most Gracious Sovereigns,
"We, Your Majesties' most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to congratulate Your Majesties on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Your Wedding, and to assure Your Majesties that this House, deeply interested in the personal well-being of the Sovereign, and warmly appreciating Your Majesties' unfailing devotion to duty in this time of stress, profoundly shares the sentiments of loyal affection with which Your peoples throughout the world welcome the anniversary of so felicitous a union; and joins with them in praying earnestly for the continuance during many years of Your Majesties' health and happiness."
There is no precedent in our Parliamentary history for the action which both branches of the Legislature are being invited to take this afternoon. When King Edward VII celebrated his silver wedding with the gracious lady who is still amongst us, beloved by all, he had not yet ascended the Throne. The gifted Consort of Queen Victoria did not live long enough to see the twenty-fifth anniversary of his wedding day. Neither did King William IV. The married life of his predecessor, King George IV, was already clouded before that epoch had been reached. When King George III, more than 130 years ago, had been married for twenty-five years to Queen Charlotte the idea of celebrating a silver wedding, so dear to the present generation, had not yet suggested itself to that more prosaic age.
This, then, is the first occasion on which the nation and Parliament have joined together in the public commemoration of so interesting and memorable an event. But the precedent that we are setting is not merely the result of accident. It has a deeper and a wider significance. For if the question be asked why it is that the nation and Parlia- 644 ment, as the representatives of the nation, are taking this willing and joyous part in the celebration of an event the significance of which is primarily domestic, the answer, I think, lies in this—that in the later history of the British Monarchy the home of the Sovereign has been dear to the hearts of the people, who have seen in it a mirror of those qualities and excellences which they fondly believe to be one of the main sources of the national strength. There has never been an occasion in the long and illustrious history of the British Throne in which the life of the Monarch has been in closer harmony with those conceptions of simplicity, self-discipline, and devotion to duty which are among the most deeply cherished ideals of our race.
Many of us recall the summer's day, now twenty-five years ago, when the young couple, already destined in anticipation to a life of such high responsibility, drove through the streets of London to and from the wedding ceremony. We also recall the figures of the Royal grandmother, Queen Victoria, already bowed with age and fame, and of the Royal mother, Princess Mary, not the least beloved of British Princesses, as the carriage in which they rode together was delayed by the acclamations of the crowd. Neither of those Royal ladies could have wished for the wedded pair a happier future than that which lay before them. No one in that crowd, as he invoked the blessings of Providence upon them, could have desired a fuller response to the nation's prayer. For the nation, in regarding this union of now a quarter of a century, has seen a picture of domestic happiness, all but untinged by sickness or suffering; it has seen in the Palace a model of a British home; it has seen a family growing up around their parents each of whom, as he has approached the age of maturity, has been dedicated to some form of public service; while the eldest son is only absent from the side of his parents upon this memorable occasion because he is serving at the Front—"a veray parfit gentil knight," the standard-bearer among the Armies of our Allies of British chivalry and British attachment to the common cause.
But their Majesties in their married life have done much more than exhibit a pattern of domestic happiness or of the domestic virtues. Both before and after their Accession their manifold energies have taken them to remote parts of the 645 Empire, where they have been seen and acclaimed by more millions of their subjects than have ever before set eyes upon a British King and Queen. There are few parts of their Dominions which they have not thus visited, identifying themselves everywhere with the interests and lives, the tastes and occupations, of a myriad races speaking many and diverse tongues. In this way the Sovereigns of the State have become the State's greatest public servants, and it is their service even more than their Royal station that has been their claim to the devotion of the Empire.
And, my Lords, what an impetus has been given to this familiarity of intercourse between the Monarchs and their people, what an opportunity for the vibration of the subtler chords of human sympathy and fellow feeling has been found, in the circumstances of the present war. The demands that are made by modern wars upon the services of the Head of the State are less perilous, but, perhaps, not less exacting, than in the struggles of old. The King is no longer called upon to lead his hosts to battle, or to win or lose a crown on the field of combat; but he is a very visible factor in the business and organisation of war. There are few accessible places on the war fronts, either by land or sea, which His Majesty has not visited in person, stimulating his soldiers and sailors by his presence, applauding and rewarding their valour, condoling with their sufferings, and commiserating their bereavement. Simultaneously, the wounded in the hospitals, the nurses in the wards, the workers of many classes and degrees behind the lines, have been cheered and consoled by the gracious presence and kindly words of Her Majesty the Queen.
But I think it is principally here at home that the King and Queen have been enabled to set a new and higher standard of active service during the war. Themselves the leading war workers of the nation, they have taken no holiday and allowed themselves no respite. In the shipyards, in the munition works, in the roaring factories, amid the training camps, they have shared and encouraged the exertions of their people. With their own eyes they have witnessed, and by their example they have fed, the furnace of national energy, still burning so fiercely at the opening of the fifth year of the war. And then, my Lords, think of the many heroes' breasts upon which the King has pinned the award of valour, and 646 of the sorrowing widows and mothers to whom he has so often handed the records of a glory that survives the grave. In this way their Majesties have added both to the strength and purpose of the nation. For the nation has felt in these four years of a toil and agony almost without precedent that their King and Queen have trodden the same path as themselves, have incurred the same risks, have had their eyes fixed on the same goal, and await the same ultimate deliverance. These are the sentiments, I venture to say, that explain the close union between the Sovereigns and their people which has grown up in recent years, and which accounts for the peculiar interest that the celebration of this anniversary in their lives has aroused in the hearts of the nation.
May health and strength be vouchsafed to their Majesties to continue this beneficent work. May their home life be as free from sorrow as their public life has been free from reproach. May they, under the blessing of the Almighty, live to see the day, twenty-five years hence, when other speakers will rise from these benches to congratulate them and, the nation on yet another anniversary, not less splendid in example and even more rich in accomplishment. I beg to move.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWEMy Lords, this Motion needs, in fact, no further commendation to the House than that which it has received in the felicitous phrases of the noble Earl the Lord President. But it is right that our unanimity should also be expressed from this side of the House, if with less eloquence, yet with equal sincerity and conviction. As the noble Earl reminded the House, it is upwards of 130 years since a King and Queen of England could have celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of their wedding; and this is, in fact, the first occasion on which such a celebration has taken place.
And it is permissible to-day to allow our thoughts to dwell for a moment on the historical grandeur of the English Monarchy through the long vistas of history; from the succession of the present Royal house, through the long roll of Stuart, Tudor, and Plantagenet Kings, up to the Norman Conquest, and, further still, in the same line of succession of blood, through the dim annals of the Saxon line up to the Sovereign who was the pattern of all his successors, 647 the Great Alfred himself. As Mr. Gladstone once observed on a notable occasion, "The people have desired that their Sovereign should be the centre of a splendid Court;" and during the last three reigns the people have shared and appreciated, on all appropriate occasions, the stately pageants, and processions, and parades. But they would not have enjoyed these as they did were it not for the circumstances to which the noble Earl has alluded; they knew that behind all the magnificence and the glitter there existed the everyday life of the Royal House, framed on the same scheme as that of other pleasant and prosperous homes, given to a great deal of serious hard work and not a little tiresome drudgery, and varied by the same occupations and amusements as from time to time relieve the labours of other Englishmen and English women.
Such, my Lords, have been the lives of their Majesties during the twenty-five years of their happy union; with this conspicuous addition, to which the noble Earl also alluded, that they have enjoyed opportunities such as fell to none of their illustrious predecessors of not merely visiting but of studying to the greatest possible advantage the larger part of the wide Dominions over which they now hold sway. It is literally true that since His Majesty became a naval cadet forty-one years ago he has gained a closer first-hand knowledge of the Dominions and of India than any one of his subjects can possibly claim; and thus, my Lords, when the time of trouble and test for the Sovereigns and the nation came they enjoyed a double advantage which they had earned by all these previous years of work. At home the popularity which their Majesties had enjoyed from the days when they were so well known as the Duke and Duchess of York has become established as the years have gone on into a relation of intimacy, one might say of actual friendliness and affection, which has only increased as the years have passed. In the second place, the tens of thousands of His Majesty's subjects who have come from India and the Dominions to serve in the war have felt that home—as we know they delight to call it—is more like home from the intimate knowledge which the Sovereign possesses of his whole Empire. Thus, my Lords, those Royal expeditions to the Front and to the Fleet, of which the noble Earl spoke, those countless visits to the wards of hospitals, the conferment of decorations 648 won at sea and in the field, those visits to munition factories and to other industrial centres scarcely less important for the conduct of the war—all these have gained an added value and an added meaning from the recollection which we all have of the twenty-five years of work which their Majesties have performed side by side, work for the country and for the Empire, and work done in the full light of public opinion.
Therefore, my Lords, in adding a word to ask your Lordships to vote this Address with enthusiasm, I will only add the humble hope that their Majesties may be granted many more happy years together; that they may find a new and added happiness in seeing His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, who has already earned so much regard from his conduct in the war, and the rest of the Royal Family develop those useful energies, following in the steps of their Royal parents, and so winning an increasing measure of national respect and affection; and lastly, my Lords, when the clouds of war are dispersed, that in a time of unchallenged peace and of ever-increasing national development, both material and moral, their Majesties may bind yet more closely the links which unite them to their subjects all over the world.
§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD FINLAY)My Lords, the Motion is that the following Address he presented to Their Majesties the King and Queen—
"Most Gracious Sovereigns,
"We, Your Majesties' most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to congratulate Your Majesties on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Your wedding; and to assure Your Majesties that this House, deeply interested in the personal well-being of the Sovereign, and warmly appreciating Your Majesties' unfailing devotion to duty in this time of stress, profoundly shares the sentiments of loyal affection with which Your peoples throughout the world welcome the anniversary of so felicitous a union; and joins with them in praying earnestly for the continuance during many years of Your Majesties' health and happiness."
On Question, Motion agreed to nemine dissentience, and Address ordered to be presented to Their Majesties by the Lords with White Staves.