The Shadow of Great Britain

Capítulo 1658: Chapter 46: British Literature Cannot Be Without “The British

You’d better do nothing, that way, you won’t get into any trouble.

——Viscount William Lamb, the second Viscount Melbourne

Although he was already seated in the carriage heading to Kensington Palace, Arthur had no mind to rehearse the outline of today’s lesson for the Crown Prince.

His mind was completely occupied with last night’s encounter at the Alhambra Theater.

To be honest, he had long known that this Whig Party government’s days were numbered. Although Viscount Melbourne replacing Earl Grey as Prime Minister could barely be considered as the will of the people, this so-called will of the people was actually the product of the various factions in British politics pulling at each other.

Everyone accepted Viscount Melbourne as the new Prime Minister, but no one could admit they were staunch supporters of Melbourne.

King William IV’s order months ago for Viscount Melbourne to replace Earl Grey and form a Cabinet was completely forced. If the Tory Party had even the slightest hope of successfully forming a Cabinet at that time, this Sailor King would not have agreed to continue having a Whig Party member as Prime Minister.

However, King William IV thought that continuing to appoint a Whig Party Prime Minister was already a huge concession on his part, yet the Whig Party still persisted in the Lower House to push for the “Ireland Church Bill” in the past two months.

Such actions naturally greatly angered the King.

King William IV couldn’t help but recall the 1832 Parliament reform, when he had to create fifteen new members of nobility to appease Earl Grey’s request in order to pass the Reform Bill through the House of Lords with an absolute majority.

However, after the Reform Bill was once again vetoed by the House of Lords, Grey again requested to expand the Whig Party’s seats in the House of Lords, and even made a statement that if the King delayed the decree, he and his Grey Cabinet would collectively resign.

Since then, King William IV, who had been a Whig Party supporter in his youth, transformed into a staunch ally of the Tory Party.

Although he had not publicly fallen out with the ruling party, everyone knew that His Majesty the King was absolutely resentful of these people who completely disregarded his royal authority and majesty.

But even so, Arthur had never imagined that he would actually dissolve Parliament and call an early general election.

When was the last time something like this happened in Britain?

If Arthur remembered correctly, it should have been half a century ago in 1786, a time when George III, the father of William IV and George IV, was King.

Moreover, the reason for dissolving Parliament that time was almost the same as this time, both were actions taken by the King to help the Tory Party against the Whig Party majority in the Lower House.

Many people felt that ever since the Glorious Revolution in 1689, the British Parliament, which had endured the Seven Years’ War, the American War of Independence, the Great Revolution Wars, and the Napoleonic Wars, had firmly locked the King in a “cage.”

The Bill of Rights limited the King’s power to impose taxes, establish a standing army, and interfere with Parliament.

The Act of Settlement stipulated that only Protestants could inherit the throne, averting the danger of Britain having a Catholic king again, and also reinforced the principle of life tenure for judges, preventing the King from dismissing judges at will.

The Union Bill merged the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland, unifying their Parliaments into the British Parliament, effectively preventing the King from using Scotland to destabilize the parliamentary system.

The Seven-Year Parliament Law extended the term of Parliament from three years to seven years, thereby reducing the King’s influence on Parliament by extending the term.

The opposition forced George III twice in 1782 and 1801, from which Britain established the principled consensus that the Prime Minister must gain the majority support of the Lower House and that the Prime Minister must be the leader of the majority party in the Lower House.

Just when all the democratic people of Europe were loudly promoting the advancement of the British constitutional system and regarding Britain’s Westminster system as the direction for the future, King William IV went and dissolved Parliament.

This action wasn’t just a slap in the face for the elite members of the European Continent but also a heavy blow to the supporters of the British constitutional monarchy system.

In the minds of constitutional monarchists, the superiority of constitutional monarchy over a republic was that, in times of intensified party conflicts, the King could exert authority to act as a mediator to reconcile party conflicts. But what they didn’t expect was that William IV was now the one intensifying the conflicts. Dissolving Parliament was not the constitutional monarchy they wanted; it was absolute monarchy.

William IV probably didn’t expect that his order to dissolve Parliament would lead to such severe consequences. Early this morning, piles of newspapers critiquing the King’s behavior were being transported out bundle after bundle from Fleet Street.

These newspapers, still bearing the fresh scent of ink, spread along Whitehall, Parliament Street, and St. James Street like wildfire, as if they were going to set all of London ablaze.

Just from the enthusiastic shouting of the paperboys, you could tell how agitated the journalists from the major newspapers — who hadn’t slept all night — were.

“King Dissolves Parliament, Experts Suggest He Be Placed in a Psychiatric Institution for Recuperation”

It is rumored that Sir Robert Peel, currently on vacation in Italy, is hastily practicing his Frisbee-catching skills to catch the state thrown by the King.

“Melbourne Steps Down, Peel Not Yet Arrived, His Majesty the King May Govern Personally Using ‘Old Sailor’s Diary’”

We are not saying that the King cannot speak, but I have to admit, I didn’t expect his first words to be ‘Get out!’