The Crown

THE CROWN AN ADDRESS BY SIR ALAN AYLESWORTH, K.C.M.G. (Links of Empire Series) 31st March, 1927.

SIR ALAN was introduced by the President, and spoke as follows : It is a pleasure to me to be among you today and I acknowledge gratefully the signal honour you do me in asking me to be your guest on this occasion. And that honour is a double one, when your President has been good enough to indicate to me that it would be agreeable if I attempted to say something on this occasion in regard to the position which the Crown of England occupies as a link of Empire.

That seems an especially appropriate subject to discuss before a club of gentlemen who use the name of The Empire Club, and it is equally an agreeable one to me personally, because while I am not a member of the Empire Club, I am a member of the United Empire Loyalists' Association of Canada, which is an organization of somewhat similar character, and one at any rate which enjoys with yourselves the distinction of standing for Canada and a United Empire. (Applause.)

In these modern times the word "Empire" seems, according to the views of some people who instruct us, one which ought scarcely to be used. We hear a great deal said, and we see in our newspaper columns a great deal written, about the Commonwealth of British Nations. The good old word "Empire," the good old phrase "The British Empire," seems to be to some extent discarded. Well, gentlemen, it is not a matter of particular consequence, except as one of sentiment. It is not of particular significance whether we term ourselves the Commonwealth of Nations, or whether we claim the distinction of being an actual empire. But so far as legal phraseology is concerned, so far as literal accuracy demands, the term "The British Empire" is far the older and much the better of the two. (Applause.) We do not call our King an emperor save as regards the Empire of India, but in many statutes of the English Parliament, and in many formal documents which fix the relations between the Crown and the subject, the actual wording is Empire, and the declarations of the most formal authorities for centuries have been that England, that Britain and her Dominions, constitute an actual empire.

All but four hundred years ago, before any white man had set foot in Canada, in the 24th year of the reign King Henry VIII, which would be in the year of our Lord 1533, a statute was passed by the Parliament of England, and the preamble to that statute begins, "Whereas by divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles it is manifestly declared and expressed that this realm of England is an empire, and so hath been accepted in this world, governed by one supreme head and King, having the royal estate and dignity of the imperial crown of the same." (Applause.) So you have the English Parliament centuries ago formally declaring that England was an empire, and its. supreme head a king enjoying to the fullest degree the dignity of the imperial crown of the same. And that phraseology has been carried forward in various other statutes of the kingdom. A hundred and fifty years later, when the great constitutional act of 1688, known as the Bill of Rights was being passed,-when twelve years afterwards, the Act of Settlement, fixing the succession to the crown in England, came to be passed to the Parliament of England the same phraseology is used, and the realm of England is called an empire, and its crown declared to be of imperial dignity. A hundred years afterward, when America, had to some extent been settled by the English people, and when after the Revolutionary War the confirmation of the independence of the thirteen colonies had taken place, those of the colonial citizens who were not willing to forgo their allegiance to the British Crown took to themselves, or were given, as the name decriptive of their desire for a continued united empire, the appellation of the The United Empire Loyalists. (Applause.) As such they came to Canada and as such they were the original pioneers of this Province of Ontario, or old Upper Canada. The name of the United Empire lived in their minds and was perpetuated by the title by which they wished to be designated.

In 1867 when our own constitutional act, the British North America, Act, was passed by the Imperial Parliament, the recital of the object with which that statute was passed, repeats the like phraseology, and becomes the constitution of Canada today. "Whereas such a union of the Provinces would conduce to the welfare of the Provinces, and promote the interests of the British Empire . . . ."-so that from the birth of the present Canadian constitution we have been told that we are a constitutent part of the British Empire, and as such, living under the same unamended constitution today, we form in this Dominion of His Majesty, an integral part of an empire and are well entitled to use the word, and to say that we are not only a Commonwealth of British Nations but that we are, to use the older and more venerable term, constitutent members of the British Empire. (Hear, hear, and applause.)

Now we often think of the ties which bind us to our Motherland, of the ties which hold together this Empire of the Briton, and universally, I think, it will be agreed that no stronger tie of union exists than that of our common allegiance and fealty to the Crown of England. (Hear, hear, and applause.) It is not merely the individual who is King. To the individual certainly we each owe our faithful allegiance, and we pledge it when we take the oath of allegiance, but it is to the institution of royalty, to the institution of kingship, to the Crown as such, that we look as the bond which keeps us together, and which is not merely one of sentiment and of affection, but is also of the most practical every-day importance in the ordinary business affairs of life. The Empire, we were told by the ancient statute of Henry VIII, is governed by one supreme head and king. Such was its constitution when Canada was acquired a hundred and sixty odd years ago. It was into that aggregation, that Empire, that Canada came when its territory was ceded by the King of France to the King of Great Britain. And the reason why the King has come to be this binding link of Empire is simply the royal prerogative, rights and privileges which he enjoys in his capacity as head of the State. We speak compendiously of all those rights and privileges by the word " prerogative", but perhaps we fail sometimes to realize how much that means. Those rights and that authority are governed by statutes, charters,-compacts they may be called-between the king and his people. Our constitutional histories point to four great statutes or charters securing the liberties of the English people, and definitely stating what the authority and privileges and powers of the king are to be. The Magna Charta of 1215; the Petition of Rights of 1627; the Bill of Right of 1688; and the Act of Settlement of 1700. Each is but a declaration of the fundamental laws of England; because it is always to be remembered that under English law the king, the head of the state, was never an Oriental despot, was never a sovereign ruler, entitled to make, at his own will and pleasure, such orders or decrees or laws for his people as he alone might see fit. But from the earliest beginnings of English history the king was, in one sense, subject to the laws of the land. The compact between him and his people always was that he should govern according to law. True, in many instances, kings, individual kings, went perhaps beyond their legal rights,-a strong king desiring to increase those rights, to increase those powers-and so, a struggle would arise between the king on the one part to increase his royal powers, and the people on the other part to cut them down, or to establish their own liberties. And out of that struggle, ultimately things came into a settled position, and these four great charters or Acts of Parliament, constitute substantially the written limitations upon the power of the royal ruler, and establish the rights of the subject people. These constitute, in substance, the constitution of Great Britain today, and the constitution of Canada.

The title of the crown of England was originally elective, or substantially so. We see it in our histories of the Saxon times. For a thousand years, or nearly, before the Norman Conquest, there were rulers-or kings, they might be called-in different portions of the British Island, and those kings in many instances were selected in some manner by popular choice. The last of the Saxon kings, Harold, conquered by the Normans, enjoyed his throne for the short time that he was king, not as a matter of hereditary right, because his family had never before been at the head of the nation, except that it was the most prominent family in the country. He was selected, or elected, or chosen, to be king; and it was only by gradual steps that the idea of hereditary descent, or of limiting the right to be at the head of the state to the family of William the Conqueror came to be recognized as a part, one may say, of the royal prerogative. But by the Revolution of 1688, by the Bill of Rights which was then passed by the Parliament, and passed by the assent of the king who was then selected, King William of Orange, and by the subsequent Act of Settlement, fixing upon the succession to the throne, the same right of choice or selection on the part of the people was asserted, exercised and thoroughly demonstrated. Let me remind you, gentlemen, that by the Act of Settlement of 1700, which brought into England and placed upon the British throne the present Royal Family, there was a complete disregard of hereditary rights or of the principle of hereditary direct descent, which the law applies to the ownership of land, or to the descent and devolution of property. By this Act of Settlement of 1700, a new source of title for the Royal Family of Britain was evolved, or was chosen. The Princess Sophia, the daughter of the Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of King James I, was deliberately selected as the new source of title. She was, of course, a lineal descendent of William the Conqueror, but in fixing upon the Princess Sophia and her descendants, the British people deliberately passed over, not only their still living King, James II, but also his son James Edward,

known to history as the Old Pretender, and equally they passed over Henrietta, the daughter of Charles I, and her descendants, of whom some are living at this day. Equally, in selecting the Princess Sophia as the root and source of a new descent of kingship, the people of England passed over two brothers of Sophia, who according to the rules of primogeniture would have had superior right. Her brothers then living, Charles Louis, and Edward, are both ignored, and the daughter, the Princess Sophia, deliberately selected.

Now that is a comparatively recent instance of the application of the principle of selection, or of choice, in the ruler of the British Empire, and is, as everybody sees, one of the strongest links of Empire, and one of the things which serve to make the present king of England and the present royal family not only dear to the hearts of the people of the country, but a ruler and family pledged to govern according to the laws of the kingdom; accepting the throne not as any matter of hereditary personal right, but as the considered choice of the British people that he should rule over them, and rule over them according to their own laws and customs and usages. (Applause.)

The king pledges himself at his coronation so to rule. Time does not serve upon this occasion to detail to you anything of the ceremonies of coronation; they are most significant and most interesting. I need not speak of their number; I do not remember, but I think there are fifteen or sixteen separate and distinct ceremonies, all of which are solemnly and carefully gone through, ceremonies of formal and religious nature, but each having its own ancient and peculiar significance. The essential ones are, perhaps, that the king should be presented publicly to his people as their choice. The people are told to look upon their king; the people recognize their king, they accept him as such. Then follows his oath of office, wherein he solemnly promises and pledges himself that he will govern according to law, that he will see, so far as it is in his power, that justice is done to every man, that justice in mercy should be administered in all his judgments. I need not speak of any of the further ceremonies; those are the material and important two. Now that ceremony of presentation to the people is one of special importance. It is something like the form, and it is not any mere form either, which still obtains in our courts of justice. When a juror comes to the book to be sworn, the clerk of the court says, "Prisoner, look upon the juror; juror, look upon the prisoner." The two, the one the prisoner to be tried, the other the juror who upon his oath is to try him truly, are to look each upon the other, to see each other face to face. And just in that way each king of England is presented to his people publicly, that they may for themselves see the man selected to be their ruler, and that he on his part may look into the faces of his people.

One cannot but be impressed when looking over the formalities of the coronation with the absolute identity in that feature of the ceremony with the one which is recorded in the Book of Samuel. When Saul, son of Kish, who towered above his fellows by head and shoulders in height, was chosen to be first king of the Jewish people, the sacred record states how Samuel the Prophet presented him to the Jewish people, and how the people when told to look upon their king replied with a shout, and said,;'God save the king." (Applause.) And that ancient prayer, first uttered on the plains of Palestine three thousand years ago by the Jewish people to acclaim their king, is now today repeated at the coronation of the British king in the same identical words to the same Eternal God. Not upon the plains of Israel but in the shrine and temple of the British people, in the House of the Lord at Westminster, builded by our fathers in centuries gone by, that same prayer is uttered to the same Almighty Being when the people answer "God save the King." Domine, salvum fac regem. Oh God, make safe the king. (Applause.)

The appreciation of the address was shown by three rousing cheers following the round of applause.

The President tendered to the speaker the thanks of the Club.