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 lbourne
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 governnt’s days were numbered. Although Viscount lbourne replacing Earl Grey as Pri 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 lbourne as the new Pri Minister, but no one could admit they were staunch supporters of lbourne.
King William IV’s order months ago for Viscount lbourne 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 ti, this Sailor King would not have agreed to continue having a Whig Party mber as Pri Minister.
However, King William IV thought that continuing to appoint a Whig Party Pri 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 Parliant reform, when he had to create fifteen new mbers 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 statent 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, transford 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 Parliant and call an early general election.
When was the last ti sothing like this happened in Britain?
If Arthur rembered correctly, it should have been half a century ago in 1786, a ti when George III, the father of William IV and George IV, was King.
Moreover, the reason for dissolving Parliant that ti was almost the sa as this ti, 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 Parliant, which had endured the Seven Years’ War, the Arican 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 Parliant.
The Act of Settlent 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 rged the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland, unifying their Parliants into the British Parliant, effectively preventing the King from using Scotland to destabilize the parliantary system.
The Seven-Year Parliant Law extended the term of Parliant from three years to seven years, thereby reducing the King’s influence on Parliant by extending the term.
The opposition forced George III twice in 1782 and 1801, from which Britain established the principled consensus that the Pri Minister must gain the majority support of the Lower House and that the Pri 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 advancent of the British constitutional system and regarding Britain’s Westminster system as the direction for the future, King William IV went and dissolved Parliant.
This action wasn’t just a slap in the face for the elite mbers 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 tis of intensified party conflicts, the King could exert authority to act as a diator to reconcile party conflicts. But what they didn’t expect was that William IV was now the one intensifying the conflicts. Dissolving Parliant was not the constitutional monarchy they wanted; it was absolute monarchy.
William IV probably didn’t expect that his order to dissolve Parliant 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, Parliant Street, and St. Jas 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 Parliant, 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.
“lbourne 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!’
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