Excerpt
England has been spending a very busy week celebrating the Queen's Jubilee.
On such occasions, when the attention of the world is centred upon a country, it seems to be the custom to publish startling rumors, to keep up the excitement.
The Jubilee has been no exception to this rule. The wildest reports have been circulated.
One account declared that the Queen was totally blind, and would not be able to enjoy any of the festivities prepared in her honor.
This was promptly contradicted, but was soon revived with the addition that the story was "strictly true," but that London was hushing it up until the Jubilee was over.
Following closely on the heels of this came a new story, that Queen Victoria was about to abdicate. This story stated that the Prince of Wales would not be crowned King while his mother lived, but would occupy the throne.
Abdication is the act of giving up or relinquishing the right to hold an office. It is the same as resigning, but the word is almost without exception used in the case of a sovereign or ruler of a country.
Abdication should be an act of free will on the part of the person who resigns.
Queen Liliuokalani claims that she is still the rightful Queen of Hawaii, because, though she signed an act of abdication, she says, she did not do it of her own free will, but was forced to sign by the present government of the islands.
As to the story of Queen Victoria's abdicating: she is now seventy-eight years old, and she may well be wearied with the cares of government, but she cannot abdicate unless Parliament is willing that she shall do so.
England has, in the past, had many troubles brought upon her by unwise, weak, or wicked kings, and when James II. fled to France the English people felt they had had enough ill treatment at the hands of kings, and determined to take away absolute power from future kings.
The people had some cause to be afraid of too much power in the hands of the king at that time, for James II. was the son of Charles I., who had so mismanaged the country that the people finally had him beheaded. He was also the brother of Charles II., who had been called to the throne after the death of Cromwell, and who had spent the years of his reign in every kind of folly and wickedness. The English people made up their minds to stand no nonsense from James; so, when he showed himself utterly incapable of ruling the country, the nobles invited William of Orange, the husband of James' daughter Mary, to occupy the throne.
When his last hope was gone, and he saw that he would be obliged to fly the country, James showed the people how wise they had been to get rid of him.
He had dissolved Parliament and disbanded the army, so that there was no form of government in the country, no army to preserve order, and, as he thought, no possibility of calling a government together, because he had thrown the Great Seal into the Thames River, without which and his signature, as he supposed, no acts would be legal.
James II., sworn to protect and preserve the rights of the English people, tried by these acts to hand them over to anarchy and mob-rule....