'Other things being equal, yesterday's institutions are by far the best for to-day; they are the most ready, the most influential, the most easy to get obeyed, the most likely to retain the reverence which they alone inherit, and which every other must win. The most imposing institutions of mankind are the oldest; and yet, so changing is the world,-so fluctuating are its needs,so apt to lose inward force, though retaining outward strength, are its best instruments, that we must not expect the oldest institutions to be now the most efficient. We must expect what is venerable to acquire influence, because of its inherent dignity; but we must not expect it to use that influence so well as new creations, apt for the modern world, instinct with its spirit, and fitting closely to its life.

The brief description of the characteristic merit of the English Constitution is, that its dignified parts are very complicated and somewhat imposing, very old and rather venerable; while its efficient part, at least when in great and critical action, is decidedly simple and rather modern. We have made, or rather stumbled on, a constitution which, though full of every species of incidental defect-though of the worst workmanship in all out-of-the-way matters, of any constitution in the world,-yet has two capital merits: it` contains a simple, efficient part which, on occasion, and when wanted, can work more simply, and easily, and better than any instrument of government that has yet been tried; and it contains likewise historical, complex, august, theatrical parts, which it has inherited from a long past,-which take the multitude, which guide by an insensible but omnipotent influence the associations of its subjects. Its essence is strong with the strength of modern simplicity; its exterior is august with the Gothic grandeur of a more imposing age.'-Bagehot, pp. 10, 11.

Meanwhile the most important portion of government is, it may truly be said, unrecognised in theory. Theory says, 'Queen, Lords, and Commons; theory recognises the Queen's Council,' not the Cabinet Council.' This body, the mainspring of the whole government, is comparatively a modern creation, and yet, without its existence, our government would be impossible. Mr. Bagehot has well pointed this out.

The efficient secret of the English Constitution may be described as the close union, the hearty, complete fusion of the executive and legislative powers. According to the traditional theory, as it exists in all the books, the goodness of our Constitution consists in the entire separation of the legislative and executive authorities, but in truth its merit consists in their singular approximation. The connecting link is the Cabinet. By that new word we mean a committee of the legislative body selected to be the executive body. The Legislature has many committees, but this is its greatest. It chooses for this, its main committee, the men in whom it has most confidence. It does not, it is true, choose them directly; but it is nearly omnipotent in choosing them indirectly.'—Ibid. p. 12.

A century ago this was hardly the case; then the Crown still possessed the choice of ministers, and occasionally exercised that choice, and the influence it possessed may be seen recorded in the pages of Sir E. May and Mr. Massey, but this is scarcely possible now. The choice may be, as at the present moment it may be said to be, in abeyance, but this results from the apathy of the people, not that the power is lost. No statute, no rule of

Common Law, no resolution even of either House of Parliament, as Dr. Hearn reminds us, have yet recognised the Cabinet itself. The real organ of executive government under our present system is a body yet unknown to the law. As recently as the time of Charles I. all administrative business was transacted in the Privy Council. But so large a body, the duty of each member of which was merely consultative, was unfit to be the council of a constitutional monarchy. And in proportion as the relation of the Crown to the Realm assumed this position, so the importance of the Privy Council declined. Unpleasant as the title may sound to our ears, the first approach to Cabinet government in England is that known as the Cabal' in the time of Charles II. This, however, was only the rudimentary form. The favoured few with whom only the monarch thought fit to discuss all important matters, were far from holding the position of Cabinet ministers in modern days. They were regarded only as forming a Standing Committee of the Privy Council. It was by no means an understood thing that the King was bound to follow the advice of these counsellors. It was by no means an understood thing that the views which they recommended were to be those held by a majority of the House of Commons. Nearly a century had to elapse before this was clearly defined. The first minister who recognised the necessity of possessing the confidence of the majority of the Lower House was Sir Robert Walpole. His practical common sense perceived where Power really resided, though the means he adopted for managing the House are happily out of date now. Still, years after this, the system, as now adopted, was not complete. Dr. Hearn considers that the first government distinctly entitled to be considered as formed . on the modern principle, was the Rockingham administration of 1782. Yet even then the necessity of political unity of thought in a ministry was barely felt. The corporate character of an administration was hardly considered as absolutely indispensable to its existence till within the present century. New theories of government introduced new tactics on the part of their opponents. The earliest attempt to unseat a ministry by a vote of want of confidence was in 1762, when an unsuccessful motion of the kind was made against Lord North's administration. The first occasion of a ministry resigning office because the King declined to take their advice, occurred in 1801, when Pitt was unable to persuade George III. to adopt his views about Ireland. Since that date, the last important occasion on which the unfortunate obstinacy of the monarch prevented the settlement of a great question, the fact that the policy of the Crown is to be determined by the advice of its ministers may be

said to be definitely established; and ministers, almost without exception, have held office by the force of public opinion, as expressed in a constitutional form.

Two of the most powerful of the early chapters of Mr. Bagehot's book are devoted to the consideration of the monarchy. Without any elaborate introduction, he proceeds to show the vast advantage the existence of such a power in the State is to us, even in our present position of civilization. As long as, side by side with the highest, the noblest, and what is more the wisest of our people, there exist masses possessed of equal political power, and steeped in the slough of turbid ignorance in which they now lie,-as long as such numbers of the population are only capable of grasping the simplest ideas on the subject,so long the vast advantage of the concrete idea of government, which is represented by the Crown, will remain. Did we want to know what the respect for royalty is among far more educated classes, it may be gathered from the warmth of feeling excited by Prince Alfred's visit to Australia. But we need not look so far for our proof: the deep interest evinced by all classes in her Majesty's recent volume, the sympathy with her grief, the respect for her character which it has evoked, are facts in the knowledge of all. But the respect felt for the Crown in England has been far from the subservience required by a despotism. The germs of a The germs of a genuine constitutional monarchy were planted many centuries since. The first of the honoured roll of Speakers of the House of Commons was appointed in the reign of Edward III., towards the close of the fourteenth century. Dr. Hearn, following the authority of Hallam, considers Sir Thomas Hungerford the first Speaker, in the fifty-first year of Edward III., A.D. 1377. The honour, however, is disputed by Sir Peter de la Mare in the first Parliament of Richard II., held in the same year. But whichever is the rightful claimant, the institution of that office of a Speaker of the House of Commons, expressly named as such, and recognised by the King in some'what the same form as is done at this day,' marks an epoch in our constitutional history, the weighty influence of which, in the consolidation of the liberties of the country, can hardly be overestimated. The gradual limitations on the royal will are concisely chronicled in Dr. Hearn's volume. He mentions, with a due sense of the advance it indicates, the check imposed in the reign of Richard III., when it was provided by a formal act of the Legislature, that the fines nominally inflicted by the will of the King must be imposed by the judgment of a regularly constituted court. This statute was a thorn in the side of James I., who sought every opportunity of extending his royal prerogative. The account of this monarch's endeavour to enlarge

the sphere of operation of the Court of High Commission, and the resolute manner in which this effort was checked by Sir Edward Coke, is well told by Dr. Hearn. The King desired to hear certain causes in person. The Chief Justice replied that this was contrary to the law, which ruled, that whatever concerned the administration of justice, must be solely determined in the courts of justice, for, as the 'party cannot have remedy against 'the King; so if the King give judgment, what remedy can the 'party have?' Still the King desired the opportunity of giving judgment, for he thought (we quote from Coke's report of this memorable interview).

The law was founded upon reason, and that he and others had reason as well as the judges: to which it was answered by me, that true it was that God had endowed his Majesty with excellent science and great endowments of nature, but his Majesty was not learned in the laws of his realm of England; and causes which concerned the life, or inheritance, or goods, or fortunes of ris subjects are not to be decided by natural reason, but by the artificial heason and judgment of the law, which law is an art which requires long study and experience before that a man can attain to the cognizance of it, and that the law was the golden met-wand and measure to try the causes of the subjects, and which protected his Majesty in safety and peace with which the King was greatly offended, and said that then he should be under the law, which was treason to affirm, as he said; to which I said that Bracton saith, "Quod rex non debet esse sub homine sed sub Deo et lege."—Hearn, pp. 73, 74.

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But a more powerful and an earlier monarch than James I. had been compelled to acknowledge the supremacy of the law even in a personal matter.

'Lord Coke has preserved a remarkable indenture which shows that Henry VIII., before he could erect a chase and forest round his palace at Hampton Court, was obliged to obtain the consent of the freeholders and copyholders affected by his project; and yet, as Lord Coke significantly observes, King Henry VIII. did stand upon his prerogative as much as any King of England ever did.'

Since that time the same principle has been successfully maintained, and two striking cases may be quoted,—

'In which men of humble position successfully vindicated their rights against princes of the blood. The Princess Amelia was convicted of a nuisance in stopping up a footpath in Richmond Fark. The Prince of Wales, the father of George III., was compelled to close a door which he had opened from his residence, Leicester House, through the premises of a poulterer. Nor are the most exalted personages reluctant to claim the protection of the law. De Lolme, who dwells with a sort of despairing admiration upon this part of our political system, mentions his astonishment at seeing, shortly after he came to England, a board on an enclosed place in Windsor Park, threatening trespassers in the familiar terms with all the terrors of the law. In our own time we have witnessed a still more striking case of the same class. Some years ago,

a daring piracy was committed of certain drawings made, for their private use, by her Majesty and the late Prince Consort. The provocation was great; the offender was a man of no mark; the injured persons were the highest in the realm. But no summary method of redress was attempted; and the

husband of the Queen applied for and obtained an injunction in the same manner as any ordinary subject might have done. Nor is it the least remarkable circumstance in these cases, that they excite no further remark than any other action of the same personages might do. The decisions of the judges upon them are not regarded as models of heroic virtue, nor is the submission of the illustrious defendants, or the forbearance of the still more illustrious plaintiff, considered a proof of royal condescension and rare magnanimity. All such cases are taken as matters of course, and as the usual and natural state of things.'-Hearn, pp. 88, 89.

That they are not, must be ascribed to the well-understood principles of the English law, that the personal will of the sovereign is of no validity against the law. Both in earlier times and in the days of Charles I., the instances in whose reign are too well known to require any further notice, the King's command has never been held to be a sufficient defence to any subject when the acts of that subject have been at variance with the statutes of the realm. The voice of the law utters on this subject no uncertain sound, although in evil times that voice may have been silenced or disregarded.

Mr. Bagehot, as is his wont, takes rather the place of a commentator than of a chronicler, and, acting as such, tersely sums up the advantages of a monarchy, under five different heads. The first, of its intelligibility and of evoking the sentiment of the people, has been already mentioned. The next is closely allied that it associates the chief power of the State with a deep religious feeling. The third is, that our monarch is the head of society. Mr. Bagehot considers this on the wane, and cites the fact of things having in other respects continued much on their usual footing, during what we must call the Queen's abdication of this portion of her functions, after the Prince Consort's death. But this very instance might by many persons be cited to prove the contrary. It is true that the absence of the Queen Bee has not altogether stilled the activity of the hive, but it may be imagined that Mr. Bagehot might somewhat have modified his expressions, had he written his book during the last year or this, instead of the year previous. The fourth is a more personal matter. It is that, from long habit, we have come to regard the Queen as the head of the morality of the country. Great is our good fortune in every respect that this should be so. Great would be the dangers to the Crown and to the kingdom should it ever unfortunately happen that the people of England had to entertain any other feeling than that of the deepest personal respect for their monarch. But, should this ever prove to be the case-should it ever be that the subjects had, as it were, to view the Throne with a half-averted eye; to pass over without notice the faults which it was impossible to extenuate-even then, we believe that one of the surest safeguards