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though it is by far the greatest, I need not now enlarge upon again,-it acts as a disguise: it enables our real rulers to change without heedless people knowing it. The masses of Englishmen are not fit for an elective government; if they knew how near they were to it, they would be surprised, and almost tremble.

Of a like nature is the value of constitutional royalty in times of transition. The greatest of all helps to the substitution of a cabinet government for a preceding absolute monarchy is the accession of a king favorable to such a government, and pledged to it. Cabinet government, when new, is weak in time of trouble: the prime minister- the chief on whom everything depends, who must take responsibility if any one is to take it, who must use force if any one is to use it is not fixed in power; he holds his place, by the essence of the government, with some uncertainty. Among a people well accustomed to such a government, such a functionary may be bold; he may rely, if not on the parliament, on the nation which understands and values him: but when that government has only recently been introduced, it is difficult for such a minister to be as bold as he ought to be, his power rests too much on human reason and too little on human instinct. The traditional strength of the hereditary monarch is at these times of incalculable use. It would have been impossible for England to get through the first years after 1688 but for the singular ability of William III. It would have been impossible for Italy to have attained and kept her freedom without the help of Victor Emmanuel; neither the work of Cavour nor the work of Garibaldi were more necessary than his. But the failure of Louis Philippe to use his reserve power as constitutional monarch is the most instructive proof how great that reserve power is. In February, 1848, Guizot was weak because his tenure of office was insecure

Louis Philippe should have made that tenure

certain. Parliamentary reform might afterwards have been conceded to instructed opinion, but nothing ought to have been conceded to the mob. The Parisian populace ought to have been put down, as Guizot wished. If Louis Philippe had been a fit king to introduce free government, he would have strengthened his ministers when they were the instruments of order, even if he afterwards discarded them when order was safe and policy could be discussed. But he was one of the cautious men who are "noted" to fail in old age: though of the largest experience, and of great ability, he failed and lost his crown for want of petty and momentary energy, which at such a crisis a plain man would have at once put forth.

Such are the principal modes in which the institution of royalty by its august aspect influences mankind, and in the English state of civilization they are invaluable. Of the actual business of the sovereign -the real work the Queen does-I shall speak in my next paper.

IV.

THE MONARCHY (continued).

THE House of Commons has inquired into most things, but has never had a committee on "the Queen": there is no authentic "blue-book" to say what she does. Such an investigation cannot take place; but if it could, it would probably save her much vexatious routine and many toilsome and unnecessary hours.

The popular theory of the English Constitution involves two errors as to the sovereign. First, in its oldest form at least, it considers him as an "estate of the realm," a separate co-ordinate authority with the House of Lords and the House of Commons. This and much else the sovereign once was, but this he is no longer. That authority could only be exercised by a monarch with a legislative veto; he should be able to reject bills, if not as the House of Commons rejects them, at least as the House of Peers rejects them but the Queen has no such veto, she must sign her own death-warrant if the two Houses unanimously send it up to her. It is a fiction of the past to ascribe to her legislative power: she has long ceased to have any. Secondly, the ancient theory holds that the Queen is the executive. The American Constitution was made upon a most careful argument, and most of that argument assumes the king to be the administrator of the English Constitution, and an unhereditary substitute for him-viz., a presidentto be peremptorily necessary. Living across the Atlantic, and misled by accepted doctrines, the acute framers of the federal Constitution, even after the keenest attention, did not perceive the Prime Minister VOL. IV.-7

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to be the principal executive of the British Constitution, and the sovereign a cog in the mechanism. There is indeed much excuse for the American legislators in the history of that time, they took their idea of our Constitution from the time when they encountered it; but in the so-called Government of Lord North, George III. was the Government: Lord North was not only his appointee, but his agent; the minister carried on a war which he disapproved and hated, because it was a war which his sovereign approved and liked. Inevitably, therefore, the American Convention believed the king, from whom they had suffered, to be the real executive, and not the minister, from whom they had not suffered.

If we leave literary theory and look to our actual old law, it is wonderful how much the sovereign can do. A few years ago the Queen very wisely attempted to make life peers, and the House of Lords very unwisely, and contrary to its own best interests, refused to admit her claim: they said her power had decayed into non-existence; she once had it, they allowed, but it had ceased by long disuse. If any one will run over the pages of Comyns' "Digest," or any other such book, title "Prerogative," he will find the Queen has a hundred such powers, which waver between reality and desuetude, and which would cause a protracted and very interesting legal argument if she tried to exercise them. Some good lawyer ought to write a careful book to say which of these powers are really usable, and which are obsolete: there is no authentic explicit information as to what the Queen can do, any more than of what she does.

In the bare superficial theory of free institutions this is undoubtedly a defect: every power in a popular government ought to be known. The whole notion of such a government is that the political people -the governing people-rules as it thinks fit. All the acts of every administration are to be canvassed by it; it is to watch if such acts seem good, and in

some manner or other to interpose if they seem not good but it cannot judge if it is to be kept in ignorance; it cannot interpose if it does not know. A secret prerogative is an anomaly - perhaps the greatest of anomalies. That secrecy is, however, essential to the utility of English royalty as it now is. Above all things our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it. When there is a select committee on the Queen, the charm of royalty will be gone: its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic: we must not bring the Queen into the combat of politics, or she will cease to be reverenced by all combatants; she will become one combatant among many. The existence of this secret power is according to abstract theory a defect in our constitutional polity; but it is a defect incident to a civilization such as ours, where august and therefore unknown powers are needed, as well as known and serviceable powers.

If we attempt to estimate the working of this inner power by the evidence of those, whether dead or living, who have been brought in contact with it, we shall find a singular difference. Both the courtiers of George III. and the courtiers of Queen Victoria are agreed as to the magnitude of the royal influence; it is with both an accepted secret doctrine that the Crown does more than it seems; but there is a wide discrepancy in opinion as to the quality of that action. Mr. Fox did not scruple to describe the hidden influence of George III. as the undetected agency of "an infernal spirit"; the action of the Crown at that period was the dread and terror of Liberal politicians: but now the best Liberal politicians say, "We shall never know, but when history is written our children may know, what we owe to the Queen and Prince Albert." The mystery of the Constitution, which used to be hated by our calmest, most thoughtful, and [most] instructed statesmen, is now loved and reverenced by them.

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