I warn.’ Supposing the king to be right, and to have what kings often have, the gift of effectual expression, he could not help moving his minister. He might not always turn his course, but he would always trouble his mind.

In the course of a long reign a sagacious king would acquire an experience with which few ministers could contend. The king could say, ‘Have you referred to the transactions which happened during such and such an administration, I think about fourteen years ago? They afford an instructive example of the bad results which are sure to attend the policy which you propose. You did not at that time take so prominent a part in public life as you now do, and it is possible you do not fully remember all the events. I should recommend you to recur to them, and to discuss them with your older colleagues who took part in them. It is unwise to recommence a policy which so lately worked so ill.’ The king would have the advantage which a permanent under-secretary has over his superior the parliamentary secretary. He took part in the proceedings of the previous parliamentary secretaries. These proceedings were part of his own life; occupied the best of his thoughts, gave him perhaps anxiety, perhaps pleasure, were commenced in spite of his dissuasion or were sanctioned by his approval. The parliamentary secretary vaguely remembers that something was done in the time of some of his predecessors, when he very likely did not know the least or care the least about that sort of public business. He has to begin by learning painfully and imperfectly what the permanent secretary knows by clear and instant memory. No doubt a parliamentary secretary always can, and sometimes does, silence his subordinate by the tacit might of his superior dignity. He says, ‘I do not think there is much in all that. Many errors were committed at the time you refer to which we need not now discuss.’ A pompous man easily sweeps away the suggestions of those beneath him. But though a minister may so deal with his subordinate he cannot so deal with his king. The social force of admitted superiority by which he overturned his under-secretary is now not with him but against him. He has no longer to regard the deferential hints of an acknowledged inferior, but to answer the arguments of a superior to whom he has himself to be respectful. George III in fact knew the forms of public business as well or better than any statesman of his time. If in addition to his capacity as a man of business and to his industry he had possessed the higher faculties of a discerning statesman, his influence would have been despotic. The old Constitution of England undoubtedly gave a sort of power to the Crown which our present Constitution does not give. While a majority in parliament was principally purchased, by royal patronage, the king was a party to the bargain either with his minister or without his minister. But even under our present constitution, a monarch like George III, with high abilities, would possess the greatest influence. It is known to all Europe that in Belgium King Leopold has exercised immense power by the use of such means as I have described.

It is known, too, to every one conversant with the real course of the recent history of England, that Prince Albert really did gain great power in precisely the same way. He had the rare gifts of a constitutional monarch. If his life had been prolonged twenty years, his name would have been known to Europe as that of King Leopold is known. While he lived he was at a disadvantage. The statesmen who had most power in England were men of far greater experience than himself. He might, and no doubt did, exercise a great, if not a commanding, influence over Lord Malmesbury, but he could not rule Lord Palmerston. The old statesman who governs England, at an age when most men are unfit to govern their own families, remembered a whole generation of statesmen who were dead before Prince Albert was born. The two were of different ages and different natures. The elaborateness of the German Prince—an elaborateness which has been justly and happily compared with that of Goethe—was wholly alien to the half-Irish, half- English statesman. The somewhat boisterous courage in minor dangers, and the obtrusive use of an always effectual, but not always refined, common-place, which are Lord Palmerston’s defects, doubtless grated on Prince Albert, who had a scholar’s caution and a scholar’s courage. The facts will be known to our children’s children, though not to us. Prince Albert did much, but he died ere he could have made his influence felt on a generation of statesmen less experienced than he was, and anxious to learn from him.

It would be childish to suppose that a conference between a minister and his sovereign can ever be a conference of pure argument. ‘The divinity which doth hedge a king’ may have less sanctity than it