The deepest interest, therefore, attaches to the problem of this essay. If hereditary royalty had been
essential to parliamentary government, we might well have despaired of that government. But accurate
investigation shows that this royalty is not essential; that, upon an average, it is not even in a high degree
useful; that though a king with high courage and fine discretion, a king with a genius for the place,is
useful, and at rare moments priceless, yet that a common king, a king such as birth brings, is of no
use at difficult crises, while in the common course of things his aid is neither likely nor requiredhe will
do nothing, and he need do nothing. But we happily find that a new country need not fall back into the
fatal division of powers incidental to a presidential government; it may, if other conditions serve, obtain
the ready, well-placed, identical sort of sovereignty which belongs to the English Constitution, under the
unroyal form of Parliamentary Government.