rsonages as the Queen and the Prince are concerned." In his
opinion, the very lowest claim of the Royal Prerogative should include
"a right on the part of the King to be the permanent President of his
Ministerial Council." The Sovereign ought to be "in the position of
a permanent Premier, who takes rank above the temporary head of the
Cabinet, and in matters of discipline exercises supreme authority." The
Sovereign "may even take a part in the initiation and the maturing of
the Government measures; for it would be unreasonable to expect that a
king, himself as able, as accomplished, and as patriotic as the best of
his Ministers, should be prevented from making use of these qualities
at the deliberations of his Council." "The judicious exercise of this
right," concluded the Baron, "which certainly requires a master mind,
would not only be the best guarantee for Constitutional Monarchy, but
would raise it to a height of power, stability, and symmetry, which has
never been attained."

Now it may be that this reading of the Constitution is a possible one,
though indeed it is hard to see how it can be made compatible with the
fundamental doctrine of ministerial responsibility. William III presided
over his Council, and he was a constitutional monarch; and it seems
that Stockmar had in his mind a conception of the Crown which would have
given it a place in the Constitution analogous to that which it filled
at the time of William III. But it is clear that such a theory, which
would invest the Crown with more power than it possessed even under
George III, runs counter to the whole development of English public life
since the Revolution; and the fact that it was held by Stockmar, and
instilled by him into Albert, was of very serious importance. For there
was good reason to believe not only that these doctrines were held by
Albert in theory, but that he was making a deliberate and sustained
attempt to give them practical validity. The history of the struggle
between the Crown and Palmerston provided startling evidence that this
was the case. That struggle reached its culmination when, in Stockmar's
memorandum of 1850, the Queen asserted her "constitutional right"
to dismiss the Foreign Secretary if he altered a despatch which had
received her sanction. The memorandum was, in fact, a plain declaration
that the Crown intended to act independently of the Prime Minister.
Lord John Russell, anxious at all costs to strengthen himself ag