political
problems and the fate of all our institutions are simply an affair of
numerical majorities at the ballot-box, and that the interests of the
people are the sole end of legislation, is enough of itself to smash the
party to atoms.

All sensible politicians admit that if the time should come when a large
majority of the people are adverse to monarchical institutions it will
be vain to think of maintaining them by force. It may be added that
sensible politicians seldom discuss such questions. They have too much
present work on hand to trouble themselves about the remote and the
unknown. "What thy hand findeth to do" is their motto, and out of the
faithful achievements of to-day will the better future spring.
Nevertheless bare possibilities sometimes present themselves as
conundrums to be unravelled, and to the conundrum in question there is
no second answer. But it is one thing to quietly accept a proposition
and then let it drop out of sight; it is another to run it up to the top
of the flag-staff as the symbol of a great party. This is what the
"Neo-conservatives" propose to do with their recent discovery. An
opinion of the Crown's utility is to determine whether it shall be
preserved or destroyed. When the majority of the people cry "Away with
it," away it is to go. As soon as the popular fiat is announced, the
Sovereign will depart from Windsor, the Life Guards will present arms to
the President of the Republic, and in the twinkling of an eye, as the
result of a contested election, the Monarchy of England is to be
decorously carried to the tomb. This is the doctrine which Tory lords
and squires are asked to proclaim with sound of trumpet as the
corner-stone of their political creed. "Only so far as the people take
this view of its subsistence"--this is to be the Tory patent for the
"subsistence" of the Crown. Rather different this from the old cry:--

"Ere the King's Crown go down there are crowns to be broke."

It is true that the peers no longer wear coats of mail, or lead their
vassals to the field of battle. Of most of them it is hardly
disrespectful to suppose that on critical occasions they would prefer
the rear of the army to the van. But the creed is not quite extinct that
there are things worth fighting for, and that among them are the
Monarchy of England and the rights of the Crown. For practical purposes,
perhaps, the creed is obsolete, but it lives in the imagination, and the
sentiments wh