w 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 states man, 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 governed England, at an age when most men are
unfit to govern their own families, remembered a whole generation of
states men 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,
commonplace, which a