when, perhaps, he is but pushing to unpopular
consequences, the narrow maxims of an inchoate theory. At such a minute
a constitutional king--such as Leopold the First was, and as Prince
Albert might have been--is invaluable; he can and will prevent
Parliament from hurting the nation.

Again, too, on the selfishness of Parliament an extrinsic check is
clearly more efficient than an intrinsic. A Premier who is made by
Parliament may share the bad impulses of those who chose him; or, at
any rate, he may have made "capital" out of them--he may have seemed to
share them. The self-interests, the jobbing propensities of the
assembly are sure indeed to be of very secondary interest to him. What
he will care most for is the permanence, is the interest--whether
corrupt or uncorrupt--of his own Ministry. He will be disinclined to
anything coarsely unpopular. In the order of nature, a new assembly
must come before long, and he will be indisposed to shock the feelings
of the electors from whom that assembly must emanate. But though the
interest of the Minister is inconsistent with appalling jobbery, he
will be inclined to mitigated jobbery. He will temporise; he will try
to give a seemly dress to unseemly matters: to do as much harm as will
content the assembly, and yet not so much harm as will offend the
nation. He will not shrink from becoming a particeps criminis; he will
but endeavour to dilute the crime. The intervention of an extrinsic,
impartial, and capable authority--if such can be found--will
undoubtedly restrain the covetousness as well as the factiousness of a
choosing assembly.

But can such a head be found? In one case I think it has been found.
Our colonial governors are precisely Dei ex machina. They are always
intelligent, for they have to live by a different trade; they are
nearly sure to be impartial, for they come from the ends of the earth;
they are sure not to participate in the selfish desires of any colonial
class or body, for long before those desires can have attained fruition
they will have passed to the other side of the world, be busy with
other faces and other minds, be almost out of hearing what happens in a
region they have half forgotten. A colonial governor is a
super-Parliamentary authority, animated by a wisdom which is probably
in quantity considerable, and is different from that of the local
Parliament, even if not above it. But even in this case the advantage
of this extrinsic authority is p