did but detect an erroneous change.
What was desirable was the prolongation of Liberal rule. The commencing
dissatisfaction did but relate to the personal demerits of the Whig
leaders, and other temporary adjuncts of free principles, and not to
those principles intrinsically. So that the last precedent for a royal
onslaught on a Ministry ended thus:--in opposing the right principles,
in aiding the wrong principles, in hurting the party it was meant to
help. After such a warning, it is likely that our monarchs will pursue
the policy which a long course of quiet precedent at present
directs--they will leave a Ministry trusted by Parliament to the
judgment of Parliament.

Indeed, the dangers arising from a party spirit in Parliament exceeding
that of the nation, and of a selfishness in Parliament contradicting
the true interest of the nation, are not great dangers in a country
where the mind of the nation is steadily political, and where its
control over its representatives is constant. A steady opposition to a
formed public opinion is hardly possible in our House of Commons, so
incessant is the national attention to politics, and so keen the fear
in the mind of each member that he may lose his valued seat. These
dangers belong to early and scattered communities, where there are no
interesting political questions, where the distances are great, where
no vigilant opinion passes judgment on Parliamentary excesses, where
few care to have seats in the chamber, and where many of those few are
from their characters and their antecedents better not there than
there. The one great vice of Parliamentary government in an adult
political nation, is the caprice of Parliament in the choice of a
Ministry. A nation can hardly control it here; and it is not good that,
except within wide limits, it should control it. The Parliamentary
judgment of the merits or demerits of an administration very generally
depends on matters which the Parliament, being close at hand,
distinctly sees, and which the distant nation does not see. But where
personality enters, capriciousness begins. It is easy to imagine a
House of Commons which is discontented with all statesmen, which is
contented with none, which is made up of little parties, which votes in
small knots, which will adhere steadily to no leader, which gives every
leader a chance and a hope. Such Parliaments require the imminent check
of possible dissolution; but that check is (as has been shown)