Walter Bagehot

He is the person most interested in maintaining his administration, and therefore the most likely person to use efficiently and dexterously the power by which it is to be maintained.

The caprice of Parliament is better checked when the faculty of dissolution is entrusted to its appointee, than when it is set apart in an outlying and an alien authority.

But, on the contrary, the party zeal and the self-seeking of Parliament are best checked by an authority which has no connection with Parliament or dependence upon it--supposing that such authority is morally and intellectually equal to…

The Prime Minister obviously being the nominee of a party majority is likely to share its feeling, and is sure to be obliged to say that he shares it.

The actual contact with affairs is indeed likely to purify him from many prejudices, to tame him of many fanaticisms, to beat out of him many errors.

When the leading sect (so to speak) in Parliament is doing what the nation do not like, an instant appeal ought to be registered and Parliament ought to be dissolved.

But a zealot of a Premier will not appeal; he will follow his formulae; he will believe he is doing good service 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.

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.

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.

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 even in this case the advantage of this extrinsic authority is purchased at a heavy price--a price which must not be made light of, because it is often worth paying.

He is sure to leave upon the colony the feeling that they have a ruler who only half knows them, and does not so much as half care for them.

We hardly appreciate this common feeling in our colonies, because WE appoint THEIR sovereign; but we should understand it in an instant if, by a political metamorphosis, the choice were turned the other way--if THEY appointed OUR sovereign.

I dwell on the evils which impair the advantage of colonial governorship because that is the most favoured case of super-Parliamentary royalty, and because from looking at it we can bring freshly home to our minds what the real…

But when we perceive by the roundabout example of a colonial governor how difficult the task of a constitutional king is in the exercise of the function of dissolving Parliament, we at once see how unlikely it is that an hereditary monarch…

For the most part, a constitutional king is a DAMAGED common man; not forced to business by necessity as a despot often is, but yet spoiled for business by most of the temptations which spoil a despot.

History, too, seems to show that hereditary royal families gather from the repeated influence of their corrupting situation some dark taint in the blood, some transmitted and growing poison which hurts their judgments, darkens all their…

Is it likely that this sort of monarchs will be able to catch the exact moment when, in opposition to the wishes of a triumphant Ministry, they ought to dissolve Parliament?

To do so with efficiency they must be able to perceive that the Parliament is wrong, and that the nation knows it is wrong.

Now to know that Parliament is wrong, a man must be, if not a great statesman, yet a considerable statesman--a statesman of some sort.

He must have great natural vigour, for no less will comprehend the hard principles of national policy.

He must have incessant industry, for no less will keep him abreast with the involved detail to which those principles relate, and the miscellaneous occasions to which they must be applied.

The progress of the military art is the most conspicuous, I was about to say the most SHOWY, fact in human history.