Walter Bagehot

There are arguments for not having a Court, and there are arguments for having a splendid Court; but there are no arguments for having a mean Court.

It is better to spend a million in dazzling when you wish to dazzle, than three-quarters of a million in trying to dazzle and yet not dazzling." There may be something in this theory; it may be that the Court of England is not quite as…

He is not the head of the State; he IS the State.

The theory of his Government is that every one in France is equal, and that the Emperor embodies the principle of equality.

The greater you make him, the less, and therefore the more equal, you make all others.

The very contrary is the principle of English royalty.

As in politics it would lose its principal use if it came forward into the public arena, so in society if it advertised itself it would be pernicious.

We have voluntary show enough already in London; we do not wish to have it encouraged and intensified, but quieted and mitigated.

Our Court is but the head of an unequal, competing, aristocratic society; its splendour would not keep others down, but incite others to come on.

It is of use so long as it keeps others out of the first place, and is guarded and retired in that place.

But it would do evil if it added a new example to our many examples of showy wealth--if it gave the sanction of its dignity to the race of expenditure.

We have come to regard the Crown as the head of our morality.

We have come to believe that it is natural to have a virtuous sovereign, and that the domestic virtues are as likely to be found on thrones as they are eminent when there.

But a little experience and less thought show that royalty cannot take credit for domestic excellence.

Neither George I., nor George II., nor William IV. were patterns of family merit; George IV. was a model of family demerit.

The plain fact is, that to the disposition of all others most likely to go wrong, to an excitable disposition, the place of a constitutional king has greater temptations than almost any other, and fewer suitable occupations than almost any…

All the world and all the glory of it, whatever is most attractive, whatever is most seductive, has always been offered to the Prince of Wales of the day, and always will be.

It is not rational to expect the best virtue where temptation is applied in the most trying form at the frailest time of human life.

On men like George III., with a predominant taste for business occupations, the routine duties of constitutional royalty have doubtless a calm and chastening effect.

The insanity with which he struggled, and in many cases struggled very successfully, during many years, would probably have burst out much oftener but for the sedative effect of sedulous employment.

But how few princes have ever felt the anomalous impulse for real work; how uncommon is that impulse anywhere; how little are the circumstances of princes calculated to foster it; how little can it be relied on as an ordinary breakwater to…

Grave and careful men may have domestic virtues on a constitutional throne, but even these fail sometimes, and to imagine that men of more eager temperaments will commonly produce them, is to expect grapes from thorns and figs from…

The masses of Englishmen are not fit for an elective government; if they knew how near they were to it, they would be surprised, and almost tremble.

The greatest of all helps to the substitution of a Cabinet government for a preceding absolute monarchy is the accession of a king favourable to such a government, and pledged to it.

The Prime Minister--the chief on whom everything depends, who must take responsibility if any one is to take it, who must use force if any one is to use it--is not fixed in power.