He holds his place, by the essence of the Government, with some uncertainty.

Among a people well-accustomed to such a Government, such a functionary may be bold: he may rely, if not on the Parliament, on the nation which understands and values him.

His power rests too much on human reason, and too little on human instinct.

The traditional strength of the hereditary monarch is at these times of incalculable use.

But the failure of Louis Philippe to use his reserve power as constitutional monarch is the most instructive proof how great that reserve power is.

Parliamentary reform might afterwards have been conceded to instructed opinion, but nothing ought to have been conceded to the mob.

If Louis Philippe had been a fit king to introduce free government, he would have strengthened his Ministers when they were the instruments of order, even if he afterwards discarded them when order was safe, and policy could be discussed.

Such are the principal modes in which the institution of royalty by its august aspect influences mankind, and in the English state of civilisation they are invaluable.

The popular theory of the English Constitution involves two errors as to the sovereign.

This and much else the sovereign once was, but this he is no longer.

She must sign her own death-warrant if the two Houses unanimously send it up to her.

It is a fiction of the past to ascribe to her legislative power.

The American Constitution was made upon a most careful argument, and most of that argument assumes the king to be the administrator of the English Constitution, and an unhereditary substitute for him--viz., a president--to be peremptorily…

Living across the Atlantic, and misled by accepted doctrines, the acute framers of the Federal Constitution, even after the keenest attention, did not perceive the Prime Minister to be the principal executive of the British Constitution…

But in the so-called Government of Lord North, George III. was the Government.

The Minister carried on a war which he disapproved and hated, because it was a war which his sovereign approved and liked.

Inevitably, therefore, the American Convention believed the King, from whom they had suffered, to be the real executive, and not the Minister, from whom they had not suffered.

A few years ago the Queen very wisely attempted to make life peers, and the House of Lords very unwisely, and contrary to its own best interests, refused to admit her claim.

They said her power had decayed into non-existence; she once had it, they allowed, but it had ceased by long disuse.

In the bare superficial theory of free institutions this is undoubtedly a defect.

Every power in a popular Government ought to be known.

The whole notion of such a Government is that the political people--the governing people--rules as it thinks fit.

All the acts of every administration are to be canvassed by it; it is to watch if such acts seem good, and in some manner or other to interpose if they seem not good.

But it cannot judge if it is to be kept in ignorance; it cannot interpose if it does not know.

A secret prerogative is an anomaly--perhaps the greatest of anomalies.