“... Since the settlement of that constitution, now nearly two centuries ago, England has never experienced a revolution, though there is no country in which there has been so continuous and such considerable change. How is this? Because the wisdom of your forefathers placed the prize of supreme power without the sphere of human passions. Whatever the struggle of parties, whatever the strife of factions, whatever the excitement and exaltation of the public mind, there has always been something in this country round which all classes and powers could rally, representing the majesty of the law, the administration of justice, and involving at the same time the security for every man’s rights and the fountain of honour.” And then, after emphasising the non-partisanship of the Crown, the very end which Bolingbroke forecasted at the time when an unemancipated King was condemned to be a party man, he led the discussion to the conventional views of the King being not only outside politics, but outside affairs. “... I know it will be said that, however beautiful in theory, the personal influence of the Sovereign is now absorbed in the responsibility of the minister. I think you will find there is a great fallacy in this view. The principles of the English Constitution do not contemplate the absence of personal influence on the part of the Sovereign; and if they did, the principles of human nature would prevent the fulfilment of such a theory.” He is here in complete accord with Peel. “Even,” he says, “with average ability, it is impossible not to perceive that such a Sovereign must soon attain a great mass of political information and political experience. Information and experience, ... whether they are possessed by a Sovereign or by the humblest of his subjects, are irresistible in life.... The longer the reign, the influence of that Sovereign must proportionately increase. All the illustrious statesmen who served his youth disappear. A new generation of public servants rises up. There is a critical conjuncture in affairs--a moment of perplexity and peril. Then it is that the Sovereign can appeal to a similar state of affairs that occurred perhaps thirty years before. When all are in doubt among his servants, he can quote the advice that was given by the illustrious men of his early years, and though he may maintain himself within the strictest limits of the Constitution, who can suppose, when such information and such suggestions are made by the most exalted person in the country, that they can be without effect? No; ... a minister who could venture to treat such influence with indifference would not be a Constitutional minister, but an arrogant idiot....” And in another speech of the same year, after insisting that English attachment to English institutions was no “political superstition,” but sprang from a resolve that “_the principles of liberty, of order, of law, and of religion ought not to