be entrusted to individual opinion, or to the caprice and passion of multitudes, but should be embodied in a form of permanence and power_,” he also remarked: “... We associate with the Monarchy the ideas which it represents--the majesty of law, the administration of justice, the fountain of mercy and honour.” He might, in fitness with his other pronouncements, have added the ideas of loyalty and of leadership. Again, in 1871, a moment of republican revival, adverting to the superintendence of public business by the Sovereign, he insisted that “... there is not a dispatch received from abroad, or sent from this country abroad, which is not submitted to the Queen.... Those Cabinet Councils, ... which are necessarily the scene of anxious and important deliberations, are reported and communicated, ... and they often call from her critical remarks requiring considerable attention.... No person likely to administer the affairs of this country would treat the suggestions of Her Majesty with indifference, for at this moment there is probably no person living who has such complete control over the political conditions.... But, although there never was a Sovereign who would less arrogate any power or prerogative which the Constitution does not authorise, so I will say there never was one more wisely jealous of those which the Constitution has allotted to her, because she believes they are for the welfare of her people.” It is by its constitutional prerogatives that, in the first place, the Crown can assert its lawful influence. They confer on him a deciding power in many spheres. Of these prerogatives Disraeli was a champion; and Mr. Gladstone upheld them in at least two interesting discussions among his “Gleanings.” To defer the most obvious among these, the King’s consultative faculty, “the power,” to cite Mr. Gladstone, “which gives the monarch an undoubted _locus standi_ in all the deliberations of a Government, ... remains as it was.” In olden days this was effected openly in form. Nor should it be forgotten that whenever a Ministry is changed, again to cite Mr. Gladstone, “the whole power of the State periodically returns into the royal hands.” In 1852, when Lord Derby reluctantly consented to assume office with a minority, there were forty-eight hours when, as Disraeli pointed out in a speech of 1873, “the Queen was without a Government.” Then take the royal prerogative of dissolution. This right enabled, in 1852, that very administration to perform the work of the session, and to carry the supplies before appealing to the constituencies on its right to exist. It is in effect a right of appeal by the Sovereign through or even against (should he deem it their duty to take the national voice) his ministers to the country; and in any crucial instance it forms the best check to faction of which our Constitution admits.