Now, not the least service which Queen Victoria rendered to her people, as Lord Salisbury said in the eloquent tribute which he paid to her memory in the House of Lords, was her constant and rigorous supervision over public affairs. The people saw only the result, the finished policy, associated in their minds with the personality of some popular Minister. What they did not know was how far that policy had been modified, perhaps even completely recast, by the sagacious counsels of their Sovereign, or what pitfalls had been avoided by her warnings, frankly offered, yet never obstinately pressed upon the chosen representatives of her beloved subjects. “Let us have the Queen’s opinion,” said Lord Clarendon, one of the shrewdest of her Foreign Ministers. “It is always worth hearing, even if you do not agree with it.” And Lord Kimberley confessed that when he was at the Foreign Office he had a difference of opinion with Queen Victoria in regard to an important matter. After discussion Her Majesty, though unconvinced, yielded to her Minister; but the event proved that she was right and the Minister wrong. Such glimpses of the inner working of the great machine of Government illustrate for us the path which King Edward has marked out for himself. Our polity has been called a crowned Republic--a phrase which, in spite of its exaggeration, expresses tersely the fact that the constitutional Sovereign of this realm has constantly to reconcile duties which seem far apart, and even sometimes inconsistent. King Edward succeeds to a Monarchy possessing great theoretical powers, which, however, have been by the slow growth of custom practically restricted to the exercise of an indirect, advisory influence on State affairs, though, as Mr. Balfour said in the House of Commons, this influence shows a tendency to increase rather than to diminish. Queen Victoria was once compared to a Permanent Under-Secretary of State, who sees Ministers come and go, succeed and fail, but himself remains. The comparison is not a bad one, except that the work of a permanent Under-Secretary is confined to one department, whereas the Sovereign is concerned, not only with every branch of the public service, but also with many matters of importance which cannot pass through the hands of any State department.