Now here I confess I cannot go along with you, and the difference between us is a very material one; for if the monarch be not an indispensable element in our constitutional mechanism, and if we can secure all the advantages of that mechanism without him, I have drawn the wrong moral from the facts. You say that the system the Red Republicans would have established in France would have been the nearest possible approach to our own. It is possible, I think, that we may be tending towards the like issues. It is possible, perhaps probable, that as the House of Commons becomes more democratic in its composition, and consequently more arrogant in its bearing, it may cast off the shackles which the other powers of the State impose on its self-will, and even utterly abolish them; but I venture to believe that those who last till that day comes, will find that they are living under a very different constitution from that which we now enjoy; that they have traversed the interval which separates a temperate and cautious administration of public affairs resting on the balance of powers and interests, from a reckless and overbearing tyranny based on the caprices and passions of an absolute and irresponsible body. You talk somewhat lightly of the check of the Crown, although you acknowledge its utility. But is it indeed so light a matter, even as our constitution now works? Is it a light matter that the Crown should have the power of dissolving Parliament; in other words, of deposing the tyrant at will? Is it a light matter that for several months in each year the House of Commons should be in abeyance, during which period the nation looks on Ministers not as slaves of Parliament but servants of the Crown? Is it a light matter that there should still be such respect for the monarchical principle, that the servants of that visible entity yclept the Crown are enabled to carry on much of the details of internal and foreign administration without consulting Parliament, and even without its cognisance? Or do you suppose that the Red Republicans, when they advocated the nomination of a Ministry of the House of Assembly with a revocable _mandat_, intended to create a Frankenstein endowed with powers in some cases paramount to, and in others running parallel with, the authority of the omnipotent body to which it owed its existence? My own impression is, that they meant a set of delegates to be appointed, who should exercise certain functions of legislative initiation and executive patronage so long as they reflected clearly, in the former the passions, and in the latter the interests of the majority for the time being, and no longer.