Constitutional history -- Great Britain; Constitutional law -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- Politics and government
If the sovereign has a genius for discernment, the aid which he can
give at such a crisis will be great. He will select for his Minister,
and if possible maintain as his Minister, the statesman upon whom the
moderate party will ultimately fix their choice, but for whom at the
outset it is blindly searching; being a man of sense, experience, and
tact, he will discern which is the combination of equilibrium, which is
the section with whom the milder members of the other sections will at
last ally themselves. Amid the shifting transitions of confused
parties, it is probable that he will have many opportunities of
exercising a selection. It will rest with him to call either on A B to
form an administration, or upon X Y, and either may have a chance of
trial. A disturbed state of parties is inconsistent with fixity, but it
abounds in momentary tolerance. Wanting something, but not knowing with
precision what, parties will accept for a brief period anything, to see
whether it may be that unknown something--to see what it will do.
During the long succession of weak Governments which begins with the
resignation of the Duke of Newcastle in 1762 and ends with the
accession of Mr. Pitt in 1784, the vigorous will of George III. was an
agency of the first magnitude. If at a period of complex and protracted
division of parties, such as are sure to occur often and last long in
every enduring Parliamentary government, the extrinsic force of royal
selection were always exercised discreetly, it would be a political
benefit of incalculable value.
But will it be so exercised? A constitutional sovereign must in the
common course of government be a man of but common ability. I am
afraid, looking to the early acquired feebleness of hereditary
dynasties, that we must expect him to be a man of inferior ability.
Theory and experience both teach that the education of a prince can be
but a poor education, and that a royal family will generally have less
ability than other families. What right have we then to expect the
perpetual entail on any family of an exquisite discretion, which if it
be not a sort of genius, is at least as rare as genius?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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