Although one can perceive the general limitations upon the personal influence of the monarch imposed by the conditions under which it is exercised, one can never know how vigorously it is being used at the moment; and, indeed, it is difficult to estimate its actual effect during any comparatively recent period. There is no use in going back beyond the reign of Queen Victoria, to times when the parliamentary system was so imperfectly developed that ministers sometimes gave individual and contrary advice to the King;[43:2] and since the Queen came to the throne very little has been published which throws light upon the subject. From the various memoirs and letters of her ministers almost everything has been eliminated that bears upon the actual influence she exerted. Nevertheless certain facts appear. There can be no doubt that the personal opinions of the monarch were deemed of greater importance at the time of the Queen's accession than they are to-day. Of late years, indeed, many popular writers have tended to neglect the royal influence altogether. With the love of broad generalisation, which is at once valuable and perilous in political philosophy, publicists have been in the habit of speaking of the Queen as a figurehead; but statesmen who have seen the inner life of the cabinet know that the metaphor is inexact. Mr. Gladstone is reported to have said that every treatise on the English government which he had read failed to estimate her actual influence at its true value; and in his "Gleanings of Past Years"[44:1] he remarks, "there is not a doubt that the aggregate of direct influence normally exercised by the sovereign upon the counsels and proceedings of her ministers is considerable in amount, tends to permanence and solidity of action, and confers much benefit on the country." Perhaps at a later period he might have stated this less strongly; and although no final judgment can yet be formed, one may venture an estimate of the Queen's influence in the different branches of the government. [Sidenote: In Domestic Policy.]