These Speeches possess a double interest, as the literary compositions and the political manifestoes of the most eminent statesmen of the Nation. To me it has been a pleasant occupation dipping into them, here and there, in the volumes of _Hansard_ and extracting a few notes personal to the Sovereign, or references to some of the great political issues of the latter half of the nineteenth century and the opening decades of the twentieth. There is a popular supposition that “the King’s Speeches” are the worst possible models of “the King’s English.” The condemnation is too sweeping. Unquestionably there are Speeches with sentences doubtful in grammar, as well as feeble and pointless. The writing of most of them, however, is pure and concise. It is possible to trace in them the characteristic styles and different moods of mind of the Prime Ministers by whom they were written. Disraeli’s Speeches stand put as the most ornate. He used more rhetoric than other Premiers deemed to be necessary or desirable. In one there is a picture of “the elephants of Asia carrying the artillery of Europe over the mountains of Rasselas”; in another the founding of British Columbia calls up a vision of her Majesty’s dominions in North America “peopled by an unbroken chain, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, of a loyal and industrious population of subjects of the British Crown.” Nothing could be more effective from an elocutionary point of view. The “Speeches” of Lord Melbourne trembled at times on the verge of puerility. Palmerston’s waved the Union Jack in relation to foreign affairs, and his off-hand “Ha, ha!” was heard in references to things domestic. Gladstone and Salisbury drafted “Speeches” equally noted for freshness and strength of expression. Lloyd George composed the longest and most comprehensive and possibly the most historic “Speeches”—those that immediately followed the conclusion of the World War. They were obviously addressed not so much to Lords and Commons as to the people at large. The early age at which I am called to the sovereignty of this Kingdom renders it a more imperative duty that under Divine Providence I should place my reliance upon your cordial co-operation, and upon the loyal affection of all my people. I ascend the Throne with a deep sense of the responsibility which is imposed upon me; but I am supported by the consciousness of my own right intentions, and by my dependence upon the protection of Almighty God.