Consider a little further the question of loyalty. I say that in 1837 among the mass of the people, even among the better class, there was none. Indeed the loyalty of the better sort had suffered for more than a hundred years many grievous knocks and discouragements. The first two Georges, good and great in official language, were aliens; they spoke a foreign tongue; they saw little of the people; yet they were tolerated, and even popular in a way, because they steadfastly upheld the Constitution and the Protestant religion. The third George began well; he was a Prince always of high moral character, strong principle, and great sincerity. Since Edward the Confessor or Henry the Sixth there had been no Sovereign so virtuous. But his constant endeavours to extend the Royal Prerogative, his obstinate treatment of the American Provinces against the impassioned and reiterated entreaties of Chatham, Burke, and the City of London, his stubborn refusal to hear of Parliamentary Reform, his desire to govern by a few families, his long affliction and seclusion, destroyed most of the personal affection with which he began. His successor, the hero of a thousand caricatures, a discredited voluptuary, never commanded the least respect except in official addresses; nor did William the Fourth, old, without force or character, without dignity. Wherefore, in 1837, when the cry of “Our Young Queen” was raised, it met with little response from the great mass of the people. [Illustration: THE DUKE OF KENT] In its place there was an eager looking forward to Revolution and a Republic. There can be no doubt that in the thirties and the forties there were many who looked forward to a Republic as actually certain; that is to say, as certain as the next day’s sun. The Chartists numbered many strong Republicans in their body, though the Law of Treason forbade them to put forward the establishment of a Republic as one of their aims. There were newspapers, however, which spoke openly of a Republic as a matter of time only. The great European upheaval of 1848, save for the miserable _fiasco_ of the Chartist meeting, left this country undisturbed. Not a single Republican rising was attempted in Great Britain. Those living men who can remember thirty or forty years back, can very well recall the Republican ideas which were floating about in men’s minds. Where are those ideas now? They are gone; they exist no longer, save, perhaps, among a very small class. I do not know even if they have an organ of their own. The reason is, that as the Chartist movement--the agitation for Reform--was due mainly to the widespread distress and the discontent of the country, so, when the distress vanished, the desire for change vanished also. [Illustration: THE DUCHESS OF KENT]