Between a king and an aristocracy there never can be anything like a
sincere attachment, unless the king be content to be recognized as
the first member of the patrician order, to be _primus inter pares_ in
strict good faith, an agent of his class, but not the sovereign of his
kingdom. Kings generally prefer new men to men of established position
and old descent. They have a fondness for low-born favorites, who are
not only cleverer than most aristocrats will condescend to be, but who
recognize a chief in a monarch, and enable him to feel and to enjoy
his superiority when in their company. The hostility that prevails
between the peer and the _parvenu_ is the most natural thing in the
world, and is no more to be wondered at than that between the hare and
the hound. In earlier times the peerage had the best of it, and could
hang up the _parvenus_ with wonderful despatch,--as witness the
fate of Cochrane and his associates, favorites of the third James of
Scotland, who swung in the wind over Lauder Bridge. In later times
brains and intelligence tell in and on the world, and the peers,
having no longer pit and gallows for the punishment of presumptuous
plebeians who dare to get between them and the regal sunshine, must be
content to see those plebeians basking in the royal rays, if they are
not capable of outdoing them in those arts that ever have been found
most useful in the advancement of the interest of courtiers. Hanging
and heading have gone mostly out of date, or the peer would be in more
danger than the upstart.

The Reform Bill has made it much easier for a king of Great Britain to
become a ruler than it was for George III. to carry his point over
the old aristocracy, for it has created a class of voters who could be
easily won over to the aid of a king engaged in a project that should
not injure them, while its success should reduce the power of the
aristocracy. The father of the Reform Bill made a strange mistake