benefit, but in most cases the wisest course for the monarch would be
inaction.

Now the sovereign has three rights, the right to be consulted, the right
to encourage, and the right to warn. In the course of a long reign a
king would acquire the same advantage which a permanent under-secretary
has over his superior, the parliamentary secretary. But whenever there
is discussion between a king and the minister, the king's opinion would
have its full weight, and the minister's would not. The whole position
is evidently attractive to an intelligent, sagacious and original
sovereign. But we cannot expect a lineal series of such kings. Neither
theory nor experience warrant any such expectations. The only fit
material for a constitutional king is a prince who begins early to
reign, who in his youth is superior to pleasure, is willing to labour,
and has by nature a genius for discretion.


_III.--The House of Lords and the House of Commons_


The use of the order of the lords in its dignified capacity is very
great. The mass of men require symbols, and nobility is the symbol of
mind. The order also prevents the rule of wealth. The Anglo-Saxon has a
natural instinctive admiration of wealth for its own sake; but from the
worst form of this our aristocracy preserves us, and the reverence for
rank is not so base as the reverence for money, or the still worse
idolatry of office. But as the picturesqueness of society diminishes,
aristocracy loses the single instrument of its peculiar power.

The House of Lords as an assembly has always been not the first, but the