ministers were informed that, for the time being, their object was
attained. When, however, the King did understand, or thought that he
did, he was less majestic and more troublesome, and had to be
circumvented in other ways; and a good deal of this history will be
taken up with the circumventions practised by an astute Cabinet upon a
monarch who was brought by accident to imagine that he really did
understand the position of ignominy combined with responsibility in
which the Constitution had placed him.


II

John of Jingalo had been in harness all his life: he had never known
freedom, never been left to find his own feet, never been taught to
think for himself except upon conventional lines; and these had kept him
from ever putting into practice the rudimental self-promptings which
sometimes troubled him. He had been elaborately instructed, but not
educated; his own individual character, that is to say, had not been
allowed to open out; but a sort of traditional character had been slowly
squeezed into him in order to fit him for that conventional acceptance
of a variety of ancient institutions (some moldering, some still
vigorous) which, by a certain official and ruling class of monetarily
interested persons, was considered to be the correct constitutional
attitude. Monarchy, that is to say, had been interpreted to him by those
who sucked the greatest amount of social prestige and material benefit
from its present conditions as a "going concern"; and in that imposed
interpretation deportment came first, initiative last, and originality
nowhere at all.

In many respects, indeed, his training had been like that of a young