talked of compromise, grew valiant again; while young Whig heroes jumped
upon club-room tables, and delivered fiery invectives. Emboldened by these
demonstrations, the House of Commons met in great force, and passed a vote
which struck, without disguise, at all rival powers in the State;
virtually announced its supremacy; revealed the forlorn position of the
House of Lords under the new arrangement; and seemed to lay for ever the
fluttering phantom of regal prerogative.

It was on the 9th of May that Lord Lyndhurst was with the King, and on the
15th all was over. Nothing in parliamentary history so humiliating as the
funeral oration delivered that day by the Duke of Wellington over the old
constitution, that, modelled on the Venetian, had governed England since
the accession of the House of Hanover. He described his Sovereign, when
his Grace first repaired to his Majesty, as in a state of the greatest
'difficulty and distress,' appealing to his never-failing loyalty to
extricate him from his trouble and vexation. The Duke of Wellington,
representing the House of Lords, sympathises with the King, and pledges
his utmost efforts for his Majesty's relief. But after five days'
exertion, this man of indomitable will and invincible fortunes, resigns
the task in discomfiture and despair, and alleges as the only and
sufficient reason for his utter and hopeless defeat, that the House of
Commons had come to a vote which ran counter to the contemplated exercise
of the prerogative.

From that moment power passed from the House of Lords to another assembly.
But if the peers have ceased to be magnificoes, may it not also happen
that the Sovereign may cease to be a Doge? It is not impossible that the
political movements of our time, which seem on the surface to have a
tendency to democracy, may have in reality a monarchical bias.