As the director of the education of the princes
and princesses, his children, his character and ideas are likely to be
felt hereafter, when those personages shall have become the occupants
of high and responsible stations. The next English sovereign will be
pretty much what he was made by his father; and it is no light thing
to have had the formation of a mind that may be made to act, with
more or less directness, on the condition of two hundred millions of
people.
We know it is the custom to speak of the Government of England as if
there were no other powerful institution in that Empire than the House
of Commons; and that very arrogant gentleman, Mr. John Arthur Roebuck,
has told us, in his usual style, that the crown is a word, and nothing
more. "The crown!" exclaimed the member for Sheffield, in 1858,--"the
crown! it is the House of Commons!" Theoretically Mr. Roebuek is
right, and the British practice conforms to the theory, whenever the
reigning prince is content to receive the theory, and to act upon it:
but all must depend upon that prince's character; and should a British
sovereign resolve to rule as well as to reign, he might give the House
of Commons much trouble, in which the whole Empire would share.
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