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  Hanging and heading have gone mostly out of date, or the peer would be in more danger than the upstart.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 as to the character of that measure.  “I hope,” said the old Tory and Pittite, Lord Sidmouth, to him, “God will forgive you on account of this bill:  I don’t think I can.”  “Mark my words,” was Earl Grey’s answer,—­“within two years you will find that we have become unpopular for having brought forward the most aristocratic measure that ever was proposed in Parliament.”  The great Whig statesman was but half right.  The Whigs became unpopular within the time named, but it was for very different reasons from that assigned by Earl Grey in advance for their fall in the people’s favor.  The Reform Bill, instead of proving an aristocratic measure, has wellnigh rendered aristocratical government impossible in England; and as a democracy in that country is as much out of the question as a well-ordered monarchy is in America, a return to a true regal government would seem to be the only course left for England, if she desires to have a strong government.  When the Duke of Wellington, seeing the breaking up of the old system because of the triumph of the Whig measure, asked the question, “How is the King’s government to be carried on?” he meant, “How will it be possible to maintain the old aristocratical system of party-government?”