It is very important to see that a good administration can be started without a sovereign, because some colonial statesmen have doubted it.  “I can conceive,” it has been said, “that a Ministry would go on well enough without a governor when it was launched, but I do not see how to launch it.”  It has even been suggested that a colony which broke away from England, and had to form its own Government, might not unwisely choose a governor for life, and solely trusted with selecting Ministers, something like the Abbe Sieyes’s grand elector.  But the introduction of such an officer into such a colony would in fact be the voluntary erection of an artificial encumbrance to it.  He would inevitably be a party man.  The most dignified post in the State must be an object of contest to the great sections into which every active political community is divided.  These parties mix in everything and meddle in everything; and they neither would nor could permit the most honoured and conspicuous of all stations to be filled, except at their pleasure.  They know, too, that the grand elector, the great chooser of Ministries, might be, at a sharp crisis, either a good friend or a bad enemy.  The strongest party would select some one who would be on their side when he had to take a side, who would incline to them when he did incline, who should be a constant auxiliary to them and a constant impediment to their adversaries.  It is absurd to choose by contested party election an impartial chooser of Ministers.

But it is during the continuance of a Ministry, rather than at its creation, that the functions of the sovereign will mainly interest most persons, and that most people will think them to be of the gravest importance.  I own I am myself of that opinion.  I think it may be shown that the post of sovereign over an intelligent and political people under a constitutional monarchy is the post which a wise man would choose above any other—­where he would find the intellectual impulses best stimulated and the worst intellectual impulses best controlled.

On the duties of the Queen during an administration we have an invaluable fragment from her own hand.  In 1851 Louis Napoleon had his coup d’etat:  in 1852 Lord John Russell had his—­he expelled Lord Palmerston.  By a most instructive breach of etiquette he read in the House a royal memorandum on the duties of his rival.  It is as follows:  “The Queen requires, first, that Lord Palmerston will distinctly state what he proposes in a given case, in order that the Queen may know as distinctly to what she is giving her royal sanction.  Secondly, having once given her sanction to such a measure that it be not arbitrarily altered or modified by the Minister.  Such an act she must consider as failing in sincerity towards the Crown, and justly to be visited by the exercise of her constitutional right of dismissing that Minister.  She expects to be kept informed of what passes between him and Foreign Ministers before important decisions are taken based upon that intercourse; to receive the foreign despatches in good time; and to have the drafts for her approval sent to her in sufficient time to make herself acquainted with their contents before they must be sent off.”