that sort of public business.  He has to begin by learning painfully and imperfectly what the permanent secretary knows by clear and instant memory.  No doubt a Parliamentary secretary always can, and sometimes does, silence his subordinate by the tacit might of his superior dignity.  He says:  “I do not think there is much in all that.  Many errors were committed at the time you refer to which we need not now discuss.”  A pompous man easily sweeps away the suggestions of those beneath him.  But though a minister may so deal with his subordinate, he cannot so deal with his king.  The social force of admitted superiority by which he overturned his under-secretary is now not with him but against him.  He has no longer to regard the deferential hints of an acknowledged inferior, but to answer the arguments of a superior to whom he has himself to be respectful.  George III. in fact knew the forms of public business as well or better than any statesman of his time.  If, in addition to his capacity as a man of business and to his industry, he had possessed the higher faculties of a discerning states man, his influence would have been despotic.  The old Constitution of England undoubtedly gave a sort of power to the Crown which our present Constitution does not give.  While a majority in Parliament was principally purchased by royal patronage, the king was a party to the bargain either with his Minister or without his Minister.  But even under our present Constitution a monarch like George III., with high abilities, would possess the greatest influence.  It is known to all Europe that in Belgium King Leopold has exercised immense power by the use of such means as I have described.

It is known, too, to every one conversant with the real course of the recent history of England, that Prince Albert really did gain great power in precisely the same way.  He had the rare gifts of a constitutional monarch.  If his life had been prolonged twenty years, his name would have been known to Europe as that of King Leopold is known.  While he lived he was at a disadvantage.  The statesmen who had most power in England were men of far greater experience than himself.  He might, and no doubt did, exercise a great, if not a commanding influence over Lord Malmesbury, but he could not rule Lord Palmerston.  The old statesman who governed England, at an age when most men are unfit to govern their own families, remembered a whole generation of states men who were dead before Prince Albert was born.  The two were of different ages and different natures.  The elaborateness of the German prince—­an elaborateness which has been justly and happily compared with that of Goethe—­was wholly alien to the half-Irish, half-English, statesman.  The somewhat boisterous courage in minor dangers, and the obtrusive use of an always effectual but not always refined, commonplace, which are Lord Palmerston’s defects, doubtless grated on Prince Albert, who had a scholar’s caution and a scholar’s courage.  The facts will be known to our children’s children, though not to us.  Prince Albert did much, but he died ere he could have made his influence felt on a generation of statesmen less experienced than he was, and anxious to learn from him.