was not responsible, she could under the constitution have enjoyed that popular regard and veneration of which she died in unchallenged possession.
The practical anomalies incident to the position of a constitutional sovereign who is in theory invested with all the semblance of power, but is denied any of its reality or responsibility, were brought into strong relief by the queen's personal character and the circumstances of her life. Possessed of no commanding strength of intellect but of an imperious will, she laboriously studied every detail of government business, and on every question of policy or administration she formed for herself decided opinions, to which she Her attitude to business of state. obstinately adhered, pressing them to business pertinaciously on the notice of her ministers. No sovereign of England ever applied himself to the work of government with greater ardour or greater industry. None was a more voluminous correspondent with the officers of state. Although the result of her energy could not under the constitution be commensurate with its intensity, her activity was in the main advantageous. The detachment from party interests or prepossessions, which her elevated and isolated position came to foster in her, gave her the opportunity of detecting in ministerial schemes any national ; peril to which her ministers might at times 'be blinded by the spirit of faction, and her persistence occasionally led to some modification of policy in the direction that she urged with happy result. Her length of sovereignty, too, rendered in course of years her personal experiences of government far wider and far closer than that of any of her ministers, and she could recall much past procedure of which she was the only surviving witness. Absolutely frank and trustful in the expression of her views to her ministers, she had at the same time the tact to acquiesce with outward grace, however strong her private objections, in any verdict of the popular vote, against which appeal was seen to be hopeless. In the two instances of the Irish church bill of 1869 and the franchise extension bill of 1884 she made personal efforts, in the interest of the general peace of the country, to discourage an agitation which she felt to be doomed to failure. While, therefore, she shrank from no exertion whereby she might influence personally the machinery of the state, she was always conscious of her powerlessness to enforce her opinions or her wishes. With the principle of the constitution which imposed on the sovereign the obligation of giving formal assent to every final decision of his advisers however privately obnoxious it might be to him, she had the practical wisdom to avoid any manner of conflict.
Partly owing to her respect for the constitution in which she was educated, partly The decay of royal power. owing to her personal idiosyncrasies and partly owing to the growth of democratic principles among her people, the active force of such prerogatives as the crown possessed at her accession was, in spite of her toil and energy diminished rather than increased during her reign. Parliament deliberately dissolved almost all the personal authority that the crown had hitherto exercised over the army. The prerogative of mercy was practically abrogated when the home secretary was in effect made by statute absolute controller of its operations. The distribution of titles and honours became in a larger degree than in former days an integral part of the machinery of party politics. The main outward signs of the sovereign's formal supremacy in the state lost, moreover, by her own acts, their old distinctness. Conservative as was her attitude to minor matters of etiquette, she was self-willed enough to break with large precedents if the breach consorted with her private predilections. During the last thirty-nine years of her reign she opened parliament in person only seven times, and did not prorogue it once after 1854. It had been the rule of her predecessors regularly to attend the legislature at the opening and close of each session, unless they were disabled by illness, and her defiance of this practice tended to weaken her semblance of hold on the central force of government. Another innovation in the usages of the monarchy, for which the queen, with a view Innovations in royal practice. to increasing her private convenience, was personally responsible, had a like effect. Her three immediate predecessors on the throne never left the country during their reigns. Only three earlier sovereigns of modern times occasionally crossed the seas while wearing the crown, and they were represented at home in their absence by a regent or by lords-justices, to whom were temporarily delegated the symbols of sovereign power, while a responsible minister was the sovereign's constant companion abroad. Queen Victoria ignored nearly the whole of this procedure. She repeatedly visited foreign countries ; no regent nor lords-justices were called to office in her absence ; she was at times unaccompanied by a responsible minister, and she often travelled privately and informally under an assumed title of inferior
