never speaks their peculiar dialect, or who speaks it condescendingly, and with an “aside;” who respects their accumulated prejudices as the “potential energies” on which he subsists, but who despises them while he lives by them. Years ago Mr. Disraeli called Sir Robert Peel’s Ministry—the last Conservative Ministry that had real power—“an organised hypocrisy,” so much did the ideas of its “head” differ from the sensations of its “tail.” Probably he now comprehends—if he did not always—that the air of Downing Street brings certain ideas to those who live there, and that the hard, compact prejudices of opposition are soon melted and mitigated in the great gulf stream of affairs. Lord Palmerston, too, was a typical example of a leader lulling, rather than arousing, assuaging rather than acerbating the minds of his followers. But though the composing effect of close difficulties will commonly make a premier cease to be an immoderate partisan, yet a partisan to some extent he must be, and a violent one he may be; and in that case he is not a good person to check the party. When the leading sect (so to speak) in Parliament is doing what the nation do not like, an instant appeal ought to be registered and Parliament ought to be dissolved. But a zealot of a premier will not appeal; he will follow his formulae; he will believe he is doing good service when, perhaps, he is but pushing to unpopular consequences the narrow maxims of an inchoate theory. At such a minute a constitutional king—such as Leopold the First was, and as Prince Albert might have been—is invaluable; he can and will prevent Parliament from hurting the nation.
