It has been said, not truly, but with a possible approximation to truth, “That in 1802 every hereditary monarch was insane”.  Is it likely that this sort of monarchs will be able to catch the exact moment when, in opposition to the wishes of a triumphant Ministry, they ought to dissolve Parliament?  To do so with efficiency they must be able to perceive that the Parliament is wrong, and that the nation knows it is wrong.  Now to know that Parliament is wrong, a man must be, if not a great statesman, yet a considerable statesman—­a statesman of some sort.  He must have great natural vigour, for no less will comprehend the hard principles of national policy.  He must have incessant industry, for no less will keep him abreast with the involved detail to which those principles relate, and the miscellaneous occasions to which they must be applied.  A man made common by nature, and made worse by life, is not likely to have either; he is nearly sure not to be both clever and industrious.  And a monarch in the recesses of a palace, listening to a charmed flattery unbiassed by the miscellaneous world, who has always been hedged in by rank, is likely to be but a poor judge of public opinion.  He may have an inborn tact for finding it out; but his life will never teach it him, and will probably enfeeble it in him.

But there is a still worse case, a case which the life of George III.—­which is a sort of museum of the defects of a constitutional king—­suggests at once.  The Parliament may be wiser than the people, and yet the king may be of the same mind with the people.  During the last years of the American war, the Premier, Lord North, upon whom the first responsibility rested, was averse to continuing it, and knew it could not succeed.  Parliament was much of the same mind; if Lord North had been able to come down to Parliament with a peace in his hand, Parliament would probably have rejoiced, and the nation under the guidance of Parliament, though saddened by its losses, probably would have been satisfied.  The opinion of that day was more like the American opinion of the present day than like our present opinion.  It was much slower in its formation than our opinion now, and obeyed much more easily sudden impulses from the central administration.  If Lord North had been able to throw the undivided energy and the undistracted authority of the executive Government into the excellent work of making a peace and carrying a peace, years of bloodshed might have been spared, and an entail of enmity cut off that has not yet run out.  But there was a power behind the Prime Minister; George III. was madly eager to continue the war, and the nation—­not seeing how hopeless the strife was, not comprehending the lasting antipathy which their obstinacy was creating—­ignorant, dull and helpless—­was ready to go on too.  Even if Lord North had wished to make peace, and had persuaded Parliament accordingly, all his work would have been useless; a superior power could and would have appealed from a wise and pacific Parliament to a sullen and warlike nation.  The check which our Constitution finds for the special vices of our Parliament was misused to curb its wisdom.