The more we study the nature of Cabinet government, the more we shall shrink from exposing at a vital instant its delicate machinery to a blow from a casual, incompetent, and perhaps semi-insane outsider.  The preponderant probability is that on a great occasion the Premier and Parliament will really be wiser than the king.  The Premier is sure to be able, and is sure to be most anxious to decide well; if he fail to decide, he loses his place, though through all blunders the king keeps his; the judgment of the man naturally very discerning is sharpened by a heavy penalty, from which the judgment of the man by nature much less intelligent is exempt.  Parliament, too, is for the most part a sound, careful and practical body of men.  Principle shows that the power of dismissing a Government with which Parliament is satisfied, and of dissolving that Parliament upon an appeal to the people, is not a power which a common hereditary monarch will in the long run be able beneficially to exercise.

Accordingly this power has almost, if not quite, dropped out of the reality of our Constitution.  Nothing, perhaps, would more surprise the English people than if the Queen by a coup d’etat and on a sudden destroyed a Ministry firm in the allegiance and secure of a majority in Parliament.  That power, indisputably, in theory, belongs to her; but it has passed so far away from the minds of men that it would terrify them, if she used it, like a volcanic eruption from Primrose Hill.  The last analogy to it is not one to be coveted as a precedent.  In 1835 William IV. dismissed an administration which, though disorganised by the loss of its leader in the Commons, was an existing Government, had a Premier in the Lords ready to go on, and a leader in the Commons willing to begin.  The king fancied that public opinion was leaving the Whigs and going over to the Tories, and he thought he should accelerate the transition by ejecting the former.  But the event showed that he misjudged.  His perception indeed was right; the English people were wavering in their allegiance to the Whigs, who had no leader that touched the popular heart, none in whom Liberalism could personify itself and become a passion—­who besides were a body long used to opposition, and therefore making blunders in office—­who were borne to power by a popular impulse which they only half comprehended, and perhaps less than half shared.  But the king’s policy was wrong; he impeded the reaction instead of aiding it.  He forced on a premature Tory Government, which was as unsuccessful as all wise people perceived that it must be.  The popular distaste to the Whigs was as yet but incipient, inefficient; and the intervention of the Crown was advantageous to them, because it looked inconsistent with the liberties of the people.  And in so far as William IV. was right in detecting an incipient change of opinion, he did but detect an erroneous change.  What was desirable was the prolongation