This was the result of what I insist on tediously, but what is most necessary to insist on, for it is a cardinal particular in the whole topic.  Many of the English people—­the higher and more educated portion—­had come to comprehend the nature of constitutional government, but the mass did not comprehend it.  They looked to the sovereign as the Government, and to the sovereign only.  These were carried forward by the magic of the aristocracy and principally by the influence of the great Whig families with their adjuncts.  Without that aid reason or liberty would never have held them.

Though the rule of Parliament was definitely established in 1688, yet the mode of exercising that rule has since changed.  At first Parliament did not know how to exercise it; the organisation of parties and the appointment of Cabinets by parties grew up in the manner Macaulay has described so well.  Up to the latest period the sovereign was supposed, to a most mischievous extent, to interfere in the choice of the persons to be Ministers.  When George III. finally became insane, in 1810, every one believed that George IV., on assuming power as Prince Regent, would turn out Mr. Perceval’s Government and empower Lord Grey or Lord Grenville, the Whig leaders, to form another.  The Tory Ministry was carrying on a successful war—­a war of existence—­against Napoleon; but in the people’s minds, the necessity at such an occasion for an unchanged Government did not outweigh the fancy that George IV. was a Whig.  And a Whig it is true he had been before the French Revolution, when he lived an indescribable life in St. James’s Street with Mr. Fox.  But Lord Grey and Lord Grenville were rigid men, and had no immoral sort of influence.  What liberalism of opinion the Regent ever had was frightened out of him (as of other people) by the Reign of Terror.  He felt, according to the saying of another monarch, that “he lived by being a royalist”.  It soon appeared that he was most anxious to retain Mr. Perceval, and that he was most eager to quarrel with the Whig Lords.  As we all know, he kept the Ministry whom he found in office; but that it should have been thought he could then change them, is a significant example how exceedingly modern our notions of the despotic action of Parliament in fact are.

By the steps of the struggle thus rudely mentioned (and by others which I have no room to speak of, nor need I), the change which in the Greek cities was effected both in appearance and in fact, has been effected in England, though in reality only, and not in outside.  Here, too, the appendages of a monarchy have been converted into the essence of a republic; only here, because of a more numerous heterogeneous political population, it is needful to keep the ancient show while we secretly interpolate the new reality.

This long and curious history has left its trace on almost every part of our present political condition; its effects lie at the root of many of our most important controversies; and because these effects are not rightly perceived, many of these controversies are misconceived.