Produced by Cornell University, Joshua Hutchinson, Leonard Johnson
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
The sudden death of Prince Albert caused profound regret, and theRoyal Family of Britain had the sincere sympathies of the civilizedworld on that sad occasion. The Prince Consort was a man of brillianttalents, and those talents he had cultivated with true Germanthoroughness. His knowledge was extensive, various, and accurate.There was no affectation in his regard for literature, art, andscience; for he felt toward them all as it was natural that aneducated gentleman of decided abilities, and who had stronglypronounced intellectual tastes, should feel. Though he could not besaid to hold any official position, his place in the British Empirewas one of the highest that could be held by a person not born to thesceptre. His knowledge of affairs, and the confidence that was placedin him by the sovereign, made it impossible that he should not bea man of much influence, no matter whether he was recognized by theConstitution or not. As the director of the education of the princesand princesses, his children, his character and ideas are likely to befelt hereafter, when those personages shall have become the occupantsof high and responsible stations. The next English sovereign will bepretty much what he was made by his father; and it is no light thingto have had the formation of a mind that may be made to act, withmore or less directness, on the condition of two hundred millions ofpeople.
We know it is the custom to speak of the Government of England as ifthere were no other powerful institution in that Empire than the Houseof Commons; and that very arrogant gentleman, Mr. John Arthur Roebuck,has told us, in his usual style, that the crown is a word, and nothingmore. "The crown!" exclaimed the member for Sheffield, in 1858,—"thecrown! it is the House of Commons!" Theoretically Mr. Roebuek isright, and the British practice conforms to the theory, whenever thereigning prince is content to receive the theory, and to act upon it:but all must depend upon that prince's character; and should a Britishsovereign resolve to rule as well as to reign, he might give the Houseof Commons much trouble, in which the whole Empire would share. TheHouse of Commons was never stronger than it was in the latter part of1760. For more than seventy years it had been the first institution inthe State, and for forty-six years the interest of the sovereign hadbeen to maintain its supremacy. The king was a cipher. Yet a newking had but to appear to change everything. George III. ascended thethrone with the determination not to be the slave of any minister,himself the slave of Parliament; and from the day that he became kingto the day that the decline of his faculties enforced his retirement,his personal power was everywhere felt, and his personal charactereverywhere impressed itself on the British world, and to no ordinaryextent on other countries. George III. was not a great man, and it hasbeen argued that his mind was never really sound; and yet of all menwho then lived, and far more than either Washington or Napoleon, hegave direction and color and tone to all public events, and to nota little of private life, and much of his work will have everlastingendurance. He did not supersede the House of Commons, but he would notbe the simple vizier of that many-headed sultan, which for the mostpart became his humble tool. Yet he was not a popula