to meet either this case, or any other form of political
miscarriage or misdeed. It seems as though the Genius of the Nation
would not stain its lips by so much as the mere utterance of such a
word; nor can we put this state of facts into language more justly than
by saying that the Constitution would regard the default of the Monarch,
with his heirs, as the chaos of the State, and would simply trust to the
inherent energies of the several orders of society for its legal
reconstruction.

The original authorship of the representative system is commonly
accorded to the English race. More clear and indisputable is its title
to the great political discovery of Constitutional Kingship. And a very
great discovery it is. Whether it is destined, in any future day, to
minister in its integrity to the needs of the New World, it may be hard
to say. In that important branch of its utility which is negative, it
completely serves the purposes of the many strong and rising Colonies of
Great Britain, and saves them all the perplexities and perils attendant
upon successions to the headship of the Executive. It presents to them,
as it does to us, the symbol of unity, and the object of all our
political veneration, which we love to find rather in a person, than in
an abstract entity, like the State. But the Old World, at any rate,
still is, and may long continue, to constitute the living centre of
civilization, and to hold the primacy of the race; and of this great
society the several members approximate, in a rapidly extending series,
to the practice and idea of Constitutional Kingship. The chief States of
Christendom, with only two exceptions, have, with more or less
distinctness, adopted it. Many of them, both great and small, have
thoroughly assimilated it to their system. The autocracy of Russia, and
the Republic of France, each of them congenial to the present wants of
the respective countries, may yet, hereafter, gravitate toward the
principle, which elsewhere has developed so large an attractive power.
Should the current, that has prevailed through the last half-century,
maintain its direction and its strength, another fifty years may see all
Europe adhering to the theory and practice of this beneficent
institution, and peaceably sailing in the wake of England.

No doubt, if tried by an ideal standard, it is open to criticism.
Aristotle and Plato, nay, Bacon, and perhaps Leibnitz, would have
scouted it as a scientific abortion.