respect to the conduct of foreign relations. The
extent of such influence cannot be made a matter of record, because
the ministers are in effect bound not to publish the fact that a
decision upon a matter of state has been taken at the sovereign's
instance. It is familiarly known, however--to cite a recent
illustration--that Edward VII. approved and encouraged the Haldane
army reforms, that he sought to dissuade the House of Lords from the
rejection of the Lloyd-George budget of 1909, and that he discouraged
the raising, in any form, of the issue of the reconstitution of the
upper chamber. In other words while, as a constitutional monarch
content to remain in the background of political controversy, the late
king not only had opinions but did not hesitate to make them known;
and in the shaping and execution of the Liberal programme his advice
was at times a factor of importance.[77]

[Footnote 76: The English Constitution (rev. ed.),
143.]

[Footnote 77: The most satisfactory estimate of the
political and governmental activities of Edward
VII. is contained in Mr. Sidney Lee's memoir of the
king, printed in the Dictionary of National
Biography, Second Supplement (London and New York,
1912), I., 546-610.]

*60. Why Monarchy Survives.*--Monarchy in Great Britain is a solid (p. 059)
and, so far as can be foreseen, a lasting reality. Throughout the
tempestuous years 1909-1911, when the nation was aroused as it had not
been in generations upon the issue of constitutional reform, and when
every sort of project was being warmly advocated and as warmly
opposed, without exception every suggested programme took for granted
the perpetuation of the monarchy as an integral part of the
governmental system. In the general bombardment to which the
hereditary House of Lords was subjected hereditary kingship wholly
escaped. The reasons are numerous and complex. They arise in part,
though by no means so largely as is sometimes imagined, from the fact
that monarchy in England is a venerable institution and the innate
conservatism of the Englishman, while permitting him from time to time
to regulate and modify it, restrains him from doing anything so
revolutionary as to abolish it. That upon certain conspicuous
occasions, as in the Cromwellian period, and again in 1688, kingship
has owed