g a succession of revolutions alternating with civil war.
Somers and Godolphin, Walpole and Chatham, Pitt and Shelburne, Eldon and
Canning, Grey and Liverpool, Wellington and Durham, Melbourne and
Palmerston, were all of this aristocratic class, though of varying
degrees in rank and title and with varied views of politics. They filled
the chief places in the Government of the country during a period when
the people were being slowly trained in the perception and practice of
constitutional and religious liberty. At the best such processes are
difficult and often prove bitter tests of national endurance; and it was
well for Great Britain that the two centuries under review produced a
class of able and cultured men who--though naturally aristocratic at
heart--were upon the whole honestly bent upon furthering the best
interests of the masses. And this despite the mistakes of a Danby or a
North.

Yet, even towards the close of this period of preparation, popular
government, as now practised, was neither understood by the immediate
predecessors of Queen Victoria, nor by the nobles who presided over the
changing administrations of the day. It was not clearly comprehended by
Liberals like Russell and Grey; it was feared by Wellington and the
Tories as being republican and revolutionary; it was dreaded by many who
could hardly be called Tories and who, in the condition of things then
prevalent, could scarcely even be termed Loyalists. Writing in 1812,
Charles Knight, the historian, described the fierce national struggle of
the previous twenty years with Napoleon and expressed a longing wish for
the prop of a sincere and spontaneous loyalty to the throne in the
critical times that were to follow. But such a sentiment of loyalty was
not then expressed, and could hardly have been publicly evoked by a
ruler of the type of George IV., whether governing as Prince-Regent or
as King.

There is, however, no doubt of its having existed, and there seems to
have been, even through those troubled years, an inborn spirit of
loyalty to the Crown as being the symbol of the State and of public
order. Its wearer might make mistakes and be personally unpopular, but
he represented the nation as a whole and must consequently be respected.
This powerful feeling has often in English history made the bravest and
strongest submit to slights from their Sovereign, and has won the most
disinterested devotion and energetic action from men who have never
e