ature in the British Empire of the
nineteenth century was the complete harmony which gradually evolved
between the Monarchy and a world-wide democracy. This process was
all-important because it eliminated an element of internal discord which
has destroyed more than one nation in the past; because it permitted the
peaceful progress of scattered states to continue through the passing
years without having questions of allegiance to seriously hamper their
growth; because it trained political thought along lines of stability
and continuity and made loyalty and liberty consistent and almost
synonymous terms; because it made the Crown the central symbol of the
Empire's unity, the visible object of a world-wide allegiance, the
special token of a common aspiration and a common sentiment amongst many
millions of English-speaking people--the subject of untutored reverence
and unquestioned respect amongst hundreds of millions of other races.

THE POSITION OF THE CROWN

The chief factor in this development was the late Queen Victoria, and to
the inheritance of the fabric thus evolved came a son who was educated
amid the constitutional environment in which she lived and was trained
in the Imperial ideas which she so strongly held and so wisely impressed
upon her statesmen, her family and her people. King Edward came into
responsibilities which were greater and more imposing than those ever
before inherited by a reigning sovereign. He had not only the great
example and life of his predecessor as a model and as a comparison; not
only the same vast and ever-changing and expanding Empire to rule over;
not only a similar myriad-eyed press and public to watch his every
expression and movement; but he entered with his people upon a new
century in which one of the first and most prominent features is a decay
in popular respect for Parliament and a revival of the old-time love for
stately display, for ceremonial and for the appropriate trappings of
royalty. With this evident and growing influence of the Crown as a
social and popular factor is the knowledge which all statesmen and
constitutional students now possess of the personal influence in
diplomacy and statecraft which was wielded by the late Queen Victoria
and which the experience and tact of the new Monarch enabled him to also
test and prove. Side by side with these two elements in the situation
was the conviction which has now become fixed throughout the Empire that
the Crown is th