dges from candidates, they are
rapidly becoming, if not delegates, at least attorneys for committees of
electors. The same causes are constantly tending to exclude men, who
combine a keen sense of self-respect with large intellectual capacity,
from a position in which the one is as constantly offended, as the other
is neutralised. Notwithstanding the attempt of George the Third to
resuscitate the royal authority, Hume's foresight has been so completely
justified that no one now dreams of the crown exerting the slightest
influence upon elections.

In the seventh essay, Hume raises a very interesting discussion as to
the probable ultimate result of the forces which were at work in the
British Constitution in the first part of the eighteenth century:--

"There has been a sudden and sensible change in the opinions of
men, within these last fifty years, by the progress of learning and
of liberty. Most people in this island have divested themselves of
all superstitious reverence to names and authority; the clergy have
much lost their credit; their pretensions and doctrines have been
much ridiculed; and even religion can scarcely support itself in
the world. The mere name of _king_ commands little respect; and to
talk of a king as God's vicegerent on earth, or to give him any of
those magnificent titles which formerly dazzled mankind, would but
excite laughter in every one."--(III. 54.)

In fact, at the present day, the danger to monarchy in Britain would
appear to lie, not in increasing love for equality, for which, except as
regards the law, Englishmen have never cared, but rather entertain an
aversion; nor in any abstract democratic theories, upon which the mass
of Englishmen pour the contempt with which they view theories in
general; but in the constantly increasing tendency of monarchy to become
slightly absurd, from the ever-widening discrepancy between modern
political ideas and the theory of kingship. As Hume observes, even in
his time, people had left off making believe that a king was a different
species of man from, other men; and, since his day, more and more such
make-believes have become impossible; until the maintenance of kingship
in coming generations seems likely to depend, entirely, upon whether it
is the general opinion, that a hereditary president of our virtual
republic will serve the general interest better than an elective one or
not. The tendency of p