und on thrones as they are eminent when there. But a
little experience and less thought show that royalty cannot take credit
for domestic excellence. Neither George I., nor George II., nor William
IV. were patterns of family merit; George IV. was a model of family
demerit. The plain fact is, that to the disposition of all others most
likely to go wrong, to an excitable disposition, the place of a
constitutional king has greater temptations than almost any other, and
fewer suitable occupations than almost any other. All the world and all
the glory of it, whatever is most attractive, whatever is most
seductive, has always been offered to the Prince of Wales of the day,
and always will be. It is not rational to expect the best virtue where
temptation is applied in the most trying form at the frailest time of
human life. The occupations of a constitutional monarch are grave,
formal, important, but never exciting; they have nothing to stir eager
blood, awaken high imagination, work off wild thoughts. On men like
George III., with a predominant taste for business occupations, the
routine duties of constitutional royalty have doubtless a calm and
chastening effect. The insanity with which he struggled, and in many
cases struggled very successfully, during many years, would probably
have burst out much oftener but for the sedative effect of sedulous
employment. But how few princes have ever felt the anomalous impulse
for real work; how uncommon is that impulse anywhere; how little are
the circumstances of princes calculated to foster it; how little can it
be relied on as an ordinary breakwater to their habitual temptations!
Grave and careful men may have domestic virtues on a constitutional
throne, but even these fail sometimes, and to imagine that men of more
eager temperaments will commonly produce them, is to expect grapes from
thorns and figs from thistles.

Lastly, constitutional royalty has the function which I insisted on at
length in my last essay, and which, though it is by far the greatest, I
need not now enlarge upon again. It acts as a DISGUISE. It enables our
real rulers to change without heedless people knowing it. The masses of
Englishmen are not fit for an elective government; if they knew how
near they were to it, they would be surprised, and almost tremble.

Of a like nature is the value of constitutional royalty in times of
transition. The greatest of all helps to the substitution of a Cabinet
government for