y
unwisely, and contrary to its own best interests, refused to admit her
claim. They said her power had decayed into non-existence; she once had
it, they allowed, but it had ceased by long disuse. If any one will run
over the pages of Comyn's Digest or any other such book, title
"Prerogative," he will find the Queen has a hundred such powers which
waver between reality and desuetude, and which would cause a protracted
and very interesting legal argument if she tried to exercise them. Some
good lawyer ought to write a careful book to say which of these powers
are really usable, and which are obsolete. There is no authentic
explicit information as to what the Queen can do, any more than of what
she does.

In the bare superficial theory of free institutions this is undoubtedly
a defect. Every power in a popular Government ought to be known. The
whole notion of such a Government is that the political people--the
governing people--rules as it thinks fit. All the acts of every
administration are to be canvassed by it; it is to watch if such acts
seem good, and in some manner or other to interpose if they seem not
good. But it cannot judge if it is to be kept in ignorance; it cannot
interpose if it does not know. A secret prerogative is an
anomaly--perhaps the greatest of anomalies. That secrecy is, however,
essential to the utility of English royalty as it now is. Above all
things our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about
it you cannot reverence it. When there is a select committee on the
Queen, the charm of royalty will be gone. Its mystery is its life. We
must not let in daylight upon magic. We must not bring the Queen into
the combat of politics, or she will cease to be reverenced by all
combatants; she will become one combatant among many. The existence of
this secret power is, according to abstract theory, a defect in our
constitutional polity, but it is a defect incident to a civilisation
such as ours, where august and therefore unknown powers are needed, as
well as known and serviceable powers.

If we attempt to estimate the working of this inner power by the
evidence of those, whether dead or living, who have been brought in
contact with it, we shall find a singular difference. Both the
courtiers of George III. and the courtiers of Queen Victoria are agreed
as to the magnitude of the royal influence. It is with both an accepted
secret doctrine that the Crown does more than it seems. But there i