fixity in the thoughts and feelings of the choosers.

Under every species of Cabinet government, whether the royal or the
unroyal, this defect can be cured in one way only. The moderate people
of every party must combine to support the Government which, on the
whole, suits every party best. This is the mode in which Lord
Palmerston's administration has been lately maintained; a Ministry in
many ways defective, but more beneficially vigorous abroad, and more
beneficially active at home, than the vast majority of English
Ministries. The moderate Conservatives and the moderate Radicals have
maintained a steady Government by a sufficiently coherent union with
the moderate Whigs. Whether there is a king or no king, this
perservative self-denial is the main force on which we must rely for
the satisfactory continuance of a Parliamentary Government at this its
period of greatest trial. Will that moderation be aided or impaired by
the addition of a sovereign? Will it be more effectual under the royal
sort of Ministerial Government, or will it be less effectual?

If the sovereign has a genius for discernment, the aid which he can
give at such a crisis will be great. He will select for his Minister,
and if possible maintain as his Minister, the statesman upon whom the
moderate party will ultimately fix their choice, but for whom at the
outset it is blindly searching; being a man of sense, experience, and
tact, he will discern which is the combination of equilibrium, which is
the section with whom the milder members of the other sections will at
last ally themselves. Amid the shifting transitions of confused
parties, it is probable that he will have many opportunities of
exercising a selection. It will rest with him to call either on A B to
form an administration, or upon X Y, and either may have a chance of
trial. A disturbed state of parties is inconsistent with fixity, but it
abounds in momentary tolerance. Wanting something, but not knowing with
precision what, parties will accept for a brief period anything, to see
whether it may be that unknown something--to see what it will do.
During the long succession of weak Governments which begins with the
resignation of the Duke of Newcastle in 1762 and ends with the
accession of Mr. Pitt in 1784, the vigorous will of George III. was an
agency of the first magnitude. If at a period of complex and protracted
division of parties, such as are sure to occur often and last long in
every e