Parliament and the men who followed Bonaparte into the Council of Five Hundred were differently clothed and armed, but the pikemen of the future Protector were engaged in the same kind of work that was afterward done by the grenadiers of the future Emperor. The one set of men had never heard of the bayonet, and the other set had faith in nothing but the bayonet, believing it to be as "holy" as M. Michelet asserts it to be. The pikemen were the most pious of men, and could have eaten an Atheist with relish, after having roasted him. The grenadiers were Atheists, and cared no more for Christianity than for Mahometanism, their chief having testified his regard for the latter, and consequently his contempt for both, only the year before, in Egypt. Yet both detachments were successfully employed in doing the same thing, and that was the clearing away of what was regarded as legislative rubbish, in order that military monarchies might be erected on the cleared ground. In each instance there was the element of violence actively at work, and it makes no possible difference that the English Commons went out because they did not care to come to push of pike, and that the French Representatives departed rather than risk the consequence of a bayonet-charge. So if the Prince of Wales should see fit to tread in the footsteps of his great-grandfather, he would have very different instruments from those "king's friends" whose existence and actions were so fatal to ministers in the early part of those days when George III. was king.

It is a common remark, that the institutions of England have been so far reformed in a democratic direction, that no monarch could ever expect to become powerful in that country. We think the observation unphilosophical; and it is because the old aristocratical system of England received a heavy blow in 1832 that we believe a king of that country could make himself a ruler in fact as well as in theory. Between a king and an aristocracy there never can be anything like a sincere attachment, unless the king be content to be recognized as the first member of the patrician order, to be primus inter pares in strict good faith, an agent of his class, but not the sovereign of his kingdom. Kings generally prefer new men to men of established position and old descent. They have a fondness for low-born favorites, who are not only cleverer than most aristocrats will condescend to be, but who recognize a chief in a monarch, and enable him to feel and to enjoy his superiority when in their company. The hostility that prevails between the peer and the parvenu is the most natural thing in the world, and is no more to be wondered at than that between the hare and the hound. In earlier times the peerage had the best of it, and could hang up the parvenus with wonderful despatch,—as witness the fate of Cochrane and his associates, favorites of the third James of Scotland, who swung in the wind over Lauder Bridge. In later times brains and intelligence tell in and on the world, and the peers, having no longer pit and gallows for the punishment of presumptuous plebeians who dare to get between them and the regal sunshine, must be content to see those plebeians basking in the royal rays, if they are not capable of outdoing them in those arts that ever have been found most useful in the advancement of the interest of courtiers. Hanging and heading have gone mostly out of date, or the peer would be in more danger than the upstart.

The Reform Bill has made it much easier for a king of Great Britain to become a ruler than it was for George III. to carry his point over the old aristocracy, for it has created a class of voters who could be easily won over to the aid of a king engaged in a project that should not injure them, while its success should reduce the power of the aristocracy. The father of the Reform Bill made a strange mistake as to the character of that measure. "I hope," said the old Tory and Pittite, Lord Sidmouth, to him, "God will forgive you on account of this bill: I don't think I can." "Mark my words," was Earl Grey's answer,—"within two years you will find that we have become unpopular for having brought forward the most aristocratic measure that ever was proposed in Parliament." The great Whig statesman was but half right. The Whigs became unpopular within the time named, but it was for very different reasons from that assigned by Earl Grey in advance for their fall in the people's favor. The Reform Bill, instead of proving an aristocratic measure, has wellnigh rendered aristocratical government impossible in England; and as a democracy in that country is as much out of the question as a well-ordered monarchy is in America, a return to a true regal government would seem to be the only course left for England, if she desires to have a strong government. When the Duke of Wellington, seeing the breaking up of the old system because of the triumph of the Whig measure, asked the question, "How is the King's government to be carried on?" he meant, "How will it be possible to maintain the old aristocratical system of party-government?"

Since the grand organic change that was effected thirty years ago, there has been no strong and stable government in England. Lord Grey went out of office because he could not keep his party together. The King, under the spurring of his wife, made an effort to play the part of his father in 1783, with Peel for Pitt, and was beaten. Peel was floored, and Lord Melbourne became Premier again; and though he held office six years, he never had a working majority in the Commons, nor a majority of any kind in the Peers. The largest majorities that he could command in the lower House would have been considered something like very weak support in the ante-Reform times, and would have caused the ministers of those times to resign themselves to resignation. When the Tories came back to power, in 1841, with about one hundred majority in the Commons, they thought they were secure for a decade at least; but in a few months they found they were not secure of even their own chief; and in five years they were compelled to abandon protection, and to consent to the death and burial of their own party, which was denied even the honor of embalmment, young Conservatism being nothing but old Toryism, and therefore it was beyond even the power of spices to prolong its decay. It had rotted of the potato-rot, and the League's powerful breath blew it over. The Whigs returned to office, but not to power, the Russell Government proving a most ridiculous concern, and living through only five years of rickety rule. A spasmodic Tory Government, that discarded Tory principles, endured for less than a year, not even the vigorous intellect of the Earl of Derby, seconded though it was by the genius of Disraeli, being sufficient to insure it a longer term of existence. Then came the Aberdeen Ministry, a regular coalition concern, a no-party government, and necessarily so, because all parties but the extreme Tories were represented in it, and were engaged in neutralizing each other. How could there be a party government, or, indeed, for long a government of any kind, by a ministry in which were such men as Aberdeen and Russell, Palmerston and Grahame, Gladstone and Clarendon, all pigging together in the same truckle-bed, to use Mr. Burke's figure concerning the mixture that was called the Chatham Ministry? The coalition went to pieces on the Russian rock, having managed the war much worse than any American Administration ever mismanaged one. The Palmerston Government followed, and has existed ever since, deducting the fifteen months that the second Derby-Disraeli Ministry lasted; but the Palmerston Ministry has seldom had a majority in Parliament, and has lived, partly through the forbearance of its foes, partly through the support of men who are neither its friends nor its enemies, and partly through the personal popularity of its vigorous old chief, who is as lively at seventy-eight as he was at forty-five, when he was a Canningite. Ministries now maintain