was a kind of “consecrated obstruction.” Whatever he did had a sanctity different from what anyone else did, and it perversely happened that he was commonly wrong. He had as good intentions as anyone need have, and he attended to the business of his country, as a clerk with his bread to get attends to the business of his office. But his mind was small, his education limited, and he lived in a changing time. Accordingly, he was always resisting what ought to be, and prolonging what ought not to be. He was the sinister but sacred assailant of half his ministries; and when the French Revolution excited the horror of the world, and proved democracy to be “impious,” the piety of England concentrated upon him, and gave him tenfold strength. The Monarchy by its religious sanction now confirms all our political order; in George III ’s time it confirmed little except itself. It gives now a vast strength to the entire Constitution, by enlisting on its behalf the credulous obedience of enormous masses; then it lived aloof, absorbed all the holiness into itself, and turned over all the rest of the polity to the coarse justification of bare expediency.