BURKE I It is the special merit of the English constitutional system that the king stands outside the categories of political conflict.

He is the dignified emollient of an organized quarrel which, at least in theory, is due to the clash of antagonistic principle.

The merit, indeed, is largely accidental; and we shall miss the real fashion in which it came to be established unless we remark the vicissitudes through which it has passed.

The foreign birth of the first two Hanoverians, the insistent widowhood of Queen Victoria, these rather than deliberate foresight have secured the elevated nullification of the Crown.

Yet the first twenty-five years of George III's reign represent the deliberate effort of an obstinate man to stem the progress of fifty years and secure once more the balance of power.