When we contemplate her as a woman, we are apt to be struck with the highest admiration of her great qualities and extensive capacity; but we are also apt to require some more softness of disposition, some greater lenity of temper, some of those amiable weaknesses by which her sex is distinguished.

But the true method of estimating her merit, is to lay aside all these considerations, and consider her merely as a rational being placed in authority, and intrusted with the government of mankind.
We may find it difficult to reconcile our fancy to her as a wife or a mistress; but her qualities as a sovereign, though with some considerable exceptions, are the object of undisputed applause and approbation.
APPENDIX III The party among us who have distinguished themselves by their adhering to liberty and a popular government, have long indulged their prejudices against the succeeding race of princes, by bestowing unbounded panegyrics on the virtue and wisdom of Elizabeth.

They have even been so extremely ignorant of the transactions of this reign, as to extol her for a quality which, of all others, she was the least possessed of; a tender regard for the constitution, and a concern for the liberties and privileges of her people.

But as it is scarcely possible for the prepossessions of party to throw a veil much longer over facts so palpable and undeniable, there is danger lest the public should run into the opposite extreme, and should entertain an aversion to the memory of a princess who exercised the royal authority in a manner so contrary to all the ideas which we at present entertain of a legal constitution.
But Elizabeth only supported the prerogatives transmitted to her by her predecessors: she believed that her subjects were entitled to no more liberty than their ancestors had enjoyed: she found that they entirely acquiesced in her arbitrary administration: and it was not natural for her to find fault with a form of government by which she herself was invested with such unlimited authority.

In the particular exertions of power, the question ought never to be forgotten, What is best?
But in the general distribution of power among the several members of a constitution, there can seldom be admitted any other question than, What is established?
Few examples occur of princes who have willingly resigned their power; none of those who have, without struggle and reluctance, allowed it to be extorted from them.