LETTER V.

"Look not to the ground,

"Ye favourites of a king. Are we not high!

66 High be our thoughts."

Rich. II.

"A king, that would not feel his crown too heavy for him, must wear it every day."

Lord Bacon's Essays.

We have now seen what I have called the natural impulse to pay homage to kings in various aspects, in various stages of civilization, in various states of political feeling; and in them all we have found it a principle of powerful and uniform operation.

It becomes a still more interesting inquiry, how this natural disposition is modified in a free and enlightened people. That it exists there, and in great force, no one can doubt, who witnessed the late royal visit, or who attends to the sentiments towards the sovereign,

which are cherished around him. Yet it is something very different from the abject prostration and idolatry of the slaves of a despot. One characteristic of the loyalty of the subjects of a free monarchical state is sufficiently obvious, there is no admixture of fear in it. There are all the other requisites of the regal state in their monarch, all the other dazzling advantages of condition which command admiration, all the splendour, and luxury, and essential power, which strike with awe, but there is no power to oppress. There may be power in such a prince to sway the nations and rule the world, but, the charm is ineffable, there is no power to injure the poorest of his subjects. In the British dominions, we look not on the face of the man who has power to hurt the most insignificant human being who breathes the air of our free land. This feeling is quite necessary to the existence of affection, superadded to reverence for a monarch. When Lord Bacon says, "a king

who is not feared is not loved," he ex

plains his use of the term by adding,

66

yet not loved for fear, but feared for love." Our affection will hold, certainly, a proportion to the Monarch's estimable personal qualities, but it is incompatible with a dread of him. No doubt, such qualities, shining very conspicuously, will command the affections of those who, constitutionally speaking, are slaves; and we know that a beneficent despot does ensure affection from his subjects, and even gratitude, for the pure gratuity of a mild instead of a ferocious sway. No monarch, for example, was ever more beloved than Henry the Fourth of France. The hold which that high-minded and kind-hearted prince had of his people's affection, may be judged of from the fact alone, that to this day his name is the established personification of French loyalty, and the ode to his praise, the national air which has greeted, since his time, a succession of kings. Although

Henry the Fourth had as much power to oppress as any other king of France before the revolution, yet every action and every thought of that excellent prince was generosity and kindly affection to his people; and his homely but heart-felt wish—" that he might see the day when there should be a fowl in the pot of every peasant in his kingdom," evinced a character of benevolence, which, superadded to his gallantry and glory, leaves us no room for wonder that he was the idol of his people, and that his memory is as fresh in their hearts as if he had not been dead a year. But affection, in a despotism, must depend exclusively on the personal character of the monarch, unaided by any other incitement or association. The benevolent autocrat is succeeded by a cruel,-the homage, the slavish feeling may be increased, but the affection is gone. If we take the best example of a free and enlightened monarchy, the British, in which the senti

ment towards the Sovereign never can be mingled with fear, we shall find many auxiliary elements characterising that exalted emotion, which, with a word borrowed from the very law which limits the monarch's power, we call, by way of eminence, loyalty. Our reverence for our King is a high sentiment of patriotism. He is our King, much more than we are his subjects. He is the exalted magistrate of our choice and elevation, not the tyrant who has himself seized the sceptre, and subjugated us. We cannot make this prince of our own exaltation too splendid. We would withhold nothing from him but the power to do wrong. Our wealth and grandeur must necessarily, as well as in unison with our wishes, increase his; and the exhibition of them by him, has in our eyes the double value of being our own munificent gift, and the test and index of our own national prosperity. He is the capital of our national pillar, which we love should be rich and