THE MONARCHY 49

CONCLUSIONS.

Why has the monarchy survived? Will it continue? What are
its advantages and disadvantages? England has witnessed the
same conflicts between feudal lords, between industrialists and
landowners, between rich and poor, employers and proletariat,
as have other countries. Each party -in the contest, however,
has wanted to get the stamp of legality on its own proceedings.

*~A victory of any section or class has been followed by an alteration
in the powers of the Crown to suit the victor's convenience.
The monarchy has been, not so much the citadel of one section's
power, as the trump card available for whoever could get the
reality of power by wealth or arms. One may take the trump card
from one's opponent by force; but one does not tear it up. When
Cromwell destroyed the monarchy, he may have thought that act
an unavoidable necessity at the time; but it weakened his position
and helped to provoke the reaction against him. When the Whigs
and Tor^s at the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 confirmed his
work they took care to alter the monarchy rather than abolish
it; and even then they claimed they were not altering it but
restoring it to its original form.

Monarchy is thus a device for securing obedience to whoever*
controls the Government. As Bagehot remarks, "The Monarchy
. . . gives a vast strength to the Constitution by enlisting on
its behalf the credulous obedience of enormous masses"—and
he adds that as long as the human heart is stronger than the
human reason, monarchy will survive. Now this is a good
argument for monarchy if it is granted that the mass of people
are too stupid to see why a Government ought to be obeyed.
It might well be a help to the most "Left" of Parties that, once

. it had a Parliamentary maiority, it would become "His Majesty's
Government". If anyone attempted to oppose it by force he
could be represented as a traitor to the King, and this might
win the Government the "credulous obedience" of some people.
But a device which,gets obedience on unreasoning grounds is a
dangerous thing, since it can protect good and bad Government