Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/58

14 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP, to choose when they speak in the name of great " States. II. Causes whieli pre- vented Eng land from having a real War Depart- ment. That which brought England's war adminis- tration into this dishevelled plight was the monarcliical surface of her polity — a surface so deceptive to a succession of princes with minds which construed words literally, that it en- couraged them in tlieir tenacity of rights growing every day less and less fit to be actually exer- cised in this country. England almost cruelly tantalised them. With one hand, and in the name of the law, she gave much, whilst with the other, and in the name of Cust(mi, or Necessity, or Common-sense, she hastened to take back her gifts ; so that, if for example, when welcoming her first German king to his capital, she showed him the pastures at Knightsbridge, and told him Hyde Park was his property, she was sure before long to warn him that, if over that same Hyde Park he were to exercise the full rights of ownership, such a venture would cost him his crown. She apprised her sovereigns of their large executive powers in terms so broad as to give them specious ground for imagining that they might exercise over our army, not simply a constitutional authority, but — extravagant as the pretension may seem in these days — an actual, personal sway ; and impressions thus created were all the more dangerous because in mere law, as distinguished from the higher State