Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 5.djvu/122

 people. It is on the ground of utility alone that we go forth to meet our foes, and if we fail to make good our ground with utilitarian arguments and for utilitarian ends, then let the present combination of Throne, Lords, and Commons be for ever swept away. An hereditary throne is the surest device which has ever been imagined or invented for the perpetuation of civil order and for that first necessity of civilized society—continuity of government.

And he would be a bold man in argument who would assert that the hereditary character of the British throne is a vice, or even a defect. When we remember that the English monarchy has endured for upwards of a thousand years, what device of the wisest philosopher or the most acute mathematician could have discovered a monarch more perfect for all the purposes of a monarchy than the one whom an hereditary descent of a thousand years has provided for us? To those—and there are, I believe, many—in this town who glibly tell you that the monarchy is too expensive and is not worth the price—to them I reply that it would be impossible to devise a form of government as effectual, and yet cheaper and more simple; and that if, in an evil hour, you were to listen to those silly tattlers, the sums of money that you would ultimately have to pay for police and military in times of administrative change, the fluctuations of credit, the displacement of capital, the loss to the interests of industry and labor which constant and inevitable