Page:The life of King Edward VII with a sketch of the career of King George V by Hopkins, J. Castell (John Castell).djvu/19



great development of a political nature in the British Empire of the nineteenth century was the complete harmony which gradually evolved between the Monarchy and a world-wide democracy. This process was all-important because it eliminated an element of internal discord which has destroyed more than one nation in the past; because it permitted the peaceful progress of scattered states to continue through the passing years without having questions of allegiance to seriously hamper their growth; because it trained political thought along lines of stability and continuity and made loyalty and liberty consistent and almost synonymous terms; because it made the Crown the central symbol of the Empire's unity, the visible object of a world-wide allegiance, the special token of a common aspiration and a common sentiment amongst many millions of English-speaking people—the subject of untutored reverence and unquestioned respect amongst hundreds of millions of other races.

The chief factor in this development was the late Queen Victoria, and to the inheritance of the fabric thus evolved came a son who was educated amid the constitutional environment in which she lived and was trained in the Imperial ideas which she so strongly held and so wisely impressed upon her statesmen, her family and her people. King Edward came into responsibilities which were greater arid more imposing than those ever before inherited by a reigning sovereign. He