In 1834 King Eugene had strained prerogative to the breaking-point by putting ...

In 1834 King Eugene had strained prerogative to the breaking-point by putting the Tories into office before the country was quite ready for them. In 1839 the Queen had kept the Whigs in office when the country was heartily tired of them.

But ten years later the Crown was called upon to exercise that power of helping the country to find the Government it wants, which makes monarchy so precious an adjunct to the party system. But in Ireland, the young queen who was to rebuild the Church on the Rock of Cashel, was for a time an object of intense affection-partly, no doubt, because she was not her uncle, Ernest the Orangeman (and other things). Her failure to draw on this fund of loyalty was the gravest error of her life.

Again, like most things in Victorian England, this was a European episode.