The Life of King Henry the Eight • Paragraph 891
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"There is no difficulty in vindicating the principle of a hereditary monarchy. The experience of every country and of all the ages show the profound wisdom which places the supreme leadership of the state beyond the reach of private ambition and above the shocks and changes of party strife. And, further, let it not be forgotten that we live under a limited and constitutional monarch. The Sovereign reigns but does not govern; that is a maxim we were all taught out of our school-books. The British monarchy has no interests divergent from those of the British people. It enshrines only those ideas and causes upon which the whole British people are united. It is based upon the abiding and prevailing interests of the nation and thus, through all the swift changes of the last hundred years, through all the wide developments of a democratic state, the English monarchy has become the most secure, as it is the most ancient and the most glorious monarchy in the whole of Christendom."