We deeply regret to announce that the Queen has taken
her departure for Balmoral. With a great war raging in Europe, with a revolution possibly imminent in France, and with serious debates constantly occurring in her own Parliament, her Majesty retires into the depths of the Highlands, six hundred miles from her capital. Should anything serious occur, therefore, her Premier, an old man full of gout, and of confidence in the wisdom of his Sovereign, must travel 1,200 miles to obtain the benefit of a personal interview. He was very nearly choked by a cold which seized him en route only a year or two ago, and will some day be caught in a railway accident on one of these tremendous and unnecessary journeys. The Queen, as far as the public convenience is concerned, might almost as well leave the kingdom, and indeed at Coburg she would be quite as accessible. No blame rests, of course, upon her Majesty, who, like every other Sovereign, has been bred to think her own convenience and the welfare of her kingdom quite inseparable ; but great blame rests upon successive Ministers, who have failed to inform her Majesty that her highest duties can only be fittingly performed in the neigh- bourhood of her Parliament, that time is an element in public affairs, and that by habitually withdrawing her Court to a distant wilderness, she is educating her subjects to that indifference for the dynasty amidst which Republican ideas are most eagerly propagated. Using up Queen's Messengers does not matter. When they are expended there are plenty more, but experienced Minis- ters are more scarce, and their remaining vitality should not be exhausted on railway journeys equally harassing and useless.
