Rats, and Ratting.
James, in his Military Dictionary, 1816, states:—
“Rats are sometimes used in military operations, particularly for setting fire to magazines of gunpowder. On these occasions, a lighted match is tied to the tail of the animal. Marshal Vauban recommends, therefore, that the walls of powder-magazines should be made very thick, and the passages for light and wind so narrow as not to admit them (the rats).”
The expression to rat is a figurative term applied to those who at the moment of a division desert or abandon any particular party or side of a question. The term itself comes from the well-known circumstance of rats running away from decayed or falling buildings.—Notes and Queries, 2 S., No. 68.
The Heir to the British Throne always in Opposition.
Horace Walpole somewhere remarks, as a peculiarity in the history of the Hanover family, that the heir-apparent has always been in opposition to the reigning monarch. The fact is true enough; but it is not a peculiarity in the House of Hanover. It is an infirmity of human nature, to be found, more or less, in every analogous case of private life; but our political system developes it with peculiar force and more remarkable effects in the Royal Family. Those who cannot obtain the favours of the father will endeavour to conciliate the good wishes of the son; and all arts are employed, and few are necessary, to seduce the heir-apparent into the exciting and amusing game of political opposition. He is naturally apt enough to dislike what he considers a present thraldom, and to anticipate, by his influence over a faction, the plenitude of his future power. This was the mainspring of the most serious part of the political troubles of the last century: let us, however, hope that it will never be revived; and this we are encouraged to hope from our improved Constitution, as well as from the improved education of our Royal Family.
Legitimacy and Government.
It is an unguarded idea of some public writers that “the Sovereign holds her crown not by hereditary descent but by the will of the nation.” This doctrine is too frequently stated in and out of Parliament; and without qualification or explanation it would be apt to breed mischief in the minds of an ignorant and excited multitude, if the instinctive feelings of common sense did not invariably correct the popular errors of theorists.
“They who have studied the Constitution attentively hold that her Majesty reigns by hereditary right, though her predecessor in 1688 received the Crown at the hands of a free nation. To refer to the right of election, which can be exercised only during a revolution, and to be silent on hereditary right, is to lower the Regal dignity to the precarious office of the judges when they held their patents durante bene placito. Suppose a nation so divided that one casting vote would carry a plebiscite, changing the form of government, or the dynasty, and there would be a practical illustration of a principle—if principle at all—which, when taken as a broad palpable fact, is undeniable in the founder of a dynasty, but when erected into a legal theory it becomes neither more nor less than a permanent code of revolution. Hence the successor of that founder, if his power be not supported by military despotism, is invariably a staunch advocate of his indefeasible hereditary right, though originally derived from the consent of the nation.”—Saturday Review.