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Hokitika Guardian, 12 August 1937, Page 4

It has. long been clear that the Monarchy as we know it is the creation of Queen Victoria, writes the Times on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Victoria’s accession. Probably if the Queen midway in her reign could have clearly posed the two alternatives—the political Monarchy of her uncles and the social Monarchy of her grandson —her personal choice would have been for the former. This is relevant only as showing that the course that at last she followed so steadfastly for her country’s glory was a course determined in some degree by acceptance rather than by initiative. All was implicit in the circumstances of her accession. !"ihe could not save her Throne by what she did; she could and did save it by wlrat she was. From the moment when the nation, sickened of the Court of the Georges as much by its staleness as by its debauchery’, turned with acclamation to the y’outh and freshness of Victoria, the new Monarchy was already in being. The young Queen might become an industrious student of public affairs, and by virtue of that industry sho might come to exercise as great a personal influence upon government as George 111 had done; what commanded the interest and soon the enthusiasm of her subjects was not her actions but her life. When unpopularity pursued her in the years of her widowhood and retirement, it was not because of her policies, but because the nation felt she had ceased to live a representative life; and in the glamour of her old age, her Empire of India, her Jubilees, apotheosis came to her because once more she seemed to be one with her people, to have gathered to herself all the sunset glories of the marvellous epoch that was already called by her name.