Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/100

 the clear aim, and the tenacious purpose, which are to be found only in the strongest and most sagacious of men.

We inherit institutions built up by generations of statesmen, and well worth defence. Our constitution, resting as it does on the unquestionable supremacy of the civil power and the universal rule of equal law, is, with all its defects, the strongest, the freest, the most pacific, we may venture to say the most humane, form of government which has ever existed in any great State or Empire. It maintains an unvaried peace in every country subject to the British flag; it has secured for the self-governing colonies of Great Britain independence as regards their local affairs, combined with exemption from the necessity of defending themselves against foreign aggression either by the sacrifices of war or by the intolerable burden of an armed peace. At this moment Englishmen are engaged in the earnest endeavour to prove that popular government in Great Britain is compatible with the maintenance of Imperial power and Imperial peace. What may be the issue of this effort to combine honest democracy with