Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/81

 that any polity which is to stand the trials to which every great institution devised by man is exposed must give effect, under whatever form, to the will of the class possessed of paramount and enduring power. In this sense, and in this sense only, statesmen who most honour law and justice must desire that might and right, law and strength, should harmonize with and support each other. The many failures and the rare successes of constitution-makers equally attest the importance of this principle. Why was it that the democrats and Puritans who planned institutions so ingenious as the constitution of 1653 could create no permanent form of popular government? A partial answer to a complicated question is surely to be found in the fact that the premature and democratic institutions of Puritanism, and even the Protectorate, with its approach towards the ancient kingship, did not represent the strength of England. The yeomanry, on which the Republicans of the Commonwealth relied, was already a declining power. Why, on the other hand, did the Revolution settlement of 1689, with all its defects, stand sub-