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 jewellery, and abolished the “lords”: some kept the king and the lords, but deprived them of real power. The English nation, which is famous for its common-sense, its audacity, and its ability, belongs to the last group. It invented that remarkable phrase, “self-government”: which ingeniously preserves the fiction that someone has a right to govern other people, yet conciliates the modern spirit by intimating that the people really govern their governors.

Into the extraordinary confusion of forms and formulae which has resulted from this compromise it would be waste of time to enter. Does it really matter that we allow our king to put on our coins a flattering portrait of himself, with an intimation that he rules as “by the grace of God”? He is quite conscious that he rules us—if his melodramatic relation to us may be called ruling—on the understanding that he never contradicts us. We are not now knocked on the head, except by an intoxicated patriot, if we refuse to stand while our neighbours chant their insincere incantation about his health: we go, not to the Tower, but to the ordinary law-court, if we mention his personal frailties; and the portentous seriousness with which he takes his robes and his formulae injures none, and amuses many. No doubt, slovenly mental habits are always to be deplored, yet these things are not in themselves important enough to be included in a list of serious reforms. What we do need to examine critically is this scheme of self-government by