though suspensive veto, a Senate elected on a Conservative principle, a written constitution in the keeping of a Supreme Court, by which all powers and jurisdictions are strictly defined and limited, and which can be amended only with the deliberate consent of the nation at large. Besides, as was said before, the Federal system itself, by localizing questions and breaking the sweep of agitation, has a highly Conservative effect. These safeguards, with the political qualities of the Anglo-Americans and the Germans, prevent a catastrophe which without them would certainly come. But England has nothing like them. She has nothing but an “ancient throne,” now stripped of the last vestige of political power, and an aristocracy which is evidently doomed, and, by its struggles to retain its obsolete privilege, stimulates revolution. The only Conservative institution which is really effective is the non-payment of Members of Parliament; and this Democracy has already marked for abolition. One could wish for a blast of the Fontarabian horn to awaken British statesmen, in this decisive hour, to the fact that England, though she has the consecrated form, has no longer the substance of monarchical government. Her only government is the House of Commons, or a committee of leaders of the dominant party, holding their offices during the pleasure of that House. In the electorate is the supreme power; this is now not only the fact but a recognized fact. Twice the Ministry, after submitting its policy to the judgment of the constituencies by a dissolution of Parliament, has resigned in deference to the verdict. Yet these same statesmen go on dealing with the electorate as though they were not dealing with the government or with the sovereign power, but only with a representation of the people convened for the purpose of assenting to taxation. They seem to fancy that flood the electorate as they will with ignorance, passion, and all the elements of violence and anarchy, the government will still be carried on calmly and wisely by the occupant and the Ministers of the “ancient throne.” Is it possible that the mere phrase “servants of the Crown” can cast such a spell over practical minds? Down to this time the political history of England has been a long revolution, of which the Whig or Liberal party in its successive phases has been the organ, and by which, after many oscillations and vicissitudes, supreme power has been drawn from the Crown and the aristocracy to the Commons. The destructive part of the process is now all but complete, only a small remnant of precarious power being retained by the House of Lords. The constructive part remains to be performed. The task of British statesmen at the present day is, in effect, to found a Democratic Government. The ground has been cleared for the new edifice, but the edifice has yet to be built. Its foundations have hardly yet been laid.