The People’s Committee were compelled to accept these imperfect concessions. The limit of time for opposing the Bill had arrived. No rich or leisured resident showed the slightest concern in this measure. The remark had been made to me by a high London authority: ‘If your townspeople really consider this such a bad Bill, then they have nothing to do but to put their hands in their pockets and raise the money to oppose it.’ This remark shows how little rich people, high in authority, know of the conditions of life in a fashionable lodging-house town. The work of revising this Bill--work necessarily incomplete--had been done by burgesses of moderate means and overwhelmed by private cares, and the time needed for this public work had been stolen from sleep. There was neither possibility of withdrawing a Bill on which much public money had been already expended, nor of raising the heavy sums of money necessary to carry on legal opposition to it. Thus, a new Corporation Bill of most retrograde character has been forced upon the town--a Bill which greatly strengthens the official or bureaucratic organization, removes much of the control of ratepayers over expenditure, plays into the hands of a centralizing Government, establishes protective duties on the necessaries of life, and vexatiously interferes in various ways with the legitimate personal liberty of the inhabitants. The latest ‘Battle of Hastings,’ in 1885, has ended in defeat. This familiar narrative of late experience in one of our little towns is now given for a practical purpose. A similar course of things appears to be taking place in all our towns, large and small. Unchecked, this neglect of social duty and thoughtless submission to official formalism must steadily deteriorate our national character. It can only be checked by the voluntary organization of individuals who will resolutely battle for the Theocratic principle of human rights against the selfish demagogueism of party strife. The plainest fact in history is the Divine Moral Government of the world. A nation given up to selfishness and lust always degenerates and perishes, and is replaced by new races. This is the great lesson of the ages. We only fail to read it because the method of action of the Creative Power is so much grander and surer than the methods of our individual action. But all that is strongest and noblest in our human nature can be but a faint reflection of what is immeasurably stronger and nobler in the Almighty Creative force. The careful study of our own human needs measured and limited by the needs of all other human beings is the foundation of all growth. This mutual limitation and government of human rights by human duties is Theocracy. It alone can be a permanent form of Government, for a righteous democratic rule must inevitably be Theocratic rule.