I accept the definition of cynicism which you give in your first paragraph. But I will add another, and a strictly etymological one. A cynic is a man who treats a deep-seated reasonable belief, or a fair argument, in a dog-like manner, as if it were a mere dog’s howl; one who vouchsafes only a kick or an imprecation to what he ought to listen to with patience, and answer (if he disagrees) with argument. A sham belief and an utterly worthless argument _ought_ to get only kicks and imprecations; to treat them otherwise would be priggishness. It is a critic’s business and difficulty to discover the right path between these two pitfalls. With all respect to the _Spectator_, I venture to express my opinion that not only in its recent article on the New South Wales Treason-Felony Act, but again and again in speaking of matters pertaining to the Crown and its relation to the people, it has fallen into the pitfall of cynicism, and (unwittingly, of course) written what has jarred painfully on the convictions of not a few amongst its readers. To define these convictions adequately in general terms is almost impossible. I do not know how to do so without entering upon theological questions too deep for me, and which I would rather have avoided. I do not know how better to express my own conviction than by saying that I do in a very real sense believe in the ‘divine right of kings;’ not of course in the sense of the High Church party of the seventeenth century; more nearly, perhaps, in that of the eminently national and protestant party, which in the latter part of the sixteenth century relied upon the doctrine as the truest and strongest bulwark against Rome and Spain. I believe in the institution of hereditary monarchy as a divine idea, imparted to mankind, and answering to true and healthy instincts implanted in them—like in kind, if differing in degree, to the institution of a priesthood or clergy. Nations may reject it if they please. In so doing they are simply rejecting a proffered blessing, just as all of us are rejecting blessings every day. The non-juring Bishops and their followers brought discredit on the doctrine by their unphilosophical perversion of it. They forgot that a dynasty, like an individual Church, may become so degraded by the unworthiness of its members as to receive its condemnation, as did the dynasties of Saul and of Ahab.