"I am not so much shocked as you might think," said I, "as I know something about governments. But tell me, how do you manage, and how have you come to this state of things?" Said he: "It is true that we have to make some arrangements about our affairs, concerning which you can ask presently; and it is also true that everybody does not always agree with the details of these arrangements; but, further, it is true that a man no more needs an elaborate system of government, with its army, navy, and police, to force him to give way to the will of the majority of his _equals_, than he wants a similar machinery to make him understand that his head and a stone wall cannot occupy the same space at the same moment. Do you want further explanation?" "Well, yes, I do," quoth I. Old Hammond settled himself in his chair with a look of enjoyment which rather alarmed me, and made me dread a scientific disquisition: so I sighed and abided. He said: "I suppose you know pretty well what the process of government was in the bad old times?" "I am supposed to know," said I. (Hammond) What was the government of those days? Was it really the Parliament or any part of it? (I) No. (H.) Was not the Parliament on the one side a kind of watch-committee sitting to see that the interests of the Upper Classes took no hurt; and on the other side a sort of blind to delude the people into supposing that they had some share in the management of their own affairs? (I) History seems to show us this. (H.) To what extent did the people manage their own affairs? (I) I judge from what I have heard that sometimes they forced the Parliament to make a law to legalise some alteration which had already taken place. (H.) Anything else? (I) I think not. As I am informed, if the people made any attempt to deal with the _cause_ of their grievances, the law stepped in and said, this is sedition, revolt, or what not, and slew or tortured the ringleaders of such attempts. (H.) If Parliament was not the government then, nor the people either, what was the government? (I) Can you tell me? (H.) I think we shall not be far wrong if we say that government was the Law-Courts, backed up by the executive, which handled the brute force that the deluded people allowed them to use for their own purposes; I mean the army, navy, and police. (I) Reasonable men must needs think you are right. (H.) Now as to those Law-Courts. Were they places of fair dealing according to the ideas of the day? Had a poor man a good chance of defending his property and person in them? (I) It is a commonplace that even rich men looked upon a law-suit as a dire misfortune, even if they gained the case; and as for a poor one--why, it was considered a miracle of justice and beneficence if a poor man who had once got into the clutches of the law escaped prison or utter ruin.