sentence is a fair statement of their case.  The aristocracy are not the people.  They are by nature a superior class which Providence or some unseen power has mercifully provided to govern, to rule, and to dominate.  They are kind, charitable, and patronizing, and expect gratitude and subservience in return.  As a mid-Victorian writer puts it:  “What one wants to see is a kind and cordial condescension on the one side, and an equally cordial but still respectful devotedness on the other.”  But these are voices from a time that has passed.

Democracy has many a fight before it.  False ideals and faulty educational systems may handicap its progress as much as the forces that are avowedly arrayed against it.  Its achievements may be arrested by the discord of factions breaking up its ranks.  Conceivably it may have to face a severe conflict with a middle-class plutocracy.  But whatever trials democracy has to undergo it can no longer be subjected to constant defeat at the hands of a constitutionally organized force of hostile aristocratic opinion.  At least, it may now secure expression in legislation for its noblest ideals and its most cherished ambitions.  A check on progressive legislation is harmful to the national welfare, especially when there is no check on the real danger of reaction.  To devise a Second Chamber which will be a check on reaction as well as on so-called revolution is a problem for the future.  For the time being, therefore, the best security for the country against the perils of a reactionary regime is to allow freer play to the forces of progress, which only tend to become revolutionary when they are resisted and suppressed.  The curtailment of the veto of the Second Chamber fulfils this purpose.  Whatever further adjustment of the Constitution may be effected in time to come, the door can no longer be closed persistently against the wishes of the people when they entrust the work of legislation to a Liberal Government.

SYDNEY BROOKS

The first but by no means the last or most crucial stage of our twentieth-century Revolution has now been completed; the old Constitution, which was perhaps the most adaptable and convenient system of government that the world has ever known, is definitely at an end; the powers of an ancient Assembly have been truncated with a violence that in any other land would have spelled barricades and bloodshed long ago; and the road has been cleared, or partially cleared, for developments that must profoundly affect, and that in all probability will absolutely transform, the whole scheme of the British State.