But to the Englishman this attitude seems somewhat superstitious.  The period of opposition to a measure is not ended when it has passed Parliament and received the royal assent.  The question is whether it will receive the assent of the people.  Can it get itself obeyed?  If it can, then its future is assured for many generations.  But it must pass through an exciting period of probation.

If it is a matter that arouses much feeling the British way is for some one to disobey and take the consequences.  Passive resistance—­with such active measures as may make the life of the enforcers of the law a burden to them—­is a recognized method of political and religious propagandism.

In periods when the national life has run most swiftly this kind of resistance to what has been considered the tyranny of lawmakers has always been notable.  Emerson’s “the chambers of the great are jails” was literally true of the England of the seventeenth century.  Every one who made any pretension to moral leadership was intent on going to jail in behalf of some principle or another.

John Bunyan goes to jail rather than attend the parish church, George Fox goes to jail rather than take off his hat in the presence of the magistrate.  Why should he do so when there was no Scripture for it?  When it was said that the Scripture had nothing to say about hats, he was ready with his triumphant reference to Daniel III, 21, where it is said that the three Hebrew children wore “their coats, their hosen, their hats and their other garments” in the fiery furnace.  If Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego wore their hats before Nebuchadnezzar and kept them on even in the fiery furnace, why should a free-born Englishman take his hat off in the presence of a petty Justice of the Peace?  Fervent Fifth Monarchy men were willing to die rather than acknowledge any king but King Jesus who was about to come to reign.  Non-juring bishops were willing to go to jail rather than submit to the judgment of Parliament as to who should be king in England.  Puritans and Covenanters of the more logical sort refused to accept toleration unless it were offered on their own terms.  They had been a “persecuted remnant” and they proposed to remain such or know the reason why.

Beneath his crust of conformity the Briton has an admiration for these recalcitrant individuals who will neither bow the knee to Baal nor to his betters.  He likes a man who is a law unto himself.  Though he has little enthusiasm for the abstract “rights of man,” he is a great believer in “the liberty of prophesying.”  The prophet is not without honor, even while he is being stoned.

Just at this time things are moving almost as rapidly as they did in the seventeenth century.  There is the same clash of opinion and violence of party spirit.  All sorts of non-conformities struggle for a hearing.  One is reminded of that most stirring period, which is so delightful to read about, and which must have been so trying for quiet people to live through.