their regular plan
now to bring in six bills all rolled into one, in a form far too big and
complicated ever to be properly discussed. They insert a lot of
unnecessary contentiousness at the beginning, and all the really
administrative part--the machinery which provides them with political
handles throughout the country, and which they call the non-contentious
part--at the end; and then--on the score of it being non-contentious,
and because by the time they get to it the mind of the legislature is
exhausted--then they shut it down with the closure. One result is that
we have laws on the statute-book which don't even make grammar. Only
last session the Minister of Education got a bill sent up to the
Spiritual Chamber with three split infinitives in it."

"What is a split infinitive?" inquired his Majesty.

"Merely a grammatical error for which in your day school-boys used to be
whipped. You were not. It's important, because when lawyers get on to
the interpretation of the law, loose syntax gives them their
opportunity; they make fortunes out of the grammatical errors of
Parliament. And, of course, it was a lawyer who drew up this bill."

"Do you mean that some one paid him to put in the split infinitives?"
inquired the King anxiously.

"That was quite unnecessary; the thing paid for itself; good drafting
is never to the legal interest. But what I wanted to say was this: here,
in a House of educated men dealing with education, nobody troubled to
correct the grammar of the thing. That to my mind stands out as a moral
portent of the first magnitude. The Bishops quite rightly sent it back
again, but for the wrong reason. Their reason was pure blind
obscurantism; if they had returned it because of its split infinitives
and its slovenly drafting, and requested that it should be put into
decent Jingalese so that they might pretend to understand it they would
have had all the enlightened educationalists in the country with them.
As it was they were against them. It is curious how the Spiritual
Chamber always seeks its popularity among the fools instead of the wise.
It treats democracy like a dog with a bad name, and yet it is to the
dog's tail that it pins its faith: and so it wags with the tail."

The King was not happy at hearing the Bishops so abused; and now a word
had fallen from his son's lips which enabled him to change the subject
to a point which more immediately concerned him.

"Max," said he, "answer me truly,