as effected both in appearance and in fact, has been effected
in England, though in reality only, and not in outside. Here, too, the
appendages of a monarchy have been converted into the essence of a
republic; only here, because of a more numerous heterogeneous political
population, it is needful to keep the ancient show while we secretly
interpolate the new reality.

This long and curious history has left its trace on almost every part
of our present political condition; its effects lie at the root of many
of our most important controversies; and because these effects are not
rightly perceived, many of these controversies are misconceived.

One of the most curious peculiarities of the English people is its
dislike of the executive government. We are not in this respect "un
vrai peuple moderne," like the Americans. The Americans conceive of the
executive as one of their appointed agents; when it intervenes in
common life, it does so, they consider, in virtue of the mandate of the
sovereign people, and there is no invasion or dereliction of freedom in
that people interfering with itself. The French, the Swiss, and all
nations who breathe the full atmosphere of the nineteenth century,
think so too. The material necessities of this age require a strong
executive; a nation destitute of it cannot be clean, or healthy, or
vigorous, like a nation possessing it. By definition, a nation calling
itself free should have no jealousy of the executive, for freedom means
that the nation, the political part of the nation, wields the
executive. But our history has reversed the English feeling: our
freedom is the result of centuries of resistance, more or less legal,
or more or less illegal, more or less audacious, or more or less timid,
to the executive government. We have, accordingly, inherited the
traditions of conflict, and preserve them in the fulness of victory. We
look on State action, not as our own action, but as alien action; as an
imposed tyranny from without, not as the consummated result of our own
organised wishes. I remember at the census of 1851 hearing a very
sensible old lady say that the "liberties of England were at an end";
if Government might be thus inquisitorial, if they might ask who slept
in your house, or what your age was, what, she argued, might they not
ask and what might they not do?

The natural impulse of the English people is to resist authority. The
introduction of effectual policemen was not liked;