I have no doubt but that a conservative Chinese gentleman would tell you
that since the Republic came in there has been a sad falling-off in the
observance of the rules of propriety as laid down by Confucius. The
Conservative newspapers of England bewail the fact that there has been a
lamentable change since the present Government came in. The arch
offender is "that political Mahdi, Lloyd George, whose false prophecies
have made deluded dervishes of hosts of British workmen, and who has
corrupted the manners of Parliament itself."

This wicked Mahdi, by his appeals to the passions of the populace, has
destroyed the old English reverence for Law.

I do not know what may be the cause, but the American visitor does
notice that the English attitude towards the laws of the realm is not so
devout as he had been led to expect. We have from our earliest youth
been taught to believe that the law-abidingness of the Englishman was
innate and impeccable. It was not that, like the good man of whom the
Psalmist speaks, he meditated on the law day and night. He didn't need
to. Decent respect for the law was in his blood. He simply could not
help conforming to it.

And this impression is confirmed by the things which the tourist goes to
see. The stately mansions embowered in green and guarded by immemorial
oaks are accepted as symbolic of an ordered life. The multitudinous
rooks suggest security which comes from triumphant legality. No
irresponsible person shoots them. When one enters a cathedral close he
feels that he is in a land that frowns on the crudity of change. Here
everything is a "thousand years the same." And how decent is the
demeanor of a verger!