tyranny in a secondary and special sense. It restrains the abnormal, not
the normal man. But the normal man, the decent discontented citizen, does
want to protest against unfair law courts. He does want to expose
brutalities of the police. He does want to make game of a vulgar
pawnbroker who is made a Peer. He does want publicly to warn people
against unscrupulous capitalists and suspicious finance. If he is run in
for doing this (as he will be) he does want to proclaim the character or
known prejudices of the magistrate who tries him. If he is sent to prison
(as he will be) he does want to have a clear and civilised sentence,
telling him when he will come out. And these are literally and exactly
the things that he now cannot get. That is the almost cloying humour of
the present situation. I can say abnormal things in modern magazines. It
is the normal things that I am not allowed to say. I can write in some
solemn quarterly an elaborate article explaining that God is the devil; I
can write in some cultured weekly an aesthetic fancy describing how I
should like to eat boiled baby. The thing I must not write is rational
criticism of the men and institutions of my country.

The present condition of England is briefly this: That no Englishman can
say in public a twentieth part of what he says in private. One cannot say,
for instance, that--But I am afraid I must leave out that instance,
because one cannot say it. I cannot prove my case--because it is so true.




THE HYPOTHETICAL HOUSEHOLDER


We have read of some celebrated philosopher who was so absent-minded that