(H.) Was not the Parliament on the one side a kind of watch-
committee sitting to see that the interests of the Upper Classes took
no hurt; and on the other side a sort of blind to delude the people
into supposing that they had some share in the management of their
own affairs?

(I) History seems to show us this.

(H.) To what extent did the people manage their own affairs?

(I) I judge from what I have heard that sometimes they forced the
Parliament to make a law to legalise some alteration which had
already taken place.

(H.) Anything else?

(I) I think not. As I am informed, if the people made any attempt
to deal with the CAUSE of their grievances, the law stepped in and
said, this is sedition, revolt, or what not, and slew or tortured the
ringleaders of such attempts.

(H.) If Parliament was not the government then, nor the people
either, what was the government?

(I) Can you tell me?

(H.) I think we shall not be far wrong if we say that government was
the Law-Courts, backed up by the executive, which handled the brute
force that the deluded people allowed them to use for their own