News from Nowhere, or, an Epoch of Rest : being some chapters from a utopian romance by William Morris
page 97 of 269 (36%)
page 97 of 269 (36%)
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(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 |
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