question that may be dealt with in general terms. What, we would ask,
are the natural, inseparable concomitants of a system of hereditary
rulers in a state, looking at the thing entirely with an eye to the
making of a greater mankind in the world? How does it compare with the
American conception of democratic equality, and how do both stand with
regard to the essential truth and purpose in things? . . .

To state these questions is like opening the door of a room that has
long been locked and deserted. One has a lonely feeling. There are
quite remarkably no other voices here, and the rusty hinges echo down
empty passages that were quite threateningly full of men seventy or
eighty years ago. But I am only one very insignificant member of a
class of inquirers in England who started upon the question "why are we
becoming inefficient?" a year or two ago, and from that starting point
it is I came to this. . . . I do not believe therefore that upon this
dusty threshold I shall stand long alone. We take most calmly the most
miraculous of things, and it is only quite recently that I have come to
see as amazing this fact, that while the greater mass of our English-
speaking people is living under the profession of democratic
Republicanism, there is no party, no sect, no periodical, no teacher
either in Great Britain or America or the Colonies, to hint at a
proposal to abolish the aristocratic and monarchical elements in the
British system. There is no revolutionary spirit over here, and very
little missionary spirit over there. The great mass of the present
generation on both sides of the Atlantic takes hardly any interest in
this issue at all. It is as if the question was an impossible one,
outside the range of thinkable things. Or, as if the last word in this
controversy was said before our grandfathers died.

But is that really so? It is permissible to suggest that for a time the