last word had been said, and still to reopen the discussion now. All
these papers, the very conception of New Republicanism, rests on the
assumption--presumptuous and offensive though it must needs seem to
many--that new matter for thought altogether, new apparatus and methods
of inquiry, and new ends, have come into view since the early
seventies, when the last Republican voices in England died away. We are
enormously more aware of the Future. That, we have already defined as
the essential difference of our new outlook. Our fathers thought of the
Kingdom as it was to them, they contrasted with that the immediate
alternative, and within these limits they were, no doubt, right in
rejecting the latter. So, to them at any rate, the thing seemed judged.
But nowadays when we have said the Kingdom is so and so, and when we
have decided that we do not wish to convert it into a Republic upon the
American or any other existing pattern before Christmas, 1904, we
consider we have only begun to look at the thing. We have then to ask
what is the future of the Kingdom; is it to be a permanent thing, or is
it to develop into and give place to some other condition? We have to
ask precisely the same question about the American democracy and the
American constitution. Is that latter arrangement going to last for
ever? We cannot help being contributory to these developments, and if
we have any pretensions to wisdom at all, we must have some theory of
what we intend with regard to these things; political action can surely
be nothing but folly, unless it has a clear purpose in the future. If
these things are not sempiternal, then are we merely to patch the
fabric as it gives way, or are we going to set about rebuilding--
piecemeal, of course, and without closing the premises or stopping the
business, but, nevertheless, on some clear and comprehensive plan? If
so, what is the plan to be? Does it permit us to retain in a more or
less modified form, or does it urge us to get rid of, the British
Crown? Does it permit us to retain or does it urge us to modify the