eak of it."

"On the contrary," replied the King, "I have got a great deal to say."
And then, with much detail and particularity, he narrated his
experience--all those hours which he had spent in the crowd; and the
Prime Minister listened, saying nothing.

"Well," said the King, when he had done, "that is what I have seen; and
you cannot tell me it is something that does not matter."

"By no means, sir; I admit that it is very serious."

"I was never told so before."

"We did not wish unnecessarily to trouble your Majesty. This is hardly a
case for Cabinet intervention; the Home Office does its duty, takes
preventive measures as far as is possible, and puts down the
disturbances when they arise."

"Yes, yes," said the King, "but is nothing going to be done?"

The Prime Minister raised his eyebrows, as though asked to reply once
more to a question already answered.

"Everything possible is being done, sir."

"Legislatively, I mean."

"Oh, sir," exclaimed the head of Government in a tone of the most
deferential protest, "that surely is a matter for the Cabinet."

"Quite so," said the King. "That is why I ask."

So then the Premier explained circumstantially and at great length why,
in that sense, nothing whatever could be done. We need not go into it
here--those who read Jingalese history will find the Prime Minister's
reasons published elsewhere; and it all really came only to this: "It is
the duty of a government to keep in power; and if it cannot do justice
without endangering its party majority, then justice cannot be done."

You could not have a more satisfactory, a more logical, or a more
unanswerable argument than that. And at all events--whether you agree
with it or not--it is the argument that all ministers act upon
now-a-days, even when, in the House of Legislature which sits
subservient to their will, there is a majority ready and waiting which
thinks differently of the matter, but fears to act lest it should lose
touch with the loaves and fishes. For now it is on the life not of a
Parliament but of a Cabinet that losses are counted. And the reason is
plain; for every member of a Cabinet has to think of saving for himself
some L5,000 a year together with an enormous amount of departmental
power and patronage; while an ordinary private member of Parliament has
only his few hundreds to think about and his rapidly diminishing right
to any independence at all. The life and death struggles of a minist