exclusive claim set up must have some meaning. The rights of property
intended may perhaps be the rights of property as understood by the
landlords, in which sense they may include a right to the property of
other people; or as understood by the association of which Lord Elcho is
president, in which sense they stand in opposition to the rights of the
public. We know what is meant by the rights of landed proprietors, of
railway corporations, of publicans, of property owners, of shipowners,
of pawnbrokers and of corporate bodies, such as the guilds of the city
of London. They represent the pretensions of these classes to have their
interests preferred to those of the community. It is a case of
prescription against equity, of the license assumed by special callings
against the checks and guarantees which Parliament has found it
necessary to impose for the general welfare. This is a field in which
Neo-conservatism can reap no harvest. It will be vain to tell the
working man who is the owner of the house in which he lives, that his
rights are in the same boat with the right of London companies to
squander or misapply the wealth which has descended to them from the
Middle Ages. It will be useless to enter an appeal before the tribunal
of public opinion in defence of such rights as these on the pretence
that they are the rights of property. The unsophisticated reason of the
constituencies will resent the assumption as an attempted fraud.

The political institutions which are to be set forth as necessary to the
maintenance of the civil and religious liberties of the people are the
Established Church, the House of Lords, and the Crown. Of the Crown we
have already spoken. It is the least vulnerable of the three, and for
this reason it is the least fitted to furnish a party cry. The strength
of the Crown resides in its enormous historical _prestige_, and in the
constitutional device, old as the monarchy in principle, but modern in
its machinery, by which it is removed from the sphere of responsibility
and therefore from party assault. The Crown need not be defended for it
is not assailed. If it were assailed there are sufficient grounds for an
adequate, perhaps a triumphant, defence. But in mere truth it would be
difficult to defend it on the special ground that it is necessary to the
maintenance of our civil and religious liberties. Everybody knows that
these liberties were won in despite of the Crown, and in opposition to
its