especially when there is no check on the real danger of reaction. To
devise a Second Chamber which will be a check on reaction as well as on
so-called revolution is a problem for the future. For the time being,
therefore, the best security for the country against the perils of a
reactionary regime is to allow freer play to the forces of progress,
which only tend to become revolutionary when they are resisted and
suppressed. The curtailment of the veto of the Second Chamber fulfils
this purpose. Whatever further adjustment of the Constitution may be
effected in time to come, the door can no longer be closed persistently
against the wishes of the people when they entrust the work of
legislation to a Liberal Government.

SYDNEY BROOKS

The first but by no means the last or most crucial stage of our
twentieth-century Revolution has now been completed; the old
Constitution, which was perhaps the most adaptable and convenient
system of government that the world has ever known, is definitely at an
end; the powers of an ancient Assembly have been truncated with a
violence that in any other land would have spelled barricades and
bloodshed long ago; and the road has been cleared, or partially
cleared, for developments that must profoundly affect, and that in all
probability will absolutely transform, the whole scheme of the British
State.

Thus far, with their usual effective, good-humored, shortsighted common
sense, with few pauses for inquiry, and with a characteristically
indifferent grasp on the ultimate trend of things, have our politicians
brought us. Our politicians, I say, and not our people, because one of
the distinctive features of the Revolution so far is that it has been a
political rather than a popular movement. It did not originate in the
constituencies, but in the Cabinet; it was not forced upon the caucus
by an aroused and indignant country, but by the caucus upon the
country; nine-tenths of its momentum has been derived from above and
not from below; the true centers of excitement throughout its polite
and orderly progress have been the lobbies of the House and the
correspondence columns of _The Times;_ it was only at the last that the
urbanities of the struggle between the "Die-hards" and their fellow
Unionists furnished the public as a whole with material for a mild
sporting interest. When Roundheads and Cavaliers were lining up for the
battle of Edgehill a Warwickshire squire was observed between the