receive the assent of the people. Can it get itself obeyed? If it
can, then its future is assured for many generations. But it must pass
through an exciting period of probation.

If it is a matter that arouses much feeling the British way is for some
one to disobey and take the consequences. Passive resistance--with such
active measures as may make the life of the enforcers of the law a
burden to them--is a recognized method of political and religious
propagandism.

In periods when the national life has run most swiftly this kind of
resistance to what has been considered the tyranny of lawmakers has
always been notable. Emerson's "the chambers of the great are jails" was
literally true of the England of the seventeenth century. Every one who
made any pretension to moral leadership was intent on going to jail in
behalf of some principle or another.

John Bunyan goes to jail rather than attend the parish church, George
Fox goes to jail rather than take off his hat in the presence of the
magistrate. Why should he do so when there was no Scripture for it? When
it was said that the Scripture had nothing to say about hats, he was
ready with his triumphant reference to Daniel III, 21, where it is said
that the three Hebrew children wore "their coats, their hosen, their
hats and their other garments" in the fiery furnace. If Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abed-nego wore their hats before Nebuchadnezzar and kept
them on even in the fiery furnace, why should a free-born Englishman
take his hat off in the presence of a petty Justice of the Peace?
Fervent Fifth Monarchy men were willing to die rather than acknowledge
any king but King Jesus who was about to come to reign. Non-juring
bishops were willing to go to jail rather than submit to the judgment of
Parliament as to who should be king in England. Puritans and Covenanters
of the more logical sort refused to accept toleration unless it were
offered on their own terms. They had been a "persecuted remnant" and
they proposed to remain such or know the reason why.

Beneath his crust of conformity the Briton has an admiration for these
recalcitrant individuals who will neither bow the knee to Baal nor to
his betters. He likes a man who is a law unto himself. Though he has
little enthusiasm for the abstract "rights of man," he is a great
believer in "the liberty of prophesying." The prophet is not without
honor, even while he is being stoned.

Just at this time things are moving almost