The English love to be ruled, just as eels are said to take delight in being skinned. They hold that a nation which is properly ruled cannot fail of happiness. Their notion of rule may be summed up in the phrase, "Law and order." The Englishman believes that law and order are heaven-sent blessings especially invented for his behoof. "Where else in the world," he will ask you grandiloquently, "do you get such law and such order as you get in England—the land of the free?" If anybody picks his pocket, or encroaches upon his land, or infringes his patent rights, or diverts his water-courses, the Englishman knows exactly what to do. There is the law. They keep it on tap in great build[Pg 164]ings called courts, and persons in wigs serve out to you precisely what you may deserve with great gusto and solemnity. The man picked your pocket, did he? Three months\' imprisonment for the man. Somebody is making colourable imitations of your patent dolls\' eyes. Well, you can apply for an injunction. And so on.

This is law. All Englishmen believe in it, particularly those who have never had any. When it comes to the worst, and the Englishman finds that he really must take on a little of his own beautiful specific, he usually begins by falling into something of a flutter. Those bewigged and sedate persons seated in great chairs, with bouquets in front of them and policemen to bawl "Silence!" for them, begin to have a new meaning for the Englishman. Hitherto he has regarded them complacently as the bodily representatives of the law in a free country. He has smacked his lips over them, rejoiced in their learning, wit, and acumen, warmed at the notion of their dignity, and thanked God that he belonged[Pg 165] to a free people—free England. Now, when it comes to a trifling personal encounter before this mountain of dignity—this mountain of dignity perched on a mountain of precedent, as it were—the Englishman shivers and looks pale. But his solicitor and his counsel and his counsel\'s clerk—particularly his counsel\'s clerk—soon put him at his ease, and instead of withdrawing at the feel of the bath, he is fain to plump right in. Whether he comes out on top or gets beaten is another matter; in any case, the trouble about the thing is that, win or lose, it is infinitely and appallingly costly. Law, the Englishman\'s birthright, is not to be given away. If you want any, you must pay for it, and pay for it handsomely, too. Otherwise you can go without. The English adage to the effect that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor is one of those adages which are very subtly true. There is a law for the rich, certainly. There is also a law for the poor—namely, no law at all. On the whole the Englishman who has not had his[Pg 166] pristine dream of English law shattered by contact with the realities is to envied. All other Englishmen, whether their experience has lain in County Courts, High Courts, or Courts of Appeal, talk lovingly of English law with their tongues in their cheeks.

With respect to order, the much bepraised handmaiden of law, I do not think that the English get half so much of her as they think they do. She costs them a pretty penny. The up-keep of her police and magistrates and general myrmidons runs the Englishman into some noble taxation; yet where shall you find an English community that is orderly if even an infinitesimal section of it has made up its mind to be otherwise? In London at the present moment there are whole districts which it is not safe for a decently dressed person to traverse even in broad daylight; and these districts are not by any means slum districts, but parts of the metropolis in which lie important arteries of traffic. There is not a square mile of the metropolitan area which does no............