The real public opinion of a nation, expressing its deepest conviction (as distinguished from what is ordinarily called public opinion, the first cry of professional politicians and journalists, which usually goes wrong,) is undoubtedly entitled to very great respect. But after making all fair allowances, no honest man, however warm a democrat he may be, can shut his eyes to the facts which stare him in the face at home, in our colonies, in the United States, and refuse to acknowledge that the will of the majority in a nation, ascertained by the best processes yet known to us, is not always or altogether just, or consistent, or stable; that the deliberate decisions of the people are not unfrequently tainted by ignorance, or passion, or prejudice.

Are we, then, to rest contented with this ultimate[197] regal power, to resign ourselves to the inevitable, and admit that for us, here at last in this nineteenth century, there is nothing higher or better to look for; and if we are to have a king at all, it must be king people or king mob, according to the mood in which our section of collective humanity happens to be? Surely we are not prepared for this any more than the Pope is. Many of us feel that Tudors, and Stuarts, and Oliver Cromwell, and cliques of Whig or Tory aristocrats, may have been bad enough; but that any tyranny under which England has groaned in the past has been light by the side of what we may come to, if we are to carry out the new political gospel to its logical conclusion, and surrender ourselves to government by the counting of heads, pure and simple.

But if we will not do this is there any alternative, since we repudiate personal government, but to fall back on the old Hebrew and Christian faith, that the nations are ruled by a living, present, invisible King, whose will is perfectly righteous and loving, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever? It is beside the question to urge that such a faith throws us back on an invisible power, and that we must have visible rulers. Of course we must have visible rulers, even after the advent of the “confederate social republic of Europe.” When the whole people is king it must have viceroys like other monarchs. But is public opinion visible? Can we see “collective humanity?” Is it easier for princes or statesmen—for[198] any man or men upon whose shoulders the government rests—to ascertain the will of the people than the will of God? Another consideration meets us at once, and that is, that this belief is assumed in our present practice. Not to insist upon the daily usage in a............