552 THE CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS

whether consistent with their will or not. This government is properly to be called Monarchical, whatever its form.

33. I see that politicians and writers of history continually run into hopeless error, because they confuse the Form of a Government with its Nature. A Government may be nominally vested in an individual; and yet if that individual be in such fear of those beneath him, that he does nothing but what he supposes will be agreeable to them, the Government is Democratic; on the other hand, the Government may be vested in a deliberative assembly of a thousand men, all having equal authority, and all chosen from the lowest ranks of the people; and yet if that assembly act independently of the will of the people, and have no fear of them, and enforce its determinations upon them, the Government is Monarchical; that is to say, the Assembly, acting as One, has power over the Many, while in the case of the weak king, the Many have power over the One.

A Monarchical Government, acting for its own interest, instead of the people’s, is a tyranny. I said the Executive Government was the hand of the nation:-the Republican Government is in like manner its tongue. The Monarchical Government is its head.

All true and right government is Monarchical, and of the head. What is its best form, is a totally different question; but unless it act for the people, and not as representative of the people, it is no government at all; and one of the grossest blockheadisms of the English in the present day, is their idea of sending men to Parliament to “represent their opinions.” Whereas their only true business is to find out the wisest men among them, and send them to Parliament to represent their own opinions, and act upon them. Of all puppet-shows in the Satanic Carnival of the earth, the most contemptible puppet-show is a Parliament with a mob pulling the strings.¹

¹ [In connexion with what Ruskin says of Carlyle constantly colouring his thoughts (Modern Painters, vol. iii. App. iii.), it may here be recalled that Latter-Day Pamphlets (ch. vi., “Parliaments”) had appeared in 1850.]

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