But the journalist
proceeds to say, his neck rising higher and higher out of his collar, and
his hair rising higher and higher on his head, in short, his resemblance
to the Dickens' original increasing every instant, that he does not mean
that the law against corruption should be less stringent, but that the
burden should be borne by the whole community. This may mean that
whenever a rich man breaks the law, all the poor men ought to be made to
pay his fine. But I will suppose a slightly less insane meaning. I will
suppose it means that the whole power of the commonwealth should be used
to prosecute an offender of this kind. That, of course, can only mean
that the matter will be decided by that instrument which still pretends to
represent the whole power of the commonwealth. In other words, the
Government will judge the Government.
Now this is a perfectly plain piece of brute logic. We need not go into
the other delicious things in the article, as when it says that "in old
times Parliament had to be protected against Royal invasion by the man in
the street." Parliament has to be protected now against the man in the
street. Parliament is simply the most detested and the most detestable of
all our national institutions: all that is evident enough. What is
interesting is the blank and staring fallacy of the attempted reply.
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