God and Gold by Walter Russell Mead

Author:Walter Russell Mead
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books Ltd
Published: 2015-05-24T15:31:33.211000+00:00

When Wellington thrashed Bonaparte

As every child can tell

The House of Peers throughout the war

Did nothing in particular

And did it very well.

Yet Britain set the world ablaze

In good King George’s glorious days.

And while the House of Peers withholds

Its legislative hand

And noble statesmen do not itch

To interfere in matters which

They do not understand

As bright will shine Great Britain’s rays

As in King George’s glorious days.4

The hereditary peers developed an irresistible itch to interfere with Lloyd George’s budget in 1910 and as a result their wings were severely clipped, but the sentiments of Iolanthe have not yet fully disappeared. The British hold on tenaciously to the surviving inconsistencies and fictions in their form of government. The Crown can do nothing, but everything is done in its name. Tiny jurisdictions like the Isle of Man and the various Channel islands continue to flourish without the officious interventions of the modernizing, rationalizing impulse. Judges wear wigs that were fashionable in the days of Charles II, and British law still delights in its thickets of precedent. Medieval and early modern costumes and customs hang on wherever possible; the Beefeaters and the Yeomen of the Guard do nothing in particular, but do it very well. Britain, the great modernizing engine that drove all Europe and the world into the maelstrom of the Industrial Revolution, remains in some ways the most traditional of the European states.

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