A Parliament chosen by universal
suffrage and electoral districts would have sent Cecil and Walsingham
into private life or to the scaffold, replaced the Mass in the churches,
and reduced the Queen, if she had been left on the throne, into the
humble servant of the Pope and Philip. It would not perhaps have lasted,
but that, so far as I can judge, would have been the immediate result,
and instead of a Reformation we should have had the light come in the
shape of lightning. But I have often asked my Radical friends what is to
be done if out of every hundred enlightened voters two-thirds will give
their votes one way, but are afraid to fight, and the remaining third
will not only vote but will fight too if the poll goes against them?
Which has then the right to rule? I can tell them which will rule. The
brave and resolute minority will rule. Plato says that if one man was
stronger than all the rest of mankind he would rule all the rest of
mankind. It must be so, because there is no appeal. The majority must be
prepared to assert their Divine right with their right hands, or it will
go the way that other Divine rights have gone before. I will not believe
the world to have been so ill-constructed that there are rights which
cannot be enforced.
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