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To the friendship of the late Sir William Anson I owe a debt the amount of which it is impossible to exaggerate . From each class he may learn much , but for reasons which I am about to lay before you for consideration , he is liable to be led by each class of authors somewhat astray in his attempt to ascertain the field of his labours and the mode of working it ; he will find , unless he can obtain some clue to guide his steps , that the whole province of so-called " constitutional law " is a sort of maze in which the wanderer is perplexed by unreality , by antiquarianism , and by conventionalism . Hence the invention of that self-contradictory idea of " peaceful picketing , " which is no more capable of real existence than would be " peaceful war " or " unoppressive oppression " ; hence , too , that triumph of legalised wrong-doing sanctioned by the fourth section of the Trade Disputes Act ,511906 . There is not the remotest doubt that the argument involved in this inquiry ( in whatever form it is stated ) seems to many women , to a great number of parliamentary electors , and also to a considerable number of M.P.s , to afford an unanswerable and conclusive reason in favour of giving parliamentary votes to women . I have enjoyed the great advantage of his having read over the parts of my Introduction which refer to our Colonial Empire . There are , as I have intimated ,104 two objects on which every Imperialist should fix his eyes . It is quite possible honestly to regret the time when Edinburgh possessed the most intellectual society to be found in Great Britain or Ireland . It had been shown previously that in England the principles of inheritance applied directly to the singular succession of the heir to a specific fee , as well as to the universal succession of the executor . To any one who investigates the actual course of British politics , and still more of British social life since the beginning of the nineteenth century , these complaints appear to be utterly groundless . Locke , Bentham , and Mil will find it easy to assent , for it is well known that in any country , and especially in any country where popular government exists , the thoughts , even the bad or the foolish thoughts , of the people should be known to the national legislature . It could not then possibly have been presented to the King for his assent till June 9 , 1914 ; it was not so presented to the King till September 18 , 1914 . But I am a student of the British constitution ; my unhesitating conviction is that the constitution of the Empire ought to develop , as it is actually developing , in the same way in which grew up the constitution of England.103 The relation between England and the Dominions , and , as far as possible , between England and the colonies which are not as yet self-governing countries , need not be developed by arduous feats of legislation . It is a little difficult to see why this proposal should be called " decentralisation , " for that term has hitherto borne a very different meaning .