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But in 1884 the exercise of self-government on the part of any colony was regarded as subordinate to real control by the English Parliament and Crown of colonial legislation which might be opposed to English interests or to English ideals of political prudence . The constitution was to them , in the quaint language of George the Third , " the most perfect of human formations " ; 3 it was to them not a mere polity to be compared with the government of any other state , but so to speak a sacred mystery of statesmanship ; it " had ( as we have all heard from our youth up ) not been made but had grown " ; it was the fruit not of abstract theory but of that instinct which ( it is supposed ) has enabled Englishmen , and especially uncivilised Englishmen , to build up sound and lasting institutions , much as bees construct a honeycomb , without undergoing the degradation of understanding the principles on which they raise a fabric more subtlely wrought than any work of conscious art . But such a conviction is almost certain to beget , on the part of persons suffering under what they deem to be an unjust law , the belief , delusive though it often is , that any kind of injustice may under a democratic government be rightly opposed by the use of force . Teutonic institutions brought into Britain by the English conquerors ; effects of the settlement on the conquerors ; probable increase of slavery ; Earls and Churls ; growth of the kingly power ; nature of kingship ; special sanctity of the King ; immemorial distinction between Kings and Eal-dormen . The rule , on the other hand , that a Bill must be read a given number of times before it is passed is , though a well-established constitutional principle , a convention which might be disregarded without bringing the Government into conflict with the ordinary law .