‘Now,’ said I, ‘I have come to the point of asking questions which I suppose will be dry for you to answer and difficult for you to explain; but I have foreseen for some time past that I must ask them, will I nill I. What kind of a government have you? Has republicanism finally triumphed? or have you come to a mere dictatorship, which some persons in the nineteenth century used to prophesy as the ultimate outcome of democracy? Indeed, this last question does not seem so very unreasonable, since you have turned your Parliament House into a dung-market. Or where do you house your present Parliament?’

The old man answered my smile with a hearty laugh, and said: ‘Well, well, dung is not the worst kind of corruption; fertility may come of that, whereas mere dearth came from the other kind, of which those walls once held the great supporters. Now, dear guest, let me tell you that our present parliament would be hard to house in one place, because the whole people is our parliament.’

‘I don't understand,’ said I.

‘No, I suppose not,’ said he. ‘I must now shock you by telling you that we have no longer anything which you, a native of another planet, would call a government.’

‘I am not so much shocked as you might think,’ said I, ‘as I know something about governments. But tell me, how do you manage, and how have you come to this state of things?’