“What about politics? On the detail of that, frankly, I have naught to say, for I am concerned only with principles. (…) Go back in history and you find the Kings ruling, and that built up the one nation of England. Then the Barons ruled, and they did not on the whole do so badly, for England was called Merrie England then, and certainly no one would dream of applying that name to it now. Then there came the England of Parliaments, getting duller and deader and deader; then the England of Commercialism. And who is our ruler now? Neither King nor Lords nor Parliament altogether, but on the one side King Purse, and King Mob on the other. Neither of those is a ruler who is likely to make this nation great. Liberty is a great celestial Goddess, strong, beneficent, and austere, and she can never descend upon a nation by shouting of crowds, nor by the arguments of unbridled passion, nor by hatred of class against class.” (Annie Besant. The Changing World, p. 101; emphasis added)