Petitions, politics and priestcraft (article)

              PETITIONS, POLITICS AND PRIESTCRAFT.
by "a Labourite".
In any age of turmoil and general unsettledness, queer ideas like dross pop up to the surface every now and again.  Politics is no exception.   And Man is paying heavily for his incurable credulity in being deceived by the quack nostrums of Dictatorships. Some fantastic propositions are floating above.  One of the most ludicrous emanates from a body called the Petition Council.  This body is organising a Petition "concerning the Abolition of Poverty, and the main causes of Economic Warfare between the Nations" direct to the young King. His Majesty Edward VIII is petitioned to exercise his Royal Prerogative and to summon "such and so many of your Judges as you deem advisable" to undertake an impartial and totally disinterested Inquiry into the Monetary, Currency and Credit System now obtaining.  It looks simple but it raises vital issues.  Grave questions long ago settled by democracy are raising their reactionary hydra heads again.   And very subtly too.  The divine right of Kings faded away with Charles I.  The proper relationship of the Judiciary to the People and representative institutions as against previous subservience to individual sovereigns has been settled by many an important trial or incident in British history. Present day education of the ordinary intellectual omits all the fundamental props of British constitutional development. Hence the apparent acceptance of any old rag or tag of reactionary doctrine dished up in modern dress.
His Majesty the King is a constitutional monarch in a democratic country with representative institute and a recognised traditional procedure.  Any petition