It was, I believe, Conor Cruise O'Brien who said that, in his biography of Edmund Burke, thinking of the British Crown's treatment of the people of Ireland in the eighteenth century.
I thought of his point when I heard that Clive Lewis was being made to take his oath of allegiance to the king again because be omitted some words the first time.
It ought to be possible for MPs to be republicans, just is at possible for them to be atheists. MPs are given the option of affirming rather than swearing on a holy book, and everyone thinks that's right and proper.
Yet it took a long battle by Charles Bradlaugh, a Liberal MP from Northampton, to win the right to affirm.
Would those who have accused Lewis of "student politics" say the same of Bradlaugh?
What the authorities should do is devise a tweak to the oath, producing either one that every MP can take or a subtly different version that republicans can take.
There would be a row at first, but soon we would be congratulating ourselves on a typically British piece if pragmatism. And not long after that, we would imagine that it has always been like that.
Photo by Rwendland.
