Enough Muddling

Your Majesty,

--- and all ye younger majesties heir to the body, hearken and take note --- I don't often question your wisdom in matters of your own craft, but I weep to think whatever on earth can be holding your wrath in restraint at this moment.

Your civilian police are effectively on strike; your parliament and prime-minister are in revolt (and quite possibly have even lost their pragmatic get-re-elected sense), and an uncomfortably large segment of your subjects have gleefully lost all self-control. If the rain does not fall soon (rorate coeli desuper!) to quell these flames, it will be to your greater ignominy and imperial humiliation if you do not risk physical humiliation and lead your cavalry in containing the wanton burglary, theft, and destruction that are even now entertaining so many stupid and cruel urchins. They desperately needed their mother or grandmother to step in and give them a proper scolding! And since their natural mothers and grandmothers seem also to have quit, gradually we find the need devolves up to the head of the First Family --- the Royal family. That is, your majesty, you.

I see today the prime-minister has sought the counsel of a non-subject who says "thugs must be taught to fear the Police"; certainly that will be a necessary first step, but really, these thugs must be taught to love their neighbor. This means they must be taught that their neighbors are lovable; this they will not learn if you, their mother-in-figure, do not act to protect their neighbors from wild stupidity.

Humbly yours,
A colonial observer