I DETECT A STRAIN of opinion that looks down on common folk for rejoicing at the birth of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s son. I think Walter Bagehot, the Victorian theorist, or even the inventor, of the English (not in his eyes “British”) constitution had an idea why the sneerers are wrong.

“Every instructed theologian would say that it was the duty of a person born under a Republic as much to obey that Republic as it is the duty of one born under a Monarchy to obey the monarch,” he wrote.