e real power does not lie with Parliament or with the Executive,
but is invariably wielded by one or more men of commanding ability.

Nominally, the administration is in the hands of the social aristocracy,
that is to say, of a few peer families and their innumerable relations.
Whichever of the two great parties in the State may happen to be in
power, the Government is invariably exploited by members of the peer
class, who practically divide the spoils of office amongst themselves
and their immediate entourage.

Although, however, the English nobility manage to usurp all the offices
of State, and to secure all the plums for themselves, it is not they who
really govern the country. No doubt the landed aristocracy are
politically the most fit to govern. They have no commercial or
industrial interests that may bring corrupt and undesirable influences
into public life. But they are unfitted for the position they ought to
occupy by a system of education that manufactures mediocrity, and
stifles the very qualities of imaginativeness and initiative which are
indispensable to sound statesmanship.

What is the inevitable result?

The self-made man, with all his splendid intellectual faculties
developed, with his independence of judgment, and his acquired habit of
thinking for himself instead of leaning on precedent and borrowed
wisdom, rides the dummy Government class with whip and spur. He lays on
the lash here and digs in the rowels there, goading on his steed in any
direction that chances to suit his purpose. He naturally places personal
ambition in front of national expediency, because his political career
is necessarily a constant fight against odds. Either he must rise
superior to the peer combination, as Disraeli succeeded in doing after a
struggle unparalleled in the annals of political history, or he will be
crushed by it.

But the necessities of his position render the self-made man a
particularly undesirable element in the administration of public
affairs. During the course of his successful upward struggle he has, in
nine cases out of ten, entangled himself in commercial or industrial
interests from which it is difficult or impossible for him to dissociate
himself. By this means, and through the necessarily adventurous
character of his political career, he can scarcely avoid becoming,
however undeserved the imputation may be, an object of suspicion. And
when once distrust of this kind has been allowed to permeat