argely; on that account he not
only dreads, but hates and despises, poverty. His virtues are those of
the free-handed and warm-hearted opulent man; his weaknesses come of the
sense of inferiority (intensely painful and humiliating) which attaches
in his mind to one who cannot spend and give; his vices, for the most
part, originate in loss of self-respect due to loss of secure position.

XXII.

For a nation of this temper, the movement towards democracy is fraught
with peculiar dangers. Profoundly aristocratic in his sympathies, the
Englishman has always seen in the patrician class not merely a social,
but a moral, superiority; the man of blue blood was to him a living
representative of those potencies and virtues which made his ideal of the
worthy life. Very significant is the cordial alliance from old time
between nobles and people; free, proud homage on one side answering to
gallant championship on the other; both classes working together in the
cause of liberty. However great the sacrifices of the common folk for
the maintenance of aristocratic power and splendour, they were gladly
made; this was the Englishman's religion, his inborn _pietas_; in the
depths of the dullest soul moved a perception of the ethic meaning
attached to lordship. Your Lord was the privileged being endowed by
descent with generous instincts, and possessed of means to show them
forth in act. A poor noble was a contradiction in terms; if such a
person existed, he could only be spoken of with wondering sadness, as
though he were the victim of some freak of nature. The Lord was
Honourable, Right Honourable; his acts, his words virtually constituted
the code of honour whereby the nation lived.

In a new world, beyond the ocean, there grew up a new race, a scion of
England, which shaped its life without regard to the principle of
hereditary lordship; and in course of time this triumphant Republic began
to shake the ideals of the Motherland. Its civilization, spite of
superficial resemblances, is not English; let him who will think it
superior; all one cares to say is that it has already shown in a broad
picture the natural tendencies of English blood when emancipated from the
old cult. Easy to understand that some there are who see nothing but
evil in the influence of that vast commonwealth. If it has done us good,
assuredly the fact is not yet demonstrable. In old England, democracy is
a thing so alien to our traditions and roote