influence as the men. But in modern England neither the
men nor the women have any influence at all. In this primary matter, the
moulding of the landscape, the creation of a mode of life, the people
are utterly impotent. They stand and stare at imperial and economic
processes going on, as they might stare at the Lord Mayor's Show.

Round about where I live, for instance, two changes are taking place
which really affect the land and all things that live on it, whether for
good or evil. The first is that the urban civilisation (or whatever
it is) is advancing; that the clerks come out in black swarms and the
villas advance in red battalions. The other is that the vast estates
into which England has long been divided are passing out of the hands
of the English gentry into the hands of men who are always upstarts and
often actually foreigners.

Now, these are just the sort of things with which self-government was
really supposed to grapple. People were supposed to be able to indicate
whether they wished to live in town or country, to be represented by a
gentleman or a cad. I do not presume to prejudge their decision; perhaps
they would prefer the cad; perhaps he is really preferable. I say that
the filling of a man's native sky with smoke or the selling of his roof
over his head illustrate the sort of things he ought to have some say
in, if he is supposed to be governing himself. But owing to the strange
trend of recent society, these enormous earthquakes he has to pass over
and treat as private trivialities. In theory the building of a villa
is as incidental as the buying of a hat. In reality it is as if all
Lancashire were laid waste for deer forests; or as if all Belgium
were flooded by the sea. In theory the sale of a squire's land to a
moneylender is a minor and exceptional necessity. In reality it is a
thing like a German invasion. Sometimes it is a German invasion.

Upon this helpless populace, gazing at these prodigies and fates, comes
round about every five years a thing called a General Election. It
is believed by antiquarians to be the remains of some system of
self-government; but it consists solely in asking the citizen questions
about everything except what he understands. The examination paper of
the Election generally consists of some such queries as these: "I. Are
the green biscuits eaten by the peasants of Eastern Lithuania in your
opinion fit for human food? II. Are the religious professions of the
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