ound it a
little difficult to credit Lord Settleham and the rest of the landowners
with sincerity in the matter so long as they were unconscious of any need
for their own improvement. According to him, they wanted it both ways,
and, so far as he could see, they meant to have it!

His use of the word sincere, in connection with Lord Settleham, was at
once pounced on. He could not know Lord Settleham--one of the most
sincere of men. Felix freely admitted that he did not, and hastened to
explain that he did not question the--er--parliamentary sincerity of Lord
Settleham and his followers. He only ventured to doubt whether they
realized the hold that human nature had on them. His experience, he said,
of the houses where they had been bred, and the seminaries where they had
been trained, had convinced him that there was still a conspiracy on foot
to blind Lord Settleham and those others concerning all this; and, since
they were themselves part of the conspiracy, there was very little danger
of their unmasking it. At this juncture Felix was felt to have exceeded
the limit of fair criticism, and only that toleration toward literary men
of a certain reputation, in country houses, as persons brought there to
say clever and irresponsible things, prevented people from taking him
seriously.

The third section of the guests, unquestionably more static than the
others, confined themselves to pointing out that, though the land
question was undoubtedly serious, nothing whatever would result from
placing any further impositions upon landowners. For, after all, what
was land? Simply capital invested in a certain way, and very poorly at
that. And what was capital? Simply a means of causing wages to be paid.
And whether they were paid to men who looked after birds and dogs, loaded
your guns, beat your coverts, or drove you to the shoot, or paid to men
who ploughed and fertilized the land, what did it matter? To dictate to
a man to whom he was to pay wages was, in the last degree, un-English.
Everybody knew the fate which had come, or was coming, upon capital. It
was being driven out of the country by leaps and bounds--though, to be
sure, it still perversely persisted in yielding every year a larger
revenue by way of income tax. And it would be dastardly to take
advantage of land just because it was the only sort of capital which
could not fly the country in times of need. Stanley himself, though--as
became a host--he spoke li