ote
issue--the 'ten per cent.' on the blue posters and the 'cent. per cent.'
on the yellow? Nor will his conscience be a safer guide than his
judgment. A 'Christian Service Wing' of the Free Money League may be
formed, and his conscience may be roused by a white-cravatted orator,
intoxicated by his own eloquence into something like sincerity, who
borrows that phrase about 'Humanity crucified on a cross of gold' which
Mr. W.J. Bryan borrowed a dozen years ago from some one else. In an
optimistic mood one might rely on the subtle network of confidence by
which each man trusts, on subjects outside his own knowledge, some
honest and better-informed neighbour, who again trusts at several
removes the trained thinker. But does such a personal network exist in
our vast delocalised urban populations?

It is the vague apprehension of such dangers, quite as much as the
merely selfish fears of the privileged classes, which preserves in
Europe the relics of past systems of non-elective government, the House
of Lords, for instance, in England, and the Monarchy in Italy or Norway.
Men feel that a second base in politics is required, consisting of
persons independent of the tactics by which electoral opinion is formed
and legally entitled to make themselves heard. But political authority
founded on heredity or wealth is not in fact protected from the
interested manipulation of opinion and feeling. The American Senate,
which has come to be representative of wealth, is already absorbed by
that financial power which depends for its existence on manufactured
opinion; and our House of Lords is rapidly tending in the same
direction. From the beginning of history it has been found easier for
any skilled politician who set his mind to it, to control the opinions
of a hereditary monarch than those of a crowd.

The real 'Second Chamber,' the real 'constitutional check' in England,
is provided, not by the House of Lords or the Monarchy, but by the
existence of a permanent Civil Service, appointed on a system
independent of the opinion or desires of any politician, and holding
office during good behaviour. If such a service were, as it is in Russia
and to a large extent in India, a sovereign power, it would itself, as I
argued in the last chapter, have to cultivate the art of manipulating
opinion. But the English Civil servants in their present position have
the right and duty of making their voice heard, without the necessity of
making their wi