vel of mine ends--the vision of the Old Order as capable of
being born anew by a sudden reillumination of faith and new acquisitions
of knowledge--represents, it has subsequently seemed to me, a mood
analogous to that which possessed Lord Beaconsfield when he wrote his
romance _Sybil_, or when he seemed to insinuate that all social strife
might be ended by doles to the poor, distributed week by week through
the almoners of manorial lords.

Of Lord Beaconsfield's visions this is not the place to speak, I am
concerned here only with the growth and the defects of my own; and as to
the general theory of things which is dramatized in _The Old Order
Changes_, its merits and its defects seem to me to be these. As for its
merits, if compared with my earlier works, _Is Life Worth Living?_ and
_A Romance of the Nineteenth Century_--in which no cognizance is taken
of social politics whatever--_The Old Order Changes_ represents a great
extension of thought, social problems being brought to the fore as an
essential part of the religious. If compared with _Social Equality_, it
represents an extension of thought likewise, in that it shows (as
_Social Equality_ does not) how these two parts are connected.

It is, however, in two ways deficient. At the time when the book was
written, the extremist party in England, though comprising many militant
Socialists, was for practical purposes composed mainly of men who were
known as extreme Radicals. A prominent representative of this class war
was Bright. Another at that time was Mr. Joseph Chamberlain. Instead of
attacking all wealth, like Socialists, most of them were business men
who spent their lives in pursuit of it. They denounced it in one form
only--namely, land, and land only as the inheritance of aristocratic
owners. The extraordinary inconsistency of attitude by which these men
were characterized created an animus against them in the minds of
many--I myself being one--which, though far from being undeserved, was
not sufficiently discriminating. As I pointed out in _Social
Equality_--and the same argument was repeated in _The Old Order
Changes_--the great modern manufacturer, whatever he may think about old
landed families, represents the forces on which the increasing wealth of
the modern world depends. And yet in that novel I was more than once
betrayed into so far joining the Socialists as to partially accept or
repeat their denunciations of the modern manufacturers as persons owi