and was building up a representative national domestic organization.
After several centuries of revolutionary disturbance the English had
regained their national balance, without sacrificing any of the
time-honored elements in their national life. The monarchy was
reconstituted as the symbol of the national integrity and as the crown
of the social system. The hereditary aristocracy, which was kept in
touch with the commoners because its younger sons were not noble and
which was national, if not liberal, in spirit, became the real rulers of
England; but its role was supplemented by an effective though limited
measure of general representation. This organization was perfected in
the nineteenth century. Little by little the area of popular
representation was enlarged, until it included almost the whole adult
male population; and the government became more and more effectively
controlled by national public opinion. As a result of this slowly
gathering but comprehensive plan of national organization, the English
have become more completely united in spirit and purpose than are the
people of any other country. The crown and the aristocracy recognize the
limitations of their positions and their inherited responsibilities to
the gentry and the people. The commoners on their side are proud of
their lords and of the monarchy and grant them full confidence. It is a
unique instance of mutual loyalty and well-distributed responsibility
among social classes, differing widely in station, occupations, and
wealth; and it is founded upon habit of joint consultation, coupled, as
the result of the long persistence of this habit, with an unusual
similarity of intellectual and moral outlook.

The result, until recently, was an exceptional degree of national
efficiency; and in scrutinizing this national efficiency the fact must
be faced that the political success of Great Britain has apparently been
due, not merely to her adoption of the practice of national
representation, but to her abhorrence of any more subversive democratic
ideas. On the one hand, the British have organized a political system
which is probably more sensitively and completely responsive to a
nationalized public opinion than is the political system of the
American democracy. On the other hand, this same nationalized political
organization is aristocratic to the core--aristocratic without scruple
or qualification. What is the effect of this aristocratic organization
upon th