grave economic drawbacks. Their position as a privileged
class made them hospitable only to those reforms which spared their
privileges. But their privileges could not be spared, provided
Englishmen allowed rational ideas any decisive influence in their
political life; and the consequence of this abstention from ideas was
the gradual cultivation of a contempt for intelligence, an excessive
worship of tradition, and a deep-rooted faith in the value of
compromise. In the interest of domestic harmony they have identified
complacent social subserviency with the virtue of loyalty, and have
erected compromise into an ultimate principle of political action.

The landed aristocracy and gentry of England have been obliged to face
only one serious crisis--the prolonged crisis occasioned by the
transformation of Great Britain from an agricultural to an industrial
community. The way the English privileged classes preserved their
political leadership during a period, in which land was ceasing to be
the source of Great Britain's economic prosperity, is an extraordinary
illustration of their political tact and social prestige. But it must be
added that their leadership has been preserved more in name than in
substance. The aristocracy managed to keep its prestige and its apparent
power during the course of the industrial revolution, but only on
condition of the abandonment of the substance thereof. The nobility and
the gentry became the privileged servants of the rising middle class.
They bought off their commercial and industrial conquerors with the
concession of free trade, because at the time such a concession did not
seem to injure their own interests; and they agreed to let the English
business man practically dictate the national policy. In this way they
preserved their political and social privileges and have gradually so
identified the interests of the well-to-do middle class with their
interest that the two have become scarcely distinguishable. The
aristocracy of privilege and the aristocracy of wealth are absolutely
united in their devotion to the existing political organization and
policy of the United Kingdom.

This bargain appeared to work very well for a while; but indications are
accumulating that a let-alone economic policy has not preserved the
vitality of the British economic system. The English farmer has lost
ambition, and has been sacrificed to the industrial growth of the
nation, while the industrial growth its