ir ruling caste. But this time they did not "muddle through"--they
had to come to America for help. As I write, our Congress is voting
billions and tens of billions of dollars, and a million of the best of
our young manhood are being taken from their homes--because in 1910
the mind of England was occupied with Dean Goode "On Eucharist", and
the ten volumes of Gibson's "Preservative".

#The Elders#

What the Church means in human affairs is the rule of the aged. It
means old men in the seats of authority, not merely in the church, but
in the law-courts and in Parliament, even in the army and navy. For a
test I look up the list of bishops of the Church of England in
Whitaker's Almanac; it appears that there are 40 of these
functionaries, including the archbishops, but not the suffragans; and
that the total salary paid to them amounts to more than nine hundred
thousand dollars a year. This, it should be understood, does not
include the pay of their assistants, nor the cost of maintaining their
religious establishments; it does not include any private incomes
which they or their wives may possess, as members of the privileged
classes of the Empire. I look up their ages in Who's Who, and I find
that there is only one below fifty-three; the oldest of them is
ninety-one, while the average age of the goodly company is seventy.
There have been men in history who have retained their flexibility of
mind, their ability to adjust themselves to new circumstances at the
age of seventy, but it will always be found that these men were
trained in science and practical affairs, never in dead languages and
theology. One of the oldest of the English prelates, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, recently stated to a newspaper reporter that he worked
seventeen hours a day, and had no time to form an opinion on the labor
question.

And now--here is the crux of the argument--do these aged gentlemen
rule of their own power? They do not! They do literally nothing of
their own power; they could not make their own episcopal robes, they
could net even cook their own episcopal dinners. They have to be
maintained in all their comings and goings. Who supports them, and to
what end?

The roots of the English Church are in the English land system, which
is one of the infamies of the modern world. It dates from the days of
William the Norman, who took possession of Britain with his sword, and
in order to keep possession for himself and his heirs, distribut