ore and more in
the power of wages to buy happiness, turning away with more and more
impatience from the divine truth that the Kingdom of Heaven is within
us.

It is a grievous thing to corrupt the mind of the simple. Democracy in
England has been the chief representative of veritable Englishness up to
these days. It was never Latinized or Frenchified. The cottage garden
refused to follow the bad example of the "carpet-bedder." The poor have
always been racy of the soil. They have laughed at the absurdities of
fashion and seen through the pretensions of wealth. They have believed
in heartiness and cheerfulness. All their proverbs spring out of a keen
sense of virtue. All their games are of a manly character. To
materialize this glorious people, to commercialize and mammonize it, to
make it think of economics instead of life, to make it bitter,
discontented, and tyrannous, this is to strike at the very heart of
England.

But though the leaders of Labour are guilty of this corruption, there is
no doubt that the ugliness of spirit in democracy is the reflection of
the ugly life led by the privileged classes. There is no reproach for
this democracy when it looks upward. It sees nothing but the reckless
and useless display of wealth, nothing in the full sunshine of
prosperity but a Bacchanalian horde of irresponsible sensualists,
nothing there but a ramp of unashamed hedonism, and a hedonism of the
lowest order.

Democracy, nursing what it deems to be its economic wrongs, and not
unnaturally regarding the wealthy classes with bitter anger, has yet to
learn that capital was largely the creation of the Puritan character,
and that the prosperity of these British Islands was laid in no small
measure by the thrift and temperance of those who lived simply because
they thought deeply. Capital, without which Labour could have done
little, is not a contrivance of the noisy rich, but the deliberate
creation of virtuous men. Capital, now regarded as an enemy, was once
the visible best friend of Labour.

Where is there now among the possessing classes an example even of
simplicity in dress, modesty in behaviour, temperance in conduct, and
thrift in living? As for any higher example--an example of wisdom, duty,
self-sacrifice, and moral earnestness--it is nowhere visible in our
national life to those who look upward.

Until we recover this ancient spirit our politics must continue their
descent to the abyss, and democracy will lis