will be no
very rich men; and if the birth-rate is regulated there should be no
paupers. It will be a far pleasanter age to live in than the present,
and more favourable to the production of great intellectual work, for
life will be more leisurely, and social conditions more stable. We may
hope that some of our best families will determine to survive, _coute
que coute_, until these better times arrive. We shall not attempt to
prophesy what the political constitution will be. Every existing form of
government is bad; and our democracy can hardly survive the two diseases
which generally kill democracies--reckless plunder of the national
wealth, and the impotence of the central government in face of
revolutionary and predatory sectionalism.

Meanwhile, we must understand that although the consideration of mankind
in the mass, and the calculation of tendencies based on figures and
averages, must lead us to somewhat pessimistic and cynical views of
human nature, there is no reason why individuals, unless they wish to
make a career out of politics (since it is the sad fate of politicians
always to deal with human nature at its worst), should conform
themselves to the low standards of the world around them. It is only 'in
the loomp' that humanity, whether poor or rich, 'is bad.' There are
materials, though far less abundant than we could wish, for a spiritual
reformation, which would smooth the transition to a new social order,
and open to us unfailing sources of happiness and inspiration, which
would not only enable us to tide over the period of dissolution, but
might make the whole world our debtor. No nation is better endowed by
nature with a faculty for sane idealism than the English. We were never
intended to be a nation of shopkeepers, if a shopkeeper is doomed to be
merely a shopkeeper, which of course he is not. Our brutal commercialism
has been a temporary aberration; the quintessential Englishman is not
the hero of Smiles' 'Self-help'; he is Raleigh, Drake, Shakespeare,
Milton, Johnson, or Wordsworth, with a pleasant spice of Dickens. He is,
in a word, an idealist who has not quite forgotten that he is descended
from an independent race of sea-rovers, accustomed to think and act for
themselves. Mr. Havelock Ellis, one of the wisest and most fearless of
our prophets to-day, quotes from an anonymous journalist a prediction
which may come true: 'London may yet be the spiritual capital of the
world; while Asia--rich in