or destroy the hedge of
property, but only to make some rude effort to make universities fairly
universal and property decently proper.

In many cases, let it be remembered, such action is not merely going
back to the old ideal, but is even going back to the old reality. It
would be a great step forward for the gin shop to go back to the inn. It
is incontrovertibly true that to mediaevalize the public schools would
be to democratize the public schools. Parliament did once really mean
(as its name seems to imply) a place where people were allowed to talk.
It is only lately that the general increase of efficiency, that is, of
the Speaker, has made it mostly a place where people are prevented from
talking. The poor do not go to the modern church, but they went to the
ancient church all right; and if the common man in the past had a grave
respect for property, it may conceivably have been because he sometimes
had some of his own. I therefore can claim that I have no vulgar itch of
innovation in anything I say about any of these institutions. Certainly
I have none in that particular one which I am now obliged to pick out
of the list; a type of institution to which I have genuine and personal
reasons for being friendly and grateful: I mean the great Tudor
foundations, the public schools of England. They have been praised for a
great many things, mostly, I am sorry to say, praised by themselves and
their children. And yet for some reason no one has ever praised them the
one really convincing reason.

*****

X. THE CASE FOR THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The word success can of course be used in two senses. It may be used
with reference to a thing serving its immediate and peculiar purpose,
as of a wheel going around; or it can be used with reference to a thing
adding to the general welfare, as of a wheel being a useful discovery.
It is one thing to say that Smith's flying machine is a failure, and
quite another to say that Smith has failed to make a flying machine.
Now this is very broadly the difference between the old English public
schools and the new democratic schools. Perhaps the old public schools
are (as I personally think they are) ultimately weakening the country
rather than strengthening it, and are therefore, in that ultimate sense,
inefficient. But there is such a thing as being efficiently inefficient.
You can make your flying ship so that it flies, even if you also make
it so that it kills you. Now the public sc