ting our
empire in the hands of families which inherit wealth without either
blood or manners. Some of our political houses are parvenue by pedigree;
they hand on vulgarity like a coat of-arms. In the case of many a modern
statesman to say that he is born with a silver spoon in his mouth, is
at once inadequate and excessive. He is born with a silver knife in his
mouth. But all this only illustrates the English theory that poverty is
perilous for a politician.

It will be the same if we compare the conditions that have come about
with the Revolution legend touching publicity. The old democratic
doctrine was that the more light that was let in to all departments of
State, the easier it was for a righteous indignation to move promptly
against wrong. In other words, monarchs were to live in glass houses,
that mobs might throw stones. Again, no admirer of existing English
politics (if there is any admirer of existing English politics) will
really pretend that this ideal of publicity is exhausted, or even
attempted. Obviously public life grows more private every day. The
French have, indeed, continued the tradition of revealing secrets and
making scandals; hence they are more flagrant and palpable than we, not
in sin but in the confession of sin. The first trial of Dreyfus might
have happened in England; it is exactly the second trial that would have
been legally impossible. But, indeed, if we wish to realise how far we
fall short of the original republican outline, the sharpest way to test
it is to note how far we fall short even of the republican element
in the older regime. Not only are we less democratic than Danton and
Condorcet, but we are in many ways less democratic than Choiseul and
Marie Antoinette. The richest nobles before the revolt were needy
middle-class people compared with our Rothschilds and Roseberys. And
in the matter of publicity the old French monarchy was infinitely more
democratic than any of the monarchies of today. Practically anybody
who chose could walk into the palace and see the king playing with his
children, or paring his nails. The people possessed the monarch, as the
people possess Primrose Hill; that is, they cannot move it, but they can
sprawl all over it. The old French monarchy was founded on the excellent
principle that a cat may look at a king. But nowadays a cat may not look
at a king; unless it is a very tame cat. Even where the press is free
for criticism it is only used for adulatio