ocial power was moulded.

This implies an essential characteristic of the time. A familiar topic
of the admirers of the British Constitution was the absence of the sharp
lines of demarcation between classes and of the exclusive aristocratic
privileges which, in France, provoked the revolution. In England the
ruling class was not a 'survival': it had not retained privileges
without discharging corresponding functions. The essence of
'self-government,' says its most learned commentator,[7] is the organic
connection 'between State and society.' On the Continent, that is,
powers were intrusted to a centralised administrative and judicial
hierarchy, which in England were left to the class independently strong
by its social position. The landholder was powerful as a product of the
whole system of industrial and agricultural development; and he was
bound in return to perform arduous and complicated duties. How far he
performed them well is another question. At least, he did whatever was
done in the way of governing, and therefore did not sink into a mere
excrescence or superfluity. I must try to point out certain results
which had a material effect upon English opinion in general and, in
particular, upon the Utilitarians.

NOTES:

[5] _Parl. Hist._ xxv. 472.

[6] The country-gentlemen, said Wilberforce in 1800, are the 'very
nerves and ligatures of the body politic.'--_Correspondence_, i. 219.

[7] Gneist's _Self-Government_ (3rd edition, 1871), p. 879.

III. LEGISLATION AND ADMINISTRATION

The country-gentlemen formed the bulk of the law-making body, and the
laws gave the first point of assault of the Utilitarian movement. One
explanation is suggested by a phrase attributed to Sir Josiah Child.[8]
The laws, he said, were a heap of nonsense, compiled by a few ignorant
country-gentlemen, who hardly knew how to make good laws for the
government of their own families, much less for the regulation of
companies and foreign commerce. He meant that the parliamentary
legislation of the century was the work of amateurs, not of specialists;
of an assembly of men more interested in immediate questions of policy
or personal intrigue than in general principles, and not of such a
centralised body as would set a value upon symmetry and scientific
precision. The country-gentleman had strong prejudices and enough common
sense to recognise his own ignorance. The product of a traditional
order, he clung to traditions, and regarded the