tions of the populace were approaching an
attitude of revolt against what they considered to be intolerable
conditions when that era closed. Much of what kept them within bounds,
that is to say within legal bounds, was their continued loyalty to the
nation; which was greatly, and for the purpose needfully, reenforced by
a lively fear of warlike aggression from without. Now, under the
projected _pax orbis terrarum_ all fear of invasion, it is hopefully
believed, will be removed; and with the disappearance of this fear
should also disappear the drag of national loyalty on the counsels of
the underbred.

If this British peace of the nineteenth century is to be taken as a
significant indication of what may be looked for under a regime of peace
at large, with due allowance for what is obviously necessary to be
allowed for, then what is held in promise would appear to be an era of
unexampled commercial prosperity, of investment and business enterprise
on a scale hitherto not experienced. These developments will bring their
necessary consequences affecting the life of the community, and some of
the consequences it should be possible to foresee. The circumstances
conditioning this prospective era of peace and prosperity will
necessarily differ from the corresponding circumstances that
conditioned the Victorian peace, and many of these points of difference
it is also possible to forecast in outline with a fair degree of
confidence. It is in the main these economic factors going to condition
the civilisation of the promised future that will have to be depended on
to give the cue to any student interested in the prospective unfolding
of events.

The scheme of law and order governing all modern nations, both in the
conduct of their domestic affairs and in their national policies, is in
its controlling elements the scheme worked out through British (and
French) experience in the eighteenth century and earlier, as revised and
further accommodated in the nineteenth century. Other peoples,
particularly the Dutch, have of course had their part in the derivation
and development of this modern scheme of institutional principles, but
it has after all been a minor part; so that the scheme at large would
not differ very materially, if indeed it should differ sensibly, from
what it is, even if the contribution of these others had not been had.
The backward nations, as e.g., Germany, Russia, Spain, etc., have of
course contributed substantia