on his good repute. So that without afterthought he deals
fairly in all everyday conjunctures of give and take; for they are at
the most inconsequential episodes to him, although the like might spell
irremediable disaster to his impecunious counterfoil among the common
men who have the community's work to do. In short, he is a gentleman, in
the best acceptation of the word,--unavoidably, by force of
circumstance. As such his example is of invaluable consequence to the
underlying community of common folk, in that it keeps before their eyes
an object lesson in habitual fortitude and visible integrity such as
could scarcely have been created except under such shelter from those
disturbances that would go to mar habitual fortitude and integrity.
There can be little doubt but the high example of the Victorian
gentlefolk has had much to do with stabilising the animus of the British
common man on lines of integrity and fair play. What else and more in
the way of habitual preconceptions he may, by competitive imitation, owe
to the same high source is not immediately in question here.

* * * * *

Recalling once more that the canon of life whereby folk are gentlefolk
sums itself up in the requirements of pecuniary waste and personal
futility, and that these requirements are indefinitely extensible, at
the same time that the management of the community's industry by
investment for a profit enables the owners of invested wealth to divert
to their own use the community's net product, wherewith to meet these
requirements, it follows that the community at large which provides this
output of product will be allowed so much as is required by their
necessary standard of living,--with an unstable margin of error in the
adjustment. This margin of error should tend continually to grow
narrower as the businesslike management of industry grows more efficient
with experience; but it will also continually be disturbed in the
contrary sense by innovations of a technological nature that require
continual readjustment. This margin is probably not to be got rid of,
though it may be expected to become less considerable under more settled
conditions.

It should also not be overlooked that the standard of living here spoken
of as necessarily to be allowed the working population by no means
coincides with the "physical subsistence minimum," from which in fact it
always departs by something appreciable. The necessary sta