nough. And then comes some insect and lays an egg under the skin, and
behold! in a little while the seed is a hollow shape with an active grub
inside that has eaten out its substance. And then comes some secondary
parasite, some ichneumon fly, and lays an egg within this grub, and
behold! that, too, is a hollow shape, and the new living thing is inside
its predecessor's skin which itself is snug within the seed coat. And
the seed coat still keeps its shape, most people think it a seed still,
and for all one knows it may still think itself a seed, vigorous and
alive. "Your Victorian kingdom," said Asano, "was like that--kingship
with the heart eaten out. The landowners--the barons and gentry--began
ages ago with King John; there were lapses, but they beheaded King
Charles, and ended practically with King George mere husk of a king...
the real power in the hands of their parliament. But the Parliament--the
organ of the land-holding tenant-ruling gentry--did not keep its
power long. The change had already come in the nineteenth century. The
franchises had been broadened until it included masses of ignorant
men, 'urban myriads,' who went in their featureless thousands to vote
together. And the natural consequence of a swarming constituency is the
rule of the party organisation. Power was passing even in the Victorian
time to the party machinery, secret, complex, and corrupt. Very speedily
power was in the hands of great men of business who financed the
machines. A time came when the real power and interest of the Empire
rested visibly between the two party councils, ruling by newspapers and
electoral organisations--two small groups of rich and able men, working
at first in opposition, then presently together."

There was a reaction of a genteel ineffectual sort. There were
numberless books in existence, Asano said, to prove that--the
publication of some of them was as early as Graham's sleep--a whole
literature of reaction in fact. The party of the reaction seems to
have locked itself into its study and rebelled with unflinching
determination--on paper. The urgent necessity of either capturing or
depriving the party councils of power is a common suggestion underlying
all the thoughtful work of the early twentieth century, both in America
and England. In most of these things America was a little earlier than
England, though both countries drove the same way.

That counter-revolution never came. It could never organise and ke