It was not enough to throw open the Professions.  Some there were in which, whether they were thrown open or not, a new-comer without family or capital or influence could never get any work.  Thus it would seem that Engineering was a profession very favourable to such new-comers.  It proved the contrary.  All engineers in practice had pupils—­sons, cousins, nephews—­to whom they gave their appointments.  To the new-comer nothing was given.  What good, then, had been effected by this revolution?  Nothing but the crowding into the learned Professions of penniless clever lads?  Nothing but the destruction of the old dignity and self-respect of Law and Medicine?  Nothing but the degradation of a Profession to the competition of trade?

Much more than this had been achieved.  The Democratic movement which had marked the nineteenth century received its final impulse from this great change.  Everyone knows that the House of Lords, long before the end of that century, had ceased to represent the old aristocracy.  The old names were, for the most part, extinct.  A Cecil, a Stanley, a Howard, a Neville, a Bruce, might yet be found, but by far the greater part of the Peers were of yesterday.  Nor could the House be kept up at all but for new creations.  They were made from rich trade or from the Law, the latter conferring respect and dignity upon the House.  But lawyers could no longer be made Peers.  They were rough in manners, and they had no longer great incomes.  Moreover, the nation demanded that its honours should be equally bestowed upon all those who rendered service to the State, and all were poor.  Now a House of poor Lords is absurd.  Equally absurd is a House of Lords all brewers.  Hence the fall of the House of Lords was certain.  In the year 1924 it was finally abolished.

In the next chapter I propose to relate what followed this rush into the Professions.  We have seen how the grant of the higher education to working lads caused the Conquest of the Professions and brought about the change I have indicated.  We have seen how this revolution was bound to sweep away in its course the last relics of the old aristocratic constitution of the country.  It remains to be told how learning, when it became the common possession of all clever lads, ceased to be a possession by which money could be made, except by the very foremost.  Then the boys went back to their trades.  If the reign of the gentleman is over, the learning and the power and culture that has belonged to the gentleman now belongs to the craftsman.  This, at least, must be admitted to be pure gain.  For one man who read and studied and thought one hundred years ago, there are now a thousand.  Editions of good books are now issued by a hundred thousand at a time.  The Professions are still the avenues to honours.  Still, as before, the men whom the people respect are the followers of science, the great Advocate the great Preacher, the great Engineer, the great Surgeon, the great Dramatist, the great Novelist, the great Poet.  That the national honours no longer take the form of the Peerage will not, I think, at this hour, be admitted to be a subject for regret by even the stanchest Conservative.