Just as Great Britain benefited enormously during a century and a half from her political precocity, so she is now suffering from the consequences thereof.  The political temperament of her people, their method of organization, and their national ideals all took form at a time when international competition for colonies and trade was not very sharp, and when democracy had no philosophic or moral standing.  At the beginning of the eighteenth century the country was longing for domestic peace, and it was willing to secure peace at any price save that of liberty.  The leadership of the landed aristocracy and gentry secured to the British people domestic peace and civil liberty, and in return for these very great blessings they sold themselves to the privileged classes.  These privileged classes have probably deserved their privileges more completely than has the aristocracy of any other country.  They have been patriotic; they have shed their blood and spent their money on what they believed to be the national welfare; they introduced an honorable and an admirable esprit de corps into the English public service; and they have been loyal to the great formative English political idea—­the idea of liberty.  They have granted to the people from time to time as much liberty as public opinion demanded, and have in this way maintained to the present day their political and social prestige.  But although they have been, on the whole, individually disinterested, they have not been and they could not be disinterested as a class.  Owning as they did much of the land, they had as a class certain economic interests.  Possessing as they did certain special privileges, they had as a class certain political interests.  These interests have been scrupulously preserved, no matter whether they did or did not conflict with the national interest.  Their landed proprietorship has resulted in certain radical inequalities of taxation and certain grave economic drawbacks.  Their position as a privileged class made them hospitable only to those reforms which spared their privileges.  But their privileges could not be spared, provided Englishmen allowed rational ideas any decisive influence in their political life; and the consequence of this abstention from ideas was the gradual cultivation of a contempt for intelligence, an excessive worship of tradition, and a deep-rooted faith in the value of compromise.  In the interest of domestic harmony they have identified complacent social subserviency with the virtue of loyalty, and have erected compromise into an ultimate principle of political action.

The landed aristocracy and gentry of England have been obliged to face only one serious crisis—­the prolonged crisis occasioned by the transformation of Great Britain from an agricultural to an industrial community.  The way the English privileged classes preserved their political leadership during a period, in which land was ceasing to be the source of Great Britain’s economic prosperity, is an extraordinary