of being abnormal and peculiar.  The standard, consequently, is not now an efficient standard; and it is frequently applied with some laxity to the members of the privileged classes.  A tacit conspiracy naturally exists among people in such a position to make it easy for their associates, friends, and relatives.  The props and chances offered to a boy born into this class make the very most of his probably moderate deserts and abilities, and in occupying a position of responsibility he inevitably displaces a more competent substitute.  In our own country the enjoyment of such political favors is known as a “pull,” and is a popular but disreputable method of political advancement, whereas in England the whole social, and a large part of the political, structure is constituted on the basis of a systematic and hereditary “pull.”  The spirit thereof is highly honored in the most sacred precincts of English life.  It is supported heartily and unscrupulously by English public opinion, and its critics are few and insignificant.

When Englishmen come to understand the need of dissociating their national idea from its existing encumbrances of political privilege and social favoritism, they will be confronted by a reconstructive task of peculiar difficulty.  The balance of the national life, which has been so slowly and painfully recovered, will be endangered by the weakening of any of its present supports.  For centuries the existing system has been wrought with the utmost patience and patriotism; and an Englishman may well shudder at the notion of any essential modification.  The good of the system is so mixed with the evil that it seems impossible to extricate and eradicate the latter without endangering English national cohesion.  Their traditional faith in compromise, their traditional dread of ideas, their traditional habit of acting first and reasoning afterwards, has made the English system a hopelessly confused bundle of semi-efficiency and semi-inefficiency—­just as it has made the best English social type a gentleman, but a gentleman absolutely conditioned, tempered, and supplemented by a flunky.

While the process of becoming more of a democracy may very well injure—­at any rate for a while—­English national consistency, England’s future as a nation is compromised by her fear of democracy.  She has built her national organization on the idea that the national welfare is better promoted by a popular loyalty which entails popular immobility, than by the exercise on the part of the people of a more individual and less subservient intellectual and moral energy.  In so doing she has for the time being renounced one of the greatest advantages of a national political and social organization—­the advantage of combining great popular energy with loyalty and fertility of association.  No doubt certain nations, because of their perilous international situation, may be obliged to sacrifice the moral and economic individuality of the people to the demands of political