manufacturers were not, on the whole, well spent.  Their luxury was not of a refined type; literature and art were not intelligently encouraged; and even science was most inadequately supported.  The great achievements of the nineteenth century in science and letters, and to a less degree in art, were independent of the industrial world, and were chiefly the work of that class which is now sinking helplessly under the blows of predatory taxation.  Capitalism itself has degenerated; the typical millionaire is no longer the captain of industry, but the international banker and company promoter.  It is more difficult than ever to find any rational justification for the accumulations which are in the hands of a few persons.  It is not to be expected that the working class should be less greedy and unscrupulous than the educated; indeed it is plain that, now that it realises its power, it will be even more so.  In some ways the national character has stood the strain of these unnatural conditions very well.  Those who feared that the modern Englishman would make a poor soldier have had to own that they were entirely wrong.  But as long as industrialism continues, we shall be in a state of thinly disguised civil war.  There can be no industrial peace while our urban population remains, because the large towns are the creation of the system which their inhabitants now want to destroy.  They can and will destroy it, but only by destroying themselves.  When the suicidal war is over we shall have a comparatively small population, living mainly in the country and cultivating the fruits of the earth.  It will be more like the England of the eighteenth century than the England which we know.  There will be no very rich men; and if the birth-rate is regulated there should be no paupers.  It will be a far pleasanter age to live in than the present, and more favourable to the production of great intellectual work, for life will be more leisurely, and social conditions more stable.  We may hope that some of our best families will determine to survive, coute que coute, until these better times arrive.  We shall not attempt to prophesy what the political constitution will be.  Every existing form of government is bad; and our democracy can hardly survive the two diseases which generally kill democracies—­reckless plunder of the national wealth, and the impotence of the central government in face of revolutionary and predatory sectionalism.

Meanwhile, we must understand that although the consideration of mankind in the mass, and the calculation of tendencies based on figures and averages, must lead us to somewhat pessimistic and cynical views of human nature, there is no reason why individuals, unless they wish to make a career out of politics (since it is the sad fate of politicians always to deal with human nature at its worst), should conform themselves to the low standards of the world around them.  It is only ’in the loomp’ that humanity, whether