Whether Lord Leverhulme would have made a better statesman than, let us say, Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman or Mr. Bonar Law it is surely certain, I think, that a true statesman would have made every conceivable use of his unusual mind.  This, as I look at things, is the ideal method of government.  I do not believe in the business man as statesman.  I believe in the trained, cultured, and incorruptible gentleman as statesman, and the business man as his adviser.

But until our politics are of a higher order we can hardly expect the best minds in the nation to feel any attraction to a political career.  More and more the professional politician, the narrow man, the man of the loud voice and the one idea, the man who has few instincts of honesty in his mind and no movement of high and disinterested patriotism in his soul, will press himself upon the attention of democracy and by intimidating his leaders and brow-beating his opponents force his way onward to office.

The consideration of this grave peril to the moral character of our public life brings me to my brief conclusion.

CONCLUSION

CHAPTER XIV

CONCLUSION

"While the advances made by objective science and its industrial applications are palpable and undeniable all around us, it is a matter of doubt and dispute if our social and moral advance towards happiness and virtue has been great or any."—­MARK PATTISON.

After all, a nation gets the politics that it deserves.  The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.  If the tone of public life is a low one it is because the tone of society is not a high one.  The remedy, then, is not “Sack the lot,” but rather, “Repent, lest a worse thing befall thee.”

It seems to me that a beginning in moral and social reformation might be made if aristocracy could be encouraged to affirm its ancient rights by the performance of its inherent duties.

We are a nation without standards, kept in health rather by memories which are fading than by examples which are compelling.  We still march to the dying music of great traditions but there is no captain of civilization at the head of our ranks.  We have indeed almost ceased to be an army marching with confidence towards the enemy, and have become a mob breaking impatiently loose from the discipline and ideals of our past.

Aristocracy, it must be boldly said, has played traitor to England.  It has ceased to lead, and not because it has been thrust from its rightful place by the rude hand of democracy, but because it has deliberately preferred the company of the vulgar.  No one has pulled it down, it has itself descended.  It has lost its respect for learning, it has grown careless of manners, it has abandoned faith in its duty, it is conscious of no solemn obligations, it takes no interest in art, it is indifferent to science, it is sick of effort, it has surrendered gladly and gratefully to the materialism of plutocracy.