of despotic democracy in its most aggravated form.  Moreover, misgovernment, and the fiscal oppression which is the almost necessary accompaniment of militarism dominant over a poverty-stricken population, have latterly developed on the continent of Europe, and more especially in Italy, a school of action—­for anarchism can scarcely be dignified by the name of a school of thought—­which regards human life as scarcely more sacred than property.  It may be that some lower depth has yet to be reached, although it is almost inconceivable that such should be the case.  Anarchy takes us past the stage of any defined political or social programme.  It would appear, so far as can at present be judged, to embody the last despairing cry of ultra-democracy “Furens.”

It is permissible to hope that our national sobriety, coupled with the inherited traditions derived from centuries of free government, will save us from such extreme manifestations of democratic tyranny as those to which allusion has been made above.  The special danger in England would appear rather to arise from the probability of gradual dry rot, due to prolonged offence against the infallible and relentless laws of economic science.  Both British employers of labour and British workmen are insular in their habits of thought, and insular in the range of their acquired knowledge.  They do not appear as yet to be thoroughly alive to the new position created for British trade by foreign competition.  It is greatly to be hoped that they will awake to the realities of the situation before any permanent harm is done to British trade, for the loss of trade involves as its ultimate result the pauperisation of the proletariat, the adoption of reckless expedients based on the Panem et Circenses policy to fill the mouths and quell the voices of the multitude, and finally the suicide of that Empire which is the offspring of trade, and which can only continue to exist so long as its parent continues to thrive and to flourish.

5. The Destruction of the Middle Class by the Fiscal Oppression of the Curiales.—­Leaving aside points of detail, which were only of special application to the circumstances of the time, this cause of Roman decay may, for all purposes of comparison and instruction, be stated in the following terms:  funds, which should have been spent by the municipalities on local objects, were, from about the close of the third century, diverted to the Imperial Exchequer, by which they were not infrequently squandered in such a manner as to confer no benefit of any kind on the taxpayers, whether local or Imperial.  Thus, the system of local self-government, which, Mr. Hodgkin says, was, during the early centuries of the Empire, “both in name and fact Republican,” was shattered.

It does not appear probable that an attempt will ever be made to divert the public revenues of the outlying dependencies of Great Britain to the Imperial Exchequer.  The lesson taught by the loss of the American Colonies has sunk deeply into the public mind.  Moreover, the example of Spain stands as a warning to all the world.  The principle that local revenues should be expended locally has become part of the political creed of Englishmen; neither is it at all likely to be infringed, even in respect to those dependencies whose rights and privileges are not safeguarded by self-governing institutions.