is it to become so to-morrow when that influence will be greater, just as it is greater to-day than twenty years ago? And further, it is just those very men who are promising such virile measures in the future who to-day cannot even see the ravages of an Insurance Act or Minimum Wage Act, or, if they can see, slink from opposing them.

The great Counter Move has failed save in this: that it is transferring to the State all the burden and charge of industry while it guarantees to the owners a limitless right to receive profits.

To

In feudal England it was a common thing for the lord of any large estate to delegate his powers and rights over parts of it to inferior lords in return for rent and services. This process was called subinfeudation. day in modern Collectivism we have the counterpart of this-the subinfeudation of industry by the capitalist. For does not the State, in return for services to its lord, take over the properties of the capitalist and stewardlike manage them for him?

We are in fee.

J. E. F. M.

CHAPTER III.1

DEMOCRACY AND CURRENT THEORY.

IT was shown in the first chapter how England was turned aside into a wrong path, how a definite recorded process of dispossession, not inevitable and sometimes deliberate, has separated production from personality and producers from citizenship. Where England stands to-day, as a result of that process, has been shown in an account of contemporary practice.

The members of the Rota Club, and we who represent them in writing this book, believe that the process was evil, that it still goes forward, and that it menaces now the very self and vitality of England. They believe that another order might have been, and that even now, if Englishmen determine, it can be. Desiring, therefore, to rouse the wills of any that neither forget their country nor despair of it, they make their first endeavour in these essays to set free or to concentrate such a driving-power of opinion as can issue soon in definite conviction and effort. They recognise that if they are not to fail in this they must go out armed, as best they may be, to fight for a creed round every corner of theory. Some critics might urge that they will find their worst enemies not in the form of

definitely rival doctrine, but in vague prejudice, in subtle

1 This chapter is analysed in Appendix C.

differences of caste or of spiritual atmosphere, in the characteristic English mistrust of definite outline. Even, however, if it be admitted that there may be some truth in these charges against English intellectual character, the weakness they imply would be found involved at root-if indeed it strike so deep-in an equally characteristic strength. The mistrust would be found one not so much of plain thinking itself as of dialectics not adequate to plain human facts. When it is reflected how often the Englishman has no real choice save that between some theory remote from anything that might be loved and some business proposal not ostensibly concerned (whether for good or evil) with morals or the human spirit, it cannot very long be wondered why as a rule he plays for apparent safety, and bows himself, not without regret, beneath the schemes of the expert or the efficient man.

The writers of this book believe that the civic creed whose outline it endeavours to mark is more compelling to the intellect than any other, both through its fitness for the human spirit, and also through the strength of its basis in historical record, in economic fact, and in the roots of politics and morals. They are convinced, therefore, that since it is from tenuous dialectic that the normal Englishman will turn away rather than from theory itself, a brief consideration of rival creeds will be neither harmful to their own propaganda nor even superfluous. The main object, then, of this chapter will be to consider as plainly as possible those theories of civics which, though not often known for what they are to those who apparently entertain them, are still, in obscurer ways which make them more

dangerously effective, strong enough in England to-day to make them important for the propagandist.

If one reads through a political column in a contemporary newspaper, it gives one thought to notice how few current political terms carry in themselves any definite meaning. Take such words as occur most often -"Liberal," "Conservative," "Unionist". Now it may be contended that a reading of political history will show that men called, for instance, "Conservative," have been standing, as a matter of recorded fact, for some definite political or economic principle. But such a principle, if it does exist in the minds of men called "Conservative," is not contained in the meaning of their name as it stands. The Conservative may no doubt claim to conserve what is good, the Liberal to free men from what is evil, the Unionist to join men for a common end. But so far the three principles are nothing but complementary and compatible, and the citizen has to read history in order to find out where exactly the principles of these claimants did in practice clash, or what particular things important men of either name believed worthy of being conserved, or abolished, or promoted. He will find, for instance, that the Unionist, so far as he did stand for something more particular than a belief in union for common ends, was in fact a Liberal who did not agree with certain other Liberals that a particular sort of self-government ought to be given to a particular body of people at a particular time. But such a fact as it stands implies no principle from which the Unionist may deduce why and when men ought to unite, none

from which he may deduce what type of industrial government ought to prevail in England now.

From names like these the citizen will turn in despair to seek that of some fairly definite thing which all parties profess to think good. If he is reading a newspaper he may find such a thing under the name "Democracy"—which seems to mean as it stands "The rule of the common people". He will notice that all parties base their claim to support on the soundness of their Democracy: he will also notice that in practice the will of the common people is not done. From these two facts he will be bound to infer either that Democracy must mean something different, or else that the claims of all parties must be questioned.

Having reflected thus far he will examine more closely, we shall hope, the first elements of politics and morals in order to discover if possible what precisely are the real implications of "Democracy," whether it is good or evil, and how it can be farthest promoted if it is good, or most readily abandoned if it is evil.1

1 The logical necessity of those conclusions on which the creed of this book rests can be completely proved only through argument from fundamentals. Many readers, however, otherwise open to conversion, may possibly find their patience over-taxed by all such argument, and probably by this particular argument. In order, therefore, that nothing of the goodwill and attention of any such be avoidably lost, the more obviously fundamental part of the argument has been relegated to an Appendix. Although thus removed from the body of the book it is in strictness necessary to the proper sequence of the whole argument, and it is therefore hoped that if any reader, not having read it at this stage, should slip, at any further stage of the argument, into a doubt mainly philosophic, he will then read it almost as if it had taken the place of this footnote. (Appendix A.)