least inconvenience.”[440] In other words, the official Government is a mere façade. Its action is wholly superficial. Society might exist without it and life would be none the less happy. But the disappearance of the savants, industrial leaders, bankers, and merchants would leave the community crippled. The very sources of wealth would dry up, for their activities are really fruitful and necessary. They are the true governors who wield real power. Such was the parable. According to Saint-Simon, little observation is needed to realise that the world we live in is based upon industry, and that anything besides industry is scarcely worth the attention of thinking people. A long process of historical evolution, which according to Saint-Simon commenced in the twelfth century with the enfranchisement of the communes and culminated in the French Revolution, had prepared the way for it.[441] At least industry is the one cardinal feature of the present day. The political concerns of his contemporaries were regarded with some measure of despair. The majority of them were engaged either in defending or attacking the Charter of 1814. The Liberals were simply deceiving themselves, examining old and meaningless formulæ such as “the sovereignty of the people,” “liberty,” and “equality”—conceptions that never had any meaning,[442] but were simply metaphysical creations of the jurists,[443] and they ought to have realised that this kind of work was perfectly useless now that the feudal _régime_ was overthrown. Men in future will have something better to do than to defend the Charter against the “ultras.” The parliamentary _régime_ may be very necessary, but it is just a passing phase between the feudalism of yesterday and the new order of to-morrow.[444] That future order is Industrialism—a social organisation having only one end in view, the further development of industry, the source of all wealth and prosperity.