The English, who gave us all we know of freedom, have been the first to understand its meaning. They too have suffered during the last century from the ravages of plutocracy, from the disease of commerce. But they had behind them the intellectual heritage of the world. They had bulwarks of education, philanthropy, thought, training, ambition, enthusiasm, the ideals of man. It was these things, this reservoir of spiritual power, that turned the tide of commercialism in England, and not as we so cheaply imagine her “leisure class.” The men and women who in the last ten years have taken hold of the Municipality of London, and now work like beavers in its reform, are not rich. Some of them may be rich, but the force that makes them toil comes neither out of riches nor out of poverty, but out of a discovery as to the use of life. These Englishmen have outlived the illusions of business. As towards them we are like children. If it were a matter of mere riches we have wealth enough to make their “leisure class” ridiculous. If there must be some term in the heaping of money before the energies of our better burghers are to be diverted toward public ends, we may wait till doomsday. But the reaction is of another sort, and is very simple. Let us be just to the conscience-givers. They dare not give more. The American is ashamed to lose a dollar. He does not want the dollar half the time, but he will lose caste if he foregoes it. Our merchant princes go on special commissions for rapid transit, and receive $5000 apiece. They must be paid. Out of custom they must receive pay because “their time is valuable,” and thus the virtue and meaning of their office receives a soil: they do not work. All this is, even at the present moment, against the private instincts of many of them. It is apparent that they stand without, shame-faced. It needs only example to give them courage. A few more reform movements in which they see each other as citizens, will knock the shackles from their imagination and make men of them. And then we shall have reform in earnest. For with this enfranchisement will come their great awakening to the fact that not they only but all men are really unselfish. It is the obscure disbelief in this salvation which has made reform so hard where it might be so easy. As soon as the reformers shall have reformed themselves, they will avoid making any appeal to self-interest as so much lost time, so much corruption, and will walk boldly upon the waves of idealism which will hold them up.