It was not to be expected that this state of things should last for ever. Oligarchic as was the nature of M’Korian society, the number of chiefs was limited; and a religious awe forbade the possession by anyone of more than a certain number of these sacred symbols. Moreover, a German firm, secretly subsidised by its government, had so far interfered with the old monopoly as to offer the rings at a price which made it difficult for the original trade to subsist in English hands. But Mr Burden’s profits were soon supplemented from other sources. Guns, of a simple sort, and a kind of sword, were introduced, and (a very remarkable example of the ingenuity of a client in Birmingham) fine chain armour replaced the leathern jackets which the warriors of the protectorate had hitherto worn. But, though Mr Burden had become the sole importer, though his advice and that of Mr Abbott often controlled the decision of the Government in the local affairs of the M’Korio, and though his name was attached to all the few traditions of the settlement, yet the trade was very small, and, such as it was, it was dwindling. In Mr Burden’s considerable affairs, the total of this petty offshoot did not amount to one-twentieth at the most; it rarely represented a profit of £400—more commonly less than £300 in a year; and, to his natural compliance in Charles Abbott’s judgment, therefore, was added a business experience which made of the Delta something mean and paltry in his conception. This contempt of his for the M’Korio was broken down at last by the intervention of Cosmo; but that intervention, necessary as it was in its moment, would not alone have sufficed, though without it nothing would finally have been done. The ground had first to be prepared for the whole public and for Mr Burden as a part of that public; and the instrument of this preparation was the power which—a full year before he had met Mr Burden’s son—Mr Barnett had begun to exercise over the Press. There is a kind of rash political indignation which we all come across, and to which some of us are attracted. There are men who hate the successful or the rich, but whose hatred is not quite dishonest, though it is wildly unjust. They see conspiracies upon every side, they scowl at every new fortune, but they do so in good faith, for they are haunted by a nightmare of Cosmopolitan Finance—pitiless, destructive of all national ideals, obscene, and eating out the heart of our European tradition. I need hardly say that this kind of hatred was roused against Mr Barnett, and gained an especial strength from the attitude which the great papers took towards what was known to be his scheme; and yet at that moment Mr Barnett, had the world known it, was comparatively poor. He had not certainly a free capital of ten thousand pounds, beyond what was locked up in his various properties and adventures. The particular charge made against Mr Barnett was that he had “bought the Press”—or at least the London Press.