ideal is, in fact, Socialism itself. THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE OLD SYNTHESIS. At the middle of the last century Western Europe was still organized on a system of which the basis was virtually a surviving feudalism. The nexus between man and man was essentially a relation of superiority and inferiority. Social power still rested either with the monarch, or with the owners of large landed estates. Some inroads had already been made in the perfect symmetry of the organization, notably by the growth of towns, and the rise of the still comparatively small trading class; but the bulk of the population was arranged in an hierarchical series of classes, linked to one another by the bond of Power. We are apt to think of England as differing in this respect from Continental Europe, and to imagine that our popular freedom was won in 1688, if not in 1648, or even as far back as Magna Charta itself. But as regards the people at large, this was, in the main, merely a difference in political form. In England the aristocratic oligarchy had prevailed over the monarch; in France the King had defeated the Fronde. For the mass of the people in either country there was nothing but obedience. Even in England the whole political administration was divided between the king and the great families; and not one person in 500 possessed so much as a vote. As lately as 1831 one hundred and fifty persons returned a majority of the House of Commons (Molesworth, “History of the Reform Bill,” p. 347). The Church, once a universal democratic organization of international fraternity, had become a mere _appanage_ of the landed gentry. The administration of justice and of the executive government was entirely in their hands, while Parliament was filled with their leaders or nominees. No avenue of advancement existed for even exceptionally gifted sons of the people; and the masses found themselves born into a position of lifelong dependence upon a class of superior birth.