There are two books written by Mr. Belloc which deal exclusively with different aspects of the England of to-day. Of these, the first is _The Servile State_, in which Mr. Belloc is writing to maintain and prove the thesis that industrial society, as we know it, is tending towards the re-establishment of slavery. In this work he is concerned with an analysis of the economic system existing in England to-day, and with sketching the course of development in which that system came into being. In the other book, _The Party System_, in which Mr. Cecil Chesterton collaborated, he is concerned with an analysis of our present methods of government. With _The Party System_ and the views contained in it we shall deal in a later chapter. Here we are concerned solely with Mr. Belloc's view of the development of England and especially with that most startling and original view which he expounds in _The Servile State_ as to the origin of our present economic system. Whether in Mr. Belloc's view, or the view of any other historian, the cardinal point in the history of England is that England was Britain before it became England: though Mr. Belloc would probably add the reminder that England was Britain for as long a period as from the time of Henry VIII to the present day. England was once as much a province of the Roman Empire as was France. This fact, of course, is commonly recognized. Where Mr. Belloc differs from other historians, so far as can be gathered by piecing together hints and allusions from his various writings, is in emphasizing the fact that the successive hosts of barbarian invaders were repeatedly brought under the influence of that Christian civilization which had inherited the magnificent institutions of the Empire. Thus the Angles and Saxons came under the influence of St. Augustine and the later missionaries, who, as they became ecclesiastics and Christianity was recognized as the national religion, introduced pieces of Roman Law into the Witenagemot and preserved in the Benedictine foundations the learning and experience of bygone centuries. In the monastic institution of the sixth and seventh centuries Mr. Belloc sees the power which re-created North and Western Europe. This institution [he says] did more work in Britain than in any other province of the Empire. And it had far more to do. It found a district utterly wrecked, perhaps half depopulated, and having lost all but a vague memory of the old Roman order; it had to remake, if it could, of all this part of a Europe. No other instrument was fitted for the purpose.