It is impossible, unfortunately, in so brief a summary of Mr. Belloc's views, even to suggest with what force of argument and wealth of example he supports the thesis of _The Servile State_. What that thesis is it may be well to state in full. Mr. Belloc says that _The Servile State_ was written "to maintain and prove the following truth": That our free modern society in which the means of production are owned by a few being necessarily in unstable equilibrium, it is tending to reach a condition of stable equilibrium by the establishment of compulsory labour legally enforcible upon those who do not own the means of production for the advantage of those who do. With this principle of compulsion applied against the non-owners there must also come a difference in their status; and in the eyes of society and of its positive law men will be divided into two sets; the first economically free and politically free, possessed of the means of production, and securely confirmed in that possession; the second economically unfree and politically unfree, but at first secured by their very lack of freedom in certain necessaries of life and in a minimum of well-being beneath which they shall not fall.[21] Now, the reader who has followed the brief summary of the preceding chapter cannot fail to arrive at a consideration of apparently cardinal importance. Even if he be convinced--as we are convinced--that the servile state is actually upon us, he will yet feel that a people still politically free will never allow what is to-day but a young growth to attain its full stature. The English people, he will argue, hold their own destiny in their own hand. We already possess all but manhood suffrage; and, until that power is taken from us, which it could never be without a fierce struggle, we possess a weapon with which any and every attempt to re-introduce the servile status can successfully be resisted. A man reasoning thus should ask himself two questions: first, does the proletariat object to the re-introduction of the servile status, provided it brings with it security and sufficiency? second, does the enjoyment of a wide suffrage connote the power of self-government? These are questions which every intelligent man must be able to answer for himself, and, if he answer them honestly, his answers, we think, will agree with those Mr. Belloc has given. In _The Servile State_ he affirms what we all know to be the fact, that the English proletariat of to-day would not merely fail to reject the servile status, but would welcome it. He puts the matter in this way: If you were to approach those millions of families now living at a wage with the proposal for the contract of service for life, guaranteeing them employment at what each regarded as his usual full wage, how many would refuse?