Its fear to-day is Socialism: Socialism which it does not understand, but which presents itself as an uprising of the uneducated, suddenly breaking into its houses; their clumsy feet on the mantelpiece, their clumsy hands seizing and destroying all beautiful and pleasant things. So it lies awake at night, listening fearfully to the tramp of the rising host: the revolt of the slave against his master. From Socialism--as a code of economic organisation, ordering life on a military, disciplinary, and rational basis--it has perhaps less to fear than it sometimes imagines. For this “Socialism” is farther away in time than many ardent Socialists suppose. And if “Socialism” were consummated, there might be found under its rigorous régime more tenderness to an aristocratic caste and tradition than is anticipated by those who are terrified at the promise of its advent. These people, indeed, have less to fear from a demand for equality, than from a demand for efficiency: from the enforced necessity, either in a hazardous national crisis abroad, or in some stress of economic adversity at home, for the rule of energy and intelligence. The demand of the Napoleonic system--“the declared principle,” to “seek talent wherever it may be found”--might make havoc of the supremacy of the children of the “Conquerors”; might drastically determine that some less ruinous proportion of the national wealth was expended on aimless conventions and enjoyments. It may be desirable that the land of England, for example, shall be held in the hands of private owners, instead of being owned by the whole community. It seems to be increasingly questioned whether the land of England shall continue to be held by its present private owners: whether the landed classes of this country, in any ultimate standard of profit and loss, can justify the trust and high calling which has placed the welfare of the rural population in their keeping, and now sees little return but a decaying, deserted countryside. There is much, again, to be said for a Second Chamber in Government. There is little to be said for the present Second Chamber, except that in practice it appears to have disproved all its theoretical advantages: abstaining where in theory it ought to have struck, and striking where in theory it ought to have abstained. Aristocracy in England has been kindly and generous. Even as in part transformed into a plutocracy, it provides little of that attitude of insolence to the less fortunate which is the surest provocation of revolution. The action of a section of the motoring classes, indeed, in their annexation of the highways and their indifference to the common traditions, stands almost alone as an example of wealth’s intolerable arrogances, and has certainly excited more resentment amongst the common people than any extravagance of pleasure or political reaction. It is only in such manifestations as those of enjoyment deliberately