Then in the large question of the employment of human flesh and blood to make money for you, the modern Englishman finds that he must either tear the effects of his religious bringing-up out of his heart, or forego the possibility of becoming really rich, don't you know. It is all a matter of supply and demand; and if the mass of humanity live starved lives and die daily in order that I may be fat and warm and cultured and possessed of surpluses at banks, it is not my fault. You must really blame supply and demand. With this fine phrase on his lips, the English capitalist confutes all the philosophies and sets his foot on the majority of the decencies of life. Of course, I shall be told that the prince and chief of all hide-bound industrial capitalists is Mr. Andrew Carnegie, who happens to be a Scot. And I cheerfully admit that Mr. Carnegie is a very serious case in point. But for our one Mr. Carnegie, the English have fifty Mr. Carnegies. They may not be so rich or so famous; but there they are, and the blood and spirit of the English people suffer accordingly. The religion of the wealthy does not prevent them from grinding the face of the poor; and the religion of the middle classes is of pretty much the same order. It is at the hands of the English middle classes that the English poor suffer a further and a bitterer depredation. For when you have earned money hardly, you want good goods for it; and the English middle classes, who are nearly all shopkeepers, either directly or indirectly, make a point of palming off on you the very worst goods the law will allow them to sell. And, in spite of all, the churches continue to open their doors, new churches continue to be built, million-pound funds are raised, the missionary speeds over the blue wave to the succour of the 'eathen, and English women and children have their pleasant Sunday afternoons, and bishops keep high-stepping horses; Church and State are grappled together with hooks of steel, and England is a Christian country. Till the churches get out of their slippers and their sloth and their tea-bibbing and their tolerance, matters will go on in the same old futile, scandalous way. If they are to have charge and direction of the soul of man, they must remember that the soul of man is a greater thing than ease, and a greater thing than the Church; they must not play with the immortal part of humanity, and they must not trifle with the things which they believe to be of God. In no other country save England would such churches and such priests as the English now possess be tolerated or supported; it is the English decadence which has rendered Englishmen blind to the stupidity and banality of their pastors and spiritual guides, and it is the English easy-heartedness which permits the game of cant and cadge and sham to go on unchecked. CHAPTER X THE POLITICIAN