In every civilized State, revenues which are drawn from a territory are expended on that territory, and there is no process known to modern government by which wealth may first be drawn from a territory into the treasury and then be redistributed with a profit to the individuals who have contributed it, or to others. It would be just as reasonable to say that the citizens of London are richer than the citizens of Birmingham because London has a richer treasury; or that Londoners would become richer if the London County Council were to annex the county of Hertford; as to say that people's wealth varies according to the size of the administrative area which they inhabit. The whole thing is, as I have called it, an optical illusion, due to the hypnotism of an obsolete terminology. Just as poverty may be greater in the large city than in the small one, and taxation heavier, so the citizens of a great State may be poorer than the citizens of a small one, as they very often are. Modern government is mainly, and tends to become entirely, a matter of administration. A mere jugglery with the administrative entities, the absorption of small States into large ones, or the breaking up of large States into small, is not of itself going to affect the matter one way or the other. CHAPTER IV THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF CONFISCATION Our present terminology of international politics an historical survival--Wherein modern conditions differ from ancient--The profound change effected by Division of Labor--The delicate interdependence of international finance--Attila and the Kaiser--What would happen if a German invader looted the Bank of England--German trade dependent upon English credit--Confiscation of an enemy's property an economic impossibility under modern conditions--Intangibility of a community's wealth. During the Victorian Jubilee procession an English beggar was heard to say: I own Australia, Canada, New Zealand, India, Burmah, and the Islands of the Far Pacific; and I am starving for want of a crust of bread. I am a citizen of the greatest Power of the modern world, and all people should bow to my greatness. And yesterday I cringed for alms to a negro savage, who repulsed me with disgust. What is the meaning of this? The meaning is that, as very frequently happens in the history of ideas, our terminology is a survival of conditions no longer existing, and our mental conceptions follow at the tail of our vocabulary. International politics are still dominated by terms applicable to conditions which the processes of modern life have altogether abolished.