But when every possible qualification of the words Idle Rich has been made, and it is fully understood that idle does not mean doing nothing (which is impossible), but doing nothing useful, and continually consuming without producing, the term applies to the class, numbering at the extreme outside one-tenth of the population, to maintain whom in their idleness the other nine-tenths are kept in a condition of slavery so complete that their slavery is not even legalized as such: hunger keeps them sufficiently in order without imposing on their masters any of those obligations which make slaves so expensive to their owners. What is more, any attempt on the part of a rich woman to do a stroke of ordinary work for the sake of her health would be bitterly resented by the poor because, from their point of view, she would be a rich woman meanly doing a poor woman out of a job. And now comes the crowning irony of it all, which many intelligent women to whom irony means nothing will prefer to call the judgment of God. When we have conferred on these people the coveted privilege of having plenty of money and nothing to do (our idiotic receipt for perfect happiness and perfect freedom) we find that we have made them so wretched and unhealthy that instead of doing nothing they are always doing something “to keep themselves fit” for doing nothing; and instead of doing what they like, they bind themselves to a laborious routine of what they call society and pleasure which you could not impose on a parlormaid without receiving notice instantly, or on a Trappist without driving him to turn atheist to escape from it. Only one part of it, the Red Indian part, the frank return to primitive life, the hunting and shooting and country life, is bearable; and one has to be by nature half a savage to enjoy that continually. So much for the exertions of the idle rich! 19 CHURCH, SCHOOL, AND PRESS Just as Parliament and the Courts are captured by the rich, so is the Church. The average parson does not teach honesty and equality in the village school: he teaches deference to the merely rich, and calls that loyalty and religion. He is the ally of the squire, who, as magistrate, administers the laws made in the interests of the rich by the parliament of rich men, and calls that justice. The villagers, having no experience of any other sort of religion or law, soon lose all respect for both, and become merely cynical. They may touch their hats and curtsey respectfully; but they whisper to oneanother that the squire, no matter how kind his wife may be at Christmas by way of ransom, is a despoiler and oppressor of the poor, and the parson a hypocrite. In revolutions, it is the respectful peasants who burn the country houses and parsonages, and rush to the cathedrals to deface the statues, shatter the stained windows, and wreck the organ.