And there is another great difference between England and other nations, a difference of tremendous import. She has not stopped after making her lower classes nominally free. She has given them full civil rights and a constantly increasing share of political rights. Thus she has made them guardians of freedom. This is the great reason why her nobility have not destroyed her. This enfranchised class has been a barrier against aristocratic encroachment. And yet in so far as the upper caste of England have partaken of traditions and habits of oppression they have deeply injured their country. Not a single great modern measure which they have not bitterly opposed. The Repeal of the Corn Laws, the Abolition of Tests, the Reform Bill, the improvement of the Universities--these and a score more of great measures nearly as important, they have fought to the last.[60] To them is mainly due that grasping of lands which has brought so much misery on the working class.[61] To them is due that cold-blooded dealing with Lafayette and Bailly and other patriots of the French Revolution, which finally resulted in the Brunswick Manifesto and the Reign of Terror. To them and their followers is due that most stupid crime which any nation ever committed in its foreign policy--the bitter, cowardly injustice toward our own Republic in its recent struggle. This is what the _remnant_ of caste-spirit in England has accomplished, and it is only because it has not been habituated to oppression by serf-owning, and because it was held in check by a lower class possessing civil and political rights, that it was not frightful in turbulence and debauchery. So stands modern history as it bears upon the thesis I have proposed. It shows a man-mastering caste, even when its man-mastering has passed from a fact into a tradition, to be the most frequent foe and the most determined with which nations have to grapple. By its erection of a substitute for patriotism, it is of all foes the most intractable; by its erection of a substitute for political morality, the most deceptive; by its proneness to disunion and disintegration, the most bewildering; by its habit of calling for the intervention of foreign powers, the most disheartening; by its morbid sensitiveness over pretended rights, the most watchful; in its unscrupulousness, the most determined; by its brilliancy, the most powerful in cheating the world into sympathy. But history gives more than this. To the thesis I have advanced it gives, as you have seen, a corollary. Having shown what foe to right and liberty is most vigorous and noxious, it shows how alone that foe can be conquered and permanently dethroned. The lesson of failures and successes in the world's history points to one course, and to that alone.