There are some good aristocrats in the political novel. All of Disraeli’s Young England heroes approach politics with high seriousness and dedication. Coningsby is so suffused with virtue that he keeps his purity unsullied at the expense of losing his inheritance. Tancred’s politics are intermingled with a religious mysticism that leads him to the Holy Land. Meredith’s Beauchamp is such an emotional firebrand in his radical convictions that he makes Disraeli’s young men look like mild and high minded Rover Boys. But he belongs to their class. A little farther down on the social and economic scale is Cary’s Edward Wilcher. A politician of entirely different kidney from these zealous young men, he is a sophisticated and cynical careerist who writes embarrassing epigrams about members of his own party. But he is like the others in his concern for progressive legislation rather than perpetuation of the privileges of his own social group. Augustine St. Clare is one of Mrs. Stowe’s better slave-owners. He is obviously on his way to salvation, partly through the influence of saintly Uncle Tom, when he is untimely carved by a bowie-knife wielded in a fight he has attempted to stop. It is this accident which prevents him from freeing Tom. Churchill’s Humphrey Crewe is an eccentric and fatuous ass, but his intentions are pure gold. He seeks office because he believes he can benefit the state. In _The Grand Design_, Jed Farrington refers to “the Squire in the White House and his big business friends.” But it is clear in the book that though Big Business may conceivably have derived some benefits from the Roosevelt administrations, this descendant of New York state patroons was politically oriented toward less pedigreed groups. If one were to compile a balance sheet for this class, however, the villains would far outnumber the heroes.