George Eliot, in a passage that has become famous, lets it be understood that good society is a terribly expensive product, that it is accustomed to float on gossamer wings of light irony, and that in order to bring it to perfection infinite labour is required from common people who sweat in factories, and toil in coal-mines, and tramp heavily about in agricultural districts “when the rainy days look dreary.” The novelist was dealing particularly with England; but the circumstances which she had in mind repeat themselves more or less exactly in most civilised countries. Even in Australia, which has not been civilised very long, men are sweating in factories, and toiling in coal-mines, and grubbing industriously on way-back selections for the benefit of other people who live in large houses and give a social tone to populous cities. Much interest attaches to this thing called “good society.” Is it, as a matter of fact, floated on gossamer wings of light irony, or on gossamer wings of any sort? Is it as delicate and ethereal as George Eliot says it ought to be? There are certain truisms that do not require to be insisted upon. They are self-evident. Mr Henry Crosland, who has become quite famous through his ingenious habit of turning positives into negatives, and negatives into positives, says that the moral tone of English upper-class circles is excellent, while that of English middle-class circles is deceitful and desperately wicked. But the ordinary man, with no literary reputation to weigh him down, declares confidently that the facts are neither as George Eliot nor as Mr Crosland declare them to be. The term society, as commonly used and understood, refers to the limited number of people who have come into possession either of a certain property or of a certain name. The atmosphere of this circle is not light and buoyant. It is heavy, and _blasé_, and tired, and dull. This good English society does not float on gossamer wings; it drags itself round two continents with very conscious endeavour. It is not ironical; to be that, requires mental effort, while it is easier and more effective to be supercilious. This same society is not moral; the whole scheme and purpose of conventional morality is narrow and circumscribed, and therefore unattractive to those unprejudiced people who perceive that arbitrary rules of conduct are made for slaves. The set in question is in no single particular what its apologists and admirers declare it to be. It is not really exclusive; a man with sufficient means can always enter it. There is only one thing to which it is actively antagonistic, and that is ability. It is not antagonistic to poverty; it is merely disdainful. Its arrogance is appalling. Its lack of creative power is more appalling still.