This latter danger can, however, be dealt with by the simple expedient of declaring that the capital goes out of the country at its own risk. It is, anyhow, preposterous to assume that capital has any inherent right to seek national protection when it travels abroad on private ventures of its own. That should be as clear as daylight; and its recognition would remove one of the main sources of international trouble. But it would also release the community from a good deal of the present wasteful and distracting preoccupation with the business incidental to the chances of international trouble, and leave it free to concern itself with the more vital matters of its inner life. And most of all, with the passing of the dynastic danger, this refusal to under-write the risks of profit-seeking capitalistic adventures abroad would remove the chief reason for that residual embargo on utter freedom of thought which must exist in a community which has to be held in readiness for swift regimentation. Men will never be wholly free until the possibility of war has disappeared from the earth. With the diminution of the chances of international friction, the urgency of domestic uniformity will in great part disappear; and democratic life may be counted upon to express itself in a free and unlimited variation of thought and interest. At the same time it is obvious that the present doctrine of property-rights within the community entails a serious limitation upon the freedom of the mind. Notice has already been taken of the effect of the property-privilege as it operates in the hands of the capitalist employer upon the freedom of the worker; but the hindrance to freedom ranges far beyond this region. In domestic legislation, the rights of property have virtually been “the law and the prophets”; and modern states have shown themselves more jealous for the defence of vested interests than the culture of the national life. It may be indeed that they have not perceived that these two things were different, not to say opposed. But how far these vested interests enter into the counsels of the state is evident from the fact that it has tended to treat any doctrine which assails them as criminal; and crimes against property are almost invariably treated with greater severity than crimes against the person. While these class rights are still recognised as entitled to the corporate protection of the community, there will be a region within which freedom of thought will be still frowned upon and so far as may be denied. The sun is too high in the heavens to permit of persecution save in sporadic cases; and it would seem that this is the last ditch in which privilege is still entrenched in its retreat before the advance of freedom. _Lese-majesté_ has ceased to be a dangerous crime; the heretic in religion enjoys his heresies unmolested; and the accident of noble birth has ceased to confer a privilege. The “divine rights” of property will presently go