The balance of strength began to be reversed when one of the periodical waves of new riches coincided with a sharp depreciation in the old media of wealth: the industrial millionaire, the Rand magnate, the American heiress and the cosmopolitan Jew, hitherto suspect and shy, made a simultaneous appearance at a time when to the afflictions of agricultural depression was added the capital taxation of the Harcourt death duties. Welcomed by the most august and forced upon the most repellent, new and alien faces appeared at Cowes, on the turf and at Covent Garden; new names among the birthday honours and in the list of those who rented grouse-moors. Faced with the choice of marrying money or of economising and doing without it, the old aristocracy of land crossed its blood with the new aristocracy of commerce, hoping no doubt that the system by which isolated newcomers had been tamed would prevail to convert the barbarian host in companies and to baptise it in platoons. On either side lessons were given and received; but, while interest urged the stranger to acquire ready-made an air of breeding, the fading memory of a waning prestige could not preserve to the older society the arbitrament in manners which it had held unchallenged before this surrender to wealth. A few families resisted the lure and kept their doors straitly barred; but, as Dane-gelt, instead of buying security for English soil, only tempted more Danes in search of more gold, so the first, partial capitulation brought more invaders with ever more and more gold to offer in exchange for a slice of England. As influence and importance were focussed on money and no longer on land, power shifted from the landed estates to London; the steadying responsibilities of a territorial position, which was already threatened by subversive democratic ideals, were allowed to dwindle.