consider receding to a secondary position. Rather than permit the advent
of a power beyond their immediate control, they preferred to shatter the
instrument by which they sustained their ascendancy. For it is clear
that Roosevelt's offence in the eyes of the capitalistic class was not
what he had actually done, for he had done nothing seriously to injure
them. The crime they resented was the assertion of the principle of
equality before the law, for equality before the law signified the end
of privilege to operate beyond the range of law. If this principle which
Roosevelt, in theory at least, certainly embodied, came to be rigorously
enforced, capitalists perceived that private persons would be precluded
from using the functions of sovereignty to enrich themselves. There lay
the parting of the ways. Sooner or later almost every successive ruling
class has had this dilemma in one of its innumerable forms presented to
them, and few have had the genius to compromise while compromise was
possible. Only a generation ago the aristocracy of the South
deliberately chose a civil war rather than admit the principle that at
some future day they might have to accept compensation for their slaves.

A thousand other instances of similar incapacity might be adduced, but I
will content myself with this alone.

Briefly the precedents induce the inference that privileged classes
seldom have the intelligence to protect themselves by adaptation when
nature turns against them, and, up to the present moment, the old
privileged class in the United States has shown little promise of being
an exception to the rule.

Be this, however, as it may, and even assuming that the great industrial
and capitalistic interests would be prepared to assist a movement toward
consolidation, as their ancestors assisted Washington, I deem it far