Powers. But in the past century there has been an enormous change in
men's opinions and consciences about property; whereas we were
Individualists, now we are Socialists. The British lord, the German
junker, has none of the sense of unqualified rights that his
great-grandfather had, and he is aware of a vigour of public criticism
that did not exist in the former time....

How far will these men get out of the tradition of their birth and
upbringing?

Next comes the great class of lawyers who, through the idiotic method of
voting in use in modern democracies, are able practically to rule Great
Britain, and who are powerful and influential in all democratic
countries.

In order to secure a certain independence and integrity in its courts,
Great Britain long ago established the principle of enormously
overpaying its judges and lawyers. The natural result has been to give
our law courts and the legal profession generally a bias in favour of
private wealth against both the public interest and the proletariat. It
has also given our higher national education an overwhelming direction
towards the training of advocates and against science and constructive
statecraft. An ordinary lawyer has no idea of making anything; that
tendency has been destroyed in his mind; he waits and sees and takes
advantage of opportunity. Everything that can possibly be done in
England is done to make our rulers Micawbers and Artful Dodgers.

One of the most anxious questions that a Briton can ask himself to-day
is just how far the gigantic sufferings and still more monstrous
warnings of this war have shocked the good gentlemen who must steer the