Socialist movement. That is rather a disquieting result to working men
of having destroyed the Liberal Party.

But we are told to wait a bit; the Socialist Party in Germany is only
three millions. How many will there be in ten years' time? That is a
fair argument. I should like to say this. A great many men can jump
four feet, but very few can jump six feet. After a certain distance
the difficulty increases progressively. It is so with the horse-power
required to drive great ships across the ocean; it is so with the
lifting power required to raise balloons in the air. A balloon goes up
quite easily for a certain distance, but after a certain distance it
refuses to go up any farther, because the air is too rarefied to float
it and sustain it. And, therefore, I would say let us examine the
concrete facts.

In France, before the Revolution, property was divided among a very
few people. A few thousand nobles and priests and merchants had all
the wealth in the country; twenty-five million peasants had nothing.
But in modern States, such as we see around us in the world to-day,
property is very widely divided. I do not say it is evenly divided. I
do not say it is fairly divided, but it is very widely divided.
Especially is that true in Great Britain. Nowhere else in the world,
except, perhaps, in France and the United States, are there such vast
numbers of persons who are holders of interest-bearing,
profit-bearing, rent-earning property, and the whole tendency of
civilisation and of free institutions is to an ever-increasing volume
of production and an increasingly wide diffusion of profit. And
therein lies the essential stability of modern States. There are
millions of persons who would certainly lose by anything like a
general overturn, and they are everywhere the strongest and best