complications of the central fact of the falsification of all names and
ranks. Our peers are like a party of mediaeval knights who should have
exchanged shields, crests, and pennons. For the present rule seems to be
that the Duke of Sussex may lawfully own the whole of Essex; and that the
Marquis of Cornwall may own all the hills and valleys so long as they are
not Cornish.

The clue to all this tangle is as simple as it is terrible. If England is
an aristocracy, England is dying. If this system IS the country, as some
say, the country is stiffening into more than the pomp and paralysis of
China. It is the final sign of imbecility in a people that it calls cats
dogs and describes the sun as the moon--and is very particular about the
preciseness of these pseudonyms. To be wrong, and to be carefully wrong,
that is the definition of decadence. The disease called aphasia, in which
people begin by saying tea when they mean coffee, commonly ends in their
silence. Silence of this stiff sort is the chief mark of the powerful
parts of modern society. They all seem straining to keep things in rather
than to let things out. For the kings of finance speechlessness is
counted a way of being strong, though it should rather be counted a way of
being sly. By this time the Parliament does not parley any more than the
Speaker speaks. Even the newspaper editors and proprietors are more
despotic and dangerous by what they do not utter than by what they do. We
have all heard the expression "golden silence." The expression "brazen
silence" is the only adequate phrase for our editors. If we wake out of
this throttled, gaping, and wordless nightmare, we must awake with a yell.
The Revolution that releases England from the fixed falsity of its
present position will be not less noisy than other revolutions. It will
contain, I fear, a great deal of that rude accomplishment described among
little boys as "calling names"; but that will not matter much so long as
they are the right names.