On the one hand, the British have organized a political system which is probably more sensitively and completely responsive to a nationalized public opinion than is the political system of the American democracy.

On the other hand, this same nationalized political organization is aristocratic to the core--aristocratic without scruple or qualification.

What is the effect of this aristocratic organization upon the efficiently and fertility of the English political system?
Has it contributed in the past to such efficiency?
Does it still contribute?
And if so, how far?
The power of the English aristocracy is no doubt to be justified, in part, by the admirable service which has been rendered to the country by the nobility and the gentry.

During the eighteenth and a part of the nineteenth centuries the political leadership of the English people was on the whole both efficient and edifying.

During all this period their continental competitors were either burdened with autocratic obscurantism or else were weakened by civil struggles and the fatal consequences of military aggression.