A century of industrial expansion and over half a century of free trade has left the English people miserably poor and contentedly hopeless; and in the future the people cannot depend upon any increase even of the small share of the benefits of industrial expansion, which they have hitherto obtained, because the national expansion is itself proceeding at a much slower rate.

The dole, which is now being accorded in the shape of old-age pensions, may fairly be compared to the free transportation to their homes with which the Bank of Monte Carlo assuages the feelings of its destitute victims.

The national organization and policy is so arranged that the majority must lose.

The result will be inevitably a diminution of the ability of the United Kingdom to hold its own in competition with its economic and political rivals; and in all probability this pressure from the outside will eventually force the English nation to reconsider the basis of its political and economic organization and policy.
IV DEMOCRACY AND NATIONALITY IN FRANCE The recent history and the present position of France illustrate another phase of the interdependence of the national and the democratic principles.

The vitality of English national life has been impaired by its identification with an inadequate and aristocratic political principle.