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.
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