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His Japanese attendant, Asano, in expounding the
political history of the intervening two centuries, drew
an apt image from a seed eaten by insect parasites.
First there is the original seed, ripening vigorously
enough. And then comes some insect and lays an egg
under the skin, and behold! in a little while the seed
is a hollow shape with an active grub inside that has
eaten out its substance. And then comes some secondary
parasite, some ichneumon fly, and lays an egg
within this grub, and behold! that, too, is a hollow
shape, and the new living thing is inside its predecessor's
skin which itself is snug within the seed coat.
And the seed coat still keeps its shape, most people
think it a seed still, and for all one knows it may still
think itself a seed, vigorous and alive. "Your
Victorian kingdom," said Asano, "was like that--kingship
with the heart eaten out. "The landowners--the
barons and gentry--began ages ago with King
John; there were lapses, but they beheaded King
Charles, and ended practically with King George
mere husk of a king . . . the real power in the
hands of their parliament. But the Parliament--the
organ of the land-holding tenant-ruling gentry--did
not keep its power long. The change had already
come in the nineteenth century. The franchises had
been broadened until it included masses of ignorant
men, "urban myriads," who went in their featureless
thousands to vote together. And the natural
consequence of a swarming constituency is the rule of the
party organisation. Power was passing even in the
Victorian time to the party machinery, secret,
complex, and corrupt. Very speedily power was in the
hands of great men of business who financed the
machines. A time came when the real power and
interest of the Empire rested visibly between the two
party councils, ruling by newspapers and electoral
organisations--two small groups of rich and able
men, working at first in opposition, then presently
together.
There was a reaction of a genteel ineffectual sort.
There were numberless books in existence, Asano said,
to prove that--the publication of some of them was
as early as Graham's sleep--a whole literature of
reaction in fact. The party of the reaction seems to
have locked itself into its study and rebelled with
unflinching determination--on paper. The urgent
necessity of either capturing or depriving the party
councils of power is a common suggestion underlying
all the thoughtful work of the early twentieth century,
both in America and England. In most of these
things America was a little earlier than England,
though both countries drove the same way.
That counter-revolution never came. It could
never organise and keep pure. There was not enough
of the old sentimentality, the old faith in righteousness,
left among men. Any organisation that became
big enough to influence the polls became complex
enough to be undermined, broken up, or bought outright
by capable rich men. Socialistic and Popular,
Reactionary and Purity Parties were all at last mere
Stock Exchange counters, selling their principles to
pay for their electioneering. And the great concern
of the rich was naturally to keep property intact, the
board clear for the game of trade. Just as the feudal
concern had been to keep the board clear for hunting
and war. The whole world was exploited, a battle
field of businesses; and financial convulsions, the
scourge of currency manipulation, tariff wars, made
more human misery during the twentieth century--because
the wretchedness was dreary life instead of
speedy death--than had war, pestilence and famine, in
the darkest hours of earlier history.
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