Functional socialism

WE AND THEY 171

promptly and without ceremony put in his place.

Our search for these unseen factors brings us at a bound to the English yeomanry and the spirit it engendered. The story of the English yeomanry is unique. From it has sprung, on the one hand, the free traders of our cities, the merchant adventurers, the sea-going population, our marine supremacy. On the other hand, from it has sprung our municipal life, with its ancient charters, its corporations, its guilds and other associations. Over the centuries a slow integument of social life, flexible, fluctuant, always tenacious of rights and privileges hardly won and never abandoned. Kings and aristocrats have vainly struggled against it. It was the kings and aristocrats who played the diplomatic game and who were easily understood in Europe.

But Europe never realized that the British aristocracy was little more than the facade, behind which the deeper forces worked, with their municipal laws and customs, their commerce and manufacture, their agricultural traditions, their Bible, their churches and chapels. Above all, their liberties. This yeoman spirit has in general been easy going, tolerant, unimaginative; but, on occasion, remorseless. When Charles I was executed, it scarcely turned a hair, whilst Europe sizzled with fear and anger. When the Restoration came, with its excesses, its corruptions and ribaldries, Europe drew a sigh of relief and pictured England as falling into line. But the unseen factor was at work, a process of extirpation begun. The political party that best understood the