The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

8 THE HOUSE OF INDUSTRY

negotiating, were rather cheap; but the profits were pocketed with the calm assurance that every aristocrat accepted the Grace of God.

Nor did the Peers carry on affairs formally sitting in the House of Lords passing Bills or Resolutions. We must rather picture them and their entourage as forming a circle round the Crown, jealously guarding against all contacts with the Crown and only permitting access to the Crown on payment of tolls and commissions commensurate with the magnitude of the business and their own dignity. Nothing vulgar or sordid, you understand.

In a country like England, where law and custom prevail, the Peerage (using the term in the broad sense, that is the Peers, their families and their hangers-on) in maintaining their position had to move on some kind of rational basis in their public work. We shall discover three main motives. First to secure national power and international prestige; second, war profits, both in peace and war; thirdly, the most substantial, ever increasing rents.

From the days of Elizabeth down to Victoria, we have the record of hundreds of appeals by the City of London to the Peers for support in home and foreign adventures, and always with the refrain: Do this and rents will not only rise but multiply. If the official difficulties were great, the Peers naturally expected a greater share of the plunder. Thus when the first expedition to the East Indies was projected, the Peers were