THE DRIFT OF CIVILIZATION
XIII
Whither are we Tending: America and Europe?
[...]
America has hitherto been blessedly free from predatory movements, though I doubt whether this immunity will long survive the appearance of a large leisured class, incomparably more wasteful and socially useless than the British aristocracy, who were partly killed off in the war and partly ruined by confiscatory taxation. The anti-immigration laws were very wise from this point of view, but when Lazarus comes to grips with Dives in America, they will not fight with kid gloves.
When the idea of democracy has been stripped of its mystical halo and half-religious sanction, government by universal suffrage is seen to be a mere experiment, and an unsuccessful one. It brings the wrong men to the top, and the arts of climbing into power make them quite unfit to use it. Somehow or other a method of securing competent rulers must be devised, and the powers of the legislature must be limited. It is intolerable that all the worldly goods of the citizens should be at the mercy of a parliamentary vote. But I have no notion how this reform is to be brought about. "Government", says Bernard Shaw, "presents only one problem - the discovery of a trustworthy anthropometric method." The discovery has not been made yet, and I am afraid it will continue to baffle our wisest heads. Let America, the most invulnerable nation, try the experiments.
[...]
Very Reverend William Ralph Inge
Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, London
(hailed as the most brilliant intellect in the Church of England.)
The Drift of Civilization [WorldCat]
by the Contributors to the
Fiftieth Anniversary Number
of the St Louis Post-Dispatch.
p. 192, George Allen & Unwin Ltd.,
London, 1929
