Thus while an incessant alteration in social
equilibrium is inevitable, a revolution is a problem in dynamics, on the
correct solution of which the fortunes of a declining class depend.
For example, the modern English landlords replaced the military feudal
aristocracy during the sixteenth century, because the landlords had more
economic capacity and less credulity. The men who supplanted the
mediaeval soldiers in Great Britain had no scruple about robbing the
clergy of their land, and because of this quality they prospered
greatly. Ultimately the landlords reached high fortune by controlling
the boroughs which had, in the Middle Ages, acquired the right to return
members to the House of Commons. Their domination lasted long;
nevertheless, about 1760, the rising tide of the Industrial Revolution
brought forward another type of mind. Flushed by success in the
Napoleonic wars the Tories failed to appreciate that the social
equilibrium, by the year 1830, had shifted, and that they no longer
commanded enough physical force to maintain their parliamentary
ascendancy. They thought they had only to be arrogant to prevail, and so
they put forward the Duke of Wellington as their champion.
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