I
The new Feudalism will be but an orderly outgrowth of present tendencies and conditions. All societies evolve naturally out of their predecessors. In sociology, as in biology, there is no cell without a parent cell. The society of each generation develops a multitude of spontaneous and acquired variations, and out of these, by a blending process of natural and conscious selection, the succeeding society is evolved. The new order will differ in no important respects from the present, except in the completer development of its more salient features. The visitor from another planet who had known the old and should see the new would note but few changes. Alter et idem—another yet the same—he would say. From magnate to baron, from workman to villein, from publicist to court agent and retainer, will be changes of state and function so slight as to elude all but the keenest eyes.
An increased power, a more concentrated control, will be seen. But these have their limitations, which must not be disregarded. A sense of the latent strength of democracy will restrain the full exercise of baronial powers, and a growing sense of ethics will guide baronial activities somewhat toward the channels of social betterment. For democracy will endure, in spite of the new order. “Like death,” said Disraeli, “it gives back nothing.” Something of its substance it gives back, it must be confessed; but of its outer forms it yields nothing, and thus it retains the potentiality of exerting its will in whatever direction it may see fit. And this fact, though now but feebly recognized, will be better understood as time runs on, and the barons will bear in mind the limit of popular patience. It is an elastic limit, of a truth; for the mass of mankind are more ready to endure known ills than to fly to others that they know not. It is a limit which, to be heeded, needs only to be carefully studied. Macaulay’s famous dictum, that the privileged classes, when their rule is threatened, always bring about their own ruin by making further exactions, is likely, in this case, to prove untrue. A wiser forethought begins to prevail among the autocrats of to-day—a forethought destined to grow and expand and to prove of inestimable value when bequeathed to their successors. Our nobility will thus temper their exactions to an endurable limit; and they will distribute benefits to a degree that makes a tolerant, if not a satisfied, people. They may even make a working principle of Bentham’s maxim, and after, of course, appropriating the first and choicest fruits of industry to themselves, may seek to promote the “greatest happiness of the greatest number.” For therein will lie their greater security.
The Positivists, in their prediction of social changes, give us the phrase, “the moralization of capital,” and some of the more hopeful theologians, not to be outdone, have prophesied “the Christianization of capital.” So far there is not much to be said confirmatory of either expectation. Yet it is not to be denied that the faint stirrings of an ethical sense are observable among the men of millions, and that the principle of the “trusteeship of great wealth” has won a number of adherents. The enormous benefactions for social purposes, the construction of “model workshops” and “model villages,” though in many cases prompted by self-interest and in others by a love of ostentation, are at least sometimes due to a new sense of social responsibility. A duty to society has been apprehended, and these are its first fruits. It is a duty, true enough, which is but dimly seen and imperfectly fulfilled. The greater part of these benefactions, as has already been pointed out, is directed to purposes which have but a slight or indirect bearing upon the relief of social distress, the restraint of injustice, or the mitigation of remediable hardships. The giving is even often economically false, and if carried to an extreme would prove disastrous to the community; for in many cases it is a transmutation of wealth from a status of active capital, wherein it makes possible a greater diffusion of comfort, to a status of comparative sterility. But, though often mistaken as is the conception and futile the fulfilment of this duty, the fact that it is apprehended at all is one of considerable importance, and one that carries the promise of baronial security in the days to come.