doned to the realm of dreams — that other world which is not of race but of language, not of Destiny but of Causality. And in it arose the idea, and finally the fact, of the "people" as conceived by poets and thinkers, who founded themselves a republic in the clouds of verse and logic and at last came to believe that politics consisted in idealistic writing and reading and speaking, and not in deed and resolve — so that even to-day real deeds and resolves are confused with mere expressions of inclination.
In England the victory of the gentry and the Declaration of Rights (1689) in reality put an end to the State. Parliament put William III on his throne, just as later it prevented George I and George II from vacating theirs, in the interest of its class. The word "State," which had been current as early as the Tudors, fell into disuse — it has become impossible to translate into English either Louis XIV's "L'état c est moi" or Frederick the Great's "Ich bin der erste Diener meiner Staates." On the other hand, the word "society" established itself as the expression of the fact that the nation was "in form" under the class- and not under the state-regime; the same word that with a significant misunderstanding Rousseau and the Continental rationalists generally took over to express the hatred of the Third Estate for authority.[1] But in England authority as "the Government" was clear-cut and well understood. From George I onwards its centre was the Cabinet, a body which constitutionally did not exist at all[2] and factually was an executive committee of the faction of the nobility in command for the time being. Absolutism existed, but it was the absolutism of a class-delegation. The idea of "lèse-majeste" was transferred to Parliament, as the immunity of the Roman kings passed to the tribunes. The genealogical principle is there, too, but it is expressed in the family relations within the higher nobility and the influence of the same upon the parliamentary situation. Even in 1902 Lord Salisbury acted as a Cecil in proposing his nephew Balfour as his successor as against Joseph Chamberlain. The noble factions of Tory and Whig separated themselves more and more distinctly, very often, indeed, within the same family, according to whether the "power-" outweighed the "booty-" outlook — that is, according as land was valued above money[3] — or vice versa, a contrast that even in the eighteenth century was expressed within the higher bourgeoisie by the words "respectable" and "fashionable," standing for two opposed conceptions of the gentleman. The State's care for all is frankly replaced by class-interest. It is for this that the individual claims his freedom — that is what "freedom" means in English — but the insular existence and the build of "society" have created such relations that in the
- ↑ For this, and what follows, see my Preussentum und Sozialismus, pp. 31, et seq.
- ↑ Mr. Asquith (Lord Oxford) was the first British Prime Minister to be officially so styled. — Tr.
- ↑ "Landed" and "funded" interests (J. Hatschek, Engl. Verfassungsgeschichte, 1913, pp. 589, et seq. Walpole, the organizer of the Whig party after 1714, used to describe himself and Townshend as "the Firm;" and this "firm" with various changes of proprietorship governed without limitation till 1760.
