executive committee, and controlled its actions by yielding or withholding personal service or, at a later date, contritutions from their possessions, which contributions, as aids, loans or taxes, constituted the revenue of the State. The form of the State has changed from time to time, and the means whereby the owners of property have exercised control over the collection and disposal of their contributions have varied. Sometimes, they have sat as the Great Council; sometimes, they have scarcely been con-suited by the King; sometimes, they have come together in Parliament to vote money in return for redress of grievances; sometimes, again, they have been able to enforce the principle of "no taxation without representation." But the Parliament has never been the Executive. It has only been a means whereby successive classes of property owners have been able to render the Executive powerless by withholding supplies or revenue indispensable to its upkeep. When the landowners and merchants became economicallу supreme and politically dominant in Parliament, they compelled Charles II., William III. and other occupants of the throne to recognise the "Constitution" and hand over control of the Executive to them. They then proceeded to transform the House of Commons into a farce until another economic force, that of the manufacturers, won their way to power in that Chamber, and, relying on the threat of a Radical Revolution, secured a share in the spoils of government. To-day, the capitalist class—landowners, manufacturers, financiers—controls the Executive and proceeds to transform the People's Chamber into the House of Camouflage. Now, the proletariat, the propertyless working class, aspires to conquer the State, and the entire class of property owners, with feverish energy, struggles to break down the Parliamentary approach, and throws up every civil and military obstacle to bar the advance of the last class. It pretends to give them more political representation by widening the franchise, it invites them to participate in certain offices of minor importance, or else it recommends them to abandon "dogmatic class politics" and fight for a great "People's Charter." It tries persuasion and it strengthens its police system. It prefers to use guile, but it holds force in reserve.
The capitalist class, in so far as it has exerted its political power through Parliament, has done so in its capacity as a tax-paying class. The working class does pay taxes, both direct and indirect, towards the upkeep of the State, but as
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