ABSTRACT
The present age differs from the past in many respects. Perhaps not the least important of these is that, in former times, political power belonged to men who from their infancy had been assured of a comfortable income. In France until the Revolution, and in England until the present century, most aristocrats derived a comfortable income from their estates; they might, it is true, gamble it away, but even then it was generally possible - in France by a position at court, in England by an enclosure act - to retrieve the spendthrift's fallen fortunes. The laws were made by those who had no experience of poverty, no knowledge of the uncertainties of life, no understanding of struggle or competition.
