If all other grounds were absent, the obstinate survival of aristocracy in ...

If all other grounds were absent, the obstinate survival of aristocracy in Victorian England is capable of economic explanation.

They were the capitalists and directors of the chief English industry: 3,500,000 acres under wheat, crops from 30 bushels upwards to the acre:' encircled by a prosperous and respectful tenantry, as proud in their own way as themselves, and a landless peasantry at the feet of both. But their ascendancy rested hardly less on immaterials.

If they had the

one thing the plutocracy

most respected in themselves, they had all the other things which the people missed in the plutocracy.

In morals and intellect they were not disturbingly above or below the average of their countrymen, who regarded them, with some truth, as being in all bodily gifts the finest stock in Europe. By exercise, temperance, and plebeian alliance, the spindle-shanked lord of Fielding had become the ancestor of an invigorated race.

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