One becomes aware, too, when projects of expenditure are under discussion, of ...

One becomes aware, too, when projects of expenditure are under discussion, of a subtle shift of speech. The older generation tends to speak of the taxpayer, the younger of the State - with reason, because the electorate of 1832 to 1867 had to pay its own way.

After 1867, much more after 1885, there is a feeling abroad that the electors have only to give their orders; someone else will meet the note.' The control of industry is more searching and regular; the volume of departmental legislation grows yearly. Free Trade is no longer an unquestioned dogma; even compulsory military service can be debated.

In Forster's phrase, the nations are massing themselves; the temperature is rising under the inter-pressure of competition; and the rocky core of old individualism is being metamorphosed into something new.

We may think of English history in the years, let us say between the Jubilees, the years of the great London strikes and the first Colonial Conference, as the epilogue to one age, or the prehistory of another. One picture is dissolving fast.